List the Various Types of Wage and Benefit Provisions

Question

Examlex · Accepted Answer

The Answer is suggested:
Normally the collective agreement will indicate the basis on which workers from a given group or occupation are paid. Typically production and other blue- collar workers are paid on an hourly basis, while office, professional, and other white- collar workers are paid on a weekly, monthly, or even annual basis.

Pay schedules will indicate the normal rate of pay for a given job. Premium pay schedules will list such things as the differential to be paid for overtime work and when it kicks in, any extra premium to be paid for Sunday or holiday work, and differentials to be paid for shift work, night work, or exceptionally onerous or unpleasant jobs such as unloading animal carcasses from shift loads. In some cases, pay schedules will provide standby pay for those who must be on call while off duty, or a minimum amount of reporting pay for those called into work for short periods. Often though not invariably, pay schedules will take workers' length of service into account through "step increments" of various kinds; these are particularly common in the public sector.

COLA cost of living allowance) clauses are designed to protect workers against the effects of inflation. They are far less common now than they were fifteen or twenty years ago because inflation is so much lower than it used to be. Typically these provisions offer some, though not complete protection against inflation. Often they are triggered only at a certain rate of inflation i.e., 4 percent). Also, some such clauses don't cover the full contract period and others provide for less than complete adjustment to the inflation rate.

Incentive pay schedules compensate workers wholly or partially on the basis of the amount of work performed. Unions normally dislike such systems, especially individual systems, on the basis that they "pit worker against worker" and make it difficult for older or disabled workers to keep up. In addition, piecework systems are often difficulty and costly to administer and can lead to workplace conflict; for this reason, such systems are rare in Canadian agreements except in the clothing industry and in logging and other parts of the forest sector. On the other hand, "group- oriented" incentive plans such as gainsharing and profit- sharing have been on the increase in recent years, suggesting that group- oriented incentives may be more palatable to workers and their unions.

Pay- for- knowledge systems are a kind of compromise between regular pay schedules and incentive systems. Under these systems, most often found in workplaces which use self- directed work teams, all workers are guaranteed a certain minimum hourly, weekly, or monthly rate, but this rate will rise depending on the number of specific skills and tasks workers have mastered. Mastery is demonstrated by passing specific tests related to the skill or task in question. Such systems allow workers to progress at their own rate; generally those who have passed all the relevant tests will receive a substantially higher wage or salary than new hires.

As for benefits, it should be noted that compensation packages in collective agreements generally provide for a variety of fringe benefits. On average, fringes comprise more than 30 percent of total compensation costs. Unionized workers generally receive a significantly higher proportion of their total compensation in the form of benefits than do non- unionized workers; this is because generally older unionized workers prefer to receive non- taxable benefits rather than taxable wages, and because firms like to use such benefits especially pension plans) as a means of "locking employees in," thereby reducing costly turnover. The benefit plans most commonly found in collective agreements include pension plans, disability and medical insurance, dental insurance, sick leave, extended health care, and life and accident insurance. Some agreements also contain provisions entitling workers to a given number of annual days off for personal or religious reasons. While employers have generally been reluctant to give new benefits in recent years, and indeed have tried to cut back on existing ones as a means of cutting costs, two types of benefits which have recently emerged have been prepaid legal services and employee assistance programs, which enable workers to receive counselling on a broad range of issues, from alcohol- and drug- related problems to marital and financial ones.

List the Various Types of Wage and Benefit Provisions

Definitions: