Abstract
The study investigates associations between the labor-management relationship and selected indicators of urban mass transit performance. Four components of performance are analyzed: service efficiency; service effectiveness; employee withdrawal (i.e. turnover, absenteeism and tardiness); and adaptability. Measures of these four dependent variables are related to several controllable aspects of the labor-management relationships: the legal framework that constrains labor-management interaction; labor and management organization; the relationship climate between labor and management (i.e. containment-aggression, accommodation, or cooperation); and the makeup of the collective agreement. The focus of the empirical research is on fixed-route bus systems, and on the bargaining unit that represents the transit operators in those systems. Data was collected from organizational archives, personal interviews, questionnaires, and on-site observations at 28 transit properties.
