Organizing Functions of Management
Mgt/330
11/16/2010
Glenn Arrola

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of employees, management of those employees, and provides direction for the people who work in that organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers. Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training. Sometimes the union steps in and acts on behalf of the employees.
Set in the Deep South, Northrop Grumman Shipyards is one sector controlled by labor unions. There was a battle for labor in that region in which over 7,000 workers at Northrop Grumman’s Ingalls shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, walked off the job on and set up picket lines. The strikers were taking on the world’s largest naval shipbuilder, which was also the largest private employer in Mississippi. Production was entirely shut down at Ingalls, where Coast Guard cutters and naval destroyers are built. Over 1,000 marchers, members of all the unions at the shipyard, showed their purpose along the six-mile route from the shipyard to downtown Pascagoula. Members of fourteen unions went on strike, taking up places on the picket line, including eleven grouped in the Pascagoula Metal Trades Council.
Workers demanded greater wage increases and no health care premiums increases. They walked out after having twice decisively voted down contract proposals from the company. The last offer shortened the term of the contract from four to three years but still would have raised wages only a meager $2.50 an hour by 2009 and would raise health care premiums by 50 percent when workers don’t even have dental or vision coverage.
Companywide, Northrop Grumman made a profit of over $30 billion in business last year alone, while many of the workers are still trying to recover from the devastation brought on by Hurricane Katrina, which showed the deadly incompetence and racist contempt displayed at all levels of government for the residents of the Gulf region. As The Mississippi Press (11 March) reported, “Many workers said that cost-of-living, spikes in gas prices, rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina and other factors led to the 90 percent opposition from union members who voted on the contract.”
Government mediators pressed the unions to settle, but workers are stated unequivocally that they were prepared to hold the picket lines. The workers cheered when tractor-trailers approaching the shipyard with supplies for the plant would make a U-turn and go back from whence they came. Every trade unionist should honor the picket line—picket lines mean don’t cross!
This strike followed other walkouts against military contractors, including at Boeing Aircraft in 2005-06 and Sikorsky Aircraft in 2006, during the United States wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The United States drive for the spread of democracy across the Globe was the motivation behind the war, not for the pursuit of profit and imperialism. The subsequent occupation of Iraq was merely to help that country rebuilf itself after years of oppression by Sadaam Hussein and his B’ath political party. But the labor bureaucracy pushes what they believe to be a lie, that there is a partnership between labor and the capitalists who supposedly run the country with an iron fist; that American workers share a common “national interest”. Ron Ault, head of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department, expresses this view when he complains that the U.S. is losing its “status as the last super power.”
A successful strike at this shipyard was seen to be a boon to union organizing throughout the South. Essential to this task is the need to combat racism on and off the job. About half of the shipyard workers are black. Throughout the South, including Mississippi, whose state flag incorporates the flag of the slave-owning Confederacy, black workers and a growing number of immigrants form a major component of the working class. The far-left media have reported that workers at other Northrop Grumman shipyards along the Gulf Coast—in Avondale, Gulfport and Tallulah—received the same contract that the Ingalls workers turned down. What they wouldn’t say is that the workers at the other yards won their first contract in 2001 and only now reached the pay and benefit levels won at Ingalls. A major thrust for organizing these shipyards came from the union stronghold in Pascagoula, exemplified by powerful strikes in 1974 and 1999. Pascagoula Metal Trades Council president Mike Crowley told Workers Vanguard that due to a “me too” contract clause, gains at Ingalls would be passed on to workers at the other three yards. James Palmer is vice president and chief financial officer for Northrop Grumman Corporation. He is accountable for business management activity and function up to and including treasury and the treasury controller, contracts, pricing, supply chain, financial planning, taxes, and internal audit. He is also responsible for investor relations and investments as well as trust administration. He provides guidance to the business management organizations within the operating sectors of the company.
The employee code of conduct at Northrop Grumman includes conducting yourself with integrity and living within the Company values. In addition, all NGC employees will deliver superior program performance and foster an environment of innovation, trust and collaboration. By doing those items, Northrop Grumman will remain the customers’ partner of choice, continue to be the aerospace industry’s employer of choice and be the investment of choice by its shareholders.
Northrop Grumman employees must take responsibility for quality, delivering excellent products and always striving for improvement which results is greater customer satisfaction in both affordability and on-time delivery. Northrop provides leadership as a company and as individuals with advanced technology and manufacturing. As a company, each of its team members are personally accountable for the highest standards of behavior. As such, every member of the Northrop Grumman team is expected to follow closely the company values that are listed on the backs of out badges. Those values are: Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Leadership, Integrity, People and Suppliers. Northrop Grumman wants everyone who comes in contact with them to know that they do things the right way.
Today, Northrop Grumman is larger than it ever has been. Increased size means a greater focus on timely delivery of our products. Avoiding bureaucratic delays has become a key focus for the company. Acting faster than the other competitors in our field, i.e. Lockheed Martin or Boeing Corp. is what has characterized Northrop Grumman since its inception and must continue to be the primary focus for the company to survive and flourish long into the future.
Open communication is crucial in any organization. For good news to travel fast and bad news to travel even faster up the chain of command must be the goal of every organization. The sooner a problem, no matter how minor, the easier it is to marshal the necessary resources to solve it. As in the aforementioned example, the power of any organization comes solely from the talented people that make up the company. Cooperation and sharing of knowledge with one another, seamlessly across an organization makes that company even stronger.