Department of Labor

(noun)

The United States Department of Labor (DOL) is a Cabinet department of the United States government responsible for occupational safety, wage and hour standards, unemployment insurance benefits, re-employment services, and some economic statistics; many U.S. states also have such departments.

Related Terms

Examples of Department of Labor in the following topics:

  • Landrum-Griffin Act

    • The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 is a U.S. labor law regulating labor unions' internal affairs and officials' relationships with employers.
    • The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (also "LMRDA" of the "Landrum-Griffin Act"), is a United States labor law that regulates labor unions' internal affairs and their officials' relationships with employers.
    • Enacted in 1959 after revelations of corruption and undemocratic practices in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, International Longshoremen's Association, United Mine Workers and other unions received wide public attention, the Act required unions to hold secret elections for local union offices on a regular basis, and provided for review by the United States Department of Labor of union members' claims of improper election activity.
    • Unions had to hold secret elections, reviewable by the Department of Labor.
    • However, Griffin argued that these violations were contrary to the Act, placing the blame instead on the Department of Labor for failing to pursue action against the Teamsters union for its corruptions.

  • Departmentalization Pros

    • Departmentalization refers to the grouping of process or purpose activities into departments.
    • Departmentalization refers to the process of grouping task activities into departments.
    • The division of labor or degree of departmentalization is driven by the need for specialization whether by process or purpose within an organization.
    • Firstly, departmentalization as a form of self-containment tends to improve the ability for the coordination of tasks within the department.
    • For instance, in a larger retail operation, one marketing department supervisor would control and coordinate the work of buyers, merchandizers, and the sales force so that information and activities of each function would be more efficient and productive.

  • Flat versus tall organizations

    • Organizations that follow this type of structure have wider spans of supervisory control and have more horizontal communication.
    • This type of structure promotes task interdependence with less attention to formal procedures.
    • More decisions are made at the middle levels of the organization.
    • Since this type of structure has more levels, the division of labor is much more specialized.
    • Departments can become more compartmentalized, which increases the communication within them, but does not lend itself to communication with other departments.

  • The Reasoning of Specialization

    • Thus, Plato held that separation of functions and specialization of labor are the keys to the establishment of a worthwhile society .
    • Division of labor creates specialists who need coordination.
    • This coordination is facilitated by grouping specialists together in departments.
    • However, this structure makes the coordination between different departments more difficult than other structures.
    • It also does not allow for flexibility because of the centralization of labor.

  • Process decisions

    • Managers must decide how to organize equipment and labor to achieve the competitive goals of the organization.
    • Intermittent processes organize labor and equipment into departments by similarity of function to serve a wide variety of production requirements.
    • X-ray equipment and technicians are organized into an "X-ray Department".
    • This production process is called an "intermittent" process, because the activity of each department happens intermittently at irregular intervals, depending on the particular needs of different patients (customers) at different points in time.
    • Equipment and labor can be organized into departments such as drilling, punch press, lathe, machining, painting, heat treating, molding, etc.

  • Modern Labor Organizations

    • The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States.
    • It was founded in Columbus, Ohio in December 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association.
    • Today, most labor unions in the United States are members of one of two larger umbrella organizations:
    • In 2007, the labor department reported the first increase in union memberships in 25 years and the largest increase since 1979.
    • Federal law forbade such a strike, and the Transportation Department implemented a backup plan (of supervisors and military air controllers) to keep the system running.

  • Specialization by Skillset

    • Division of labor is the specialization of cooperative labor in specific, circumscribed tasks and like roles.
    • Division of labor was also a method used by the Sumerians to categorize different jobs and divide them to skilled members of a society.
    • One can see specialization by skillset being used in functional departments, grouping activities by functions performed.
    • Employees within the functional divisions of an organization tend to perform a specialized set of tasks, for instance, the engineering department would be staffed only with software engineers.
    • The skillset found here will place the employee in the right department.

  • Activities in the Human Resources Department

    • Human resource departments are responsible for a wide variety of activities across a number of core organizational functions
    • A brief review of the core functions of human resource departments will be useful in framing the more common activities a human resource professional will conduct.
    • Salary and benefits are also within the scope of human resource management.
    • Acting as the voice of the organization and/or the voice of the employees during any broader organizational issues pertaining to employee welfare
    • This chart highlights a few of the key competencies expected of human resource teams in organizations.

  • Benefits of Organization

    • Individuals are grouped into departments, and their work is coordinated and directed towards organizational goals.
    • The philosophy of organization is centered on the concepts of specialization and division of work.
    • To make optimum use of resources such as labor, material, money, machine, and method, it is necessary to design an organization properly.
    • Departmentalization is the basis on which individuals are grouped into departments, and departments into total organizations.
    • Network - departments are independent, providing functions for a central core breaker

  • Frederick Taylor

    • Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity.
    • It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management.
    • Application of engineering principles to the industrial system of the production
    • Information centralized/controlled in planning department, which increases potential for survillance and controlling the production process
    • Expert directions by engineers, factory planning, time and motion studies, standardization, and the intensive division of labors