Getting maximum value from employee teams--and keeping them legal

Today's increasing emphasis on participative management is tending to bring more employees into problem-solving processes and giving them more voice in how they do their work. As a natural consequence of such changes, more is being done with employee teams. However, in some areas of potential involvement, employee teams can be seen as intruding on the territory of labor unions, so there is a constant risk of a given employee team being ruled an illegal labor organization. This problem, actually existing as long as the National Labor Relations Act has been with us but only recently forced into prominence by the Electromation Decision of late 1992, can be solved through observance of sensible guidelines for team organization and operation.