There is little doubt that the
balance of power in collective bargaining in recent years, has swung in the
favour of management. Managers have a choice as to what approach they take to
employee involvement, but frequently that choice will depend on the nature of
the product and labour markets in which they operate, as well as company
history, culture, and structure, and whether their workforce is unionised.
Data from the Workplace
Employment Relations Survey (Kersley et al., 2006) show that where collective
bargaining does occur, traditional topics still dominate the bargaining agenda:
pay, hours, holidays, pensions,
disciplinary and grievance procedures and performance appraisal schemes. A
small minority of firms also bargain over the core ‘HR bundle’ of training, HR planning, recruitment and
selection
There are three elements:
·
Bargaining levels
·
units and agents of bargaining
·
Scope of bargaining.
There are different levels at
which bargaining takes place. Bargaining may involve many employers (multi-employer bargaining), be at
company level or at the level of the establishment if there are different sites
where the company is located. The bargaining
unit refers to the group of employees covered by a particular agreement.
For example, there may be one agreement for skilled workers, clerical workers,
or supervisors. The bargaining agent refers to the employee representative body
which is conducting the bargaining on the employees’ behalf.
Where only one union is
recognised by the employer there will be a single bargaining agent within each
unit. In multi-union organisations there will be many different bargaining
agents. The scope of collective bargaining refers to the subject matter of the
collective agreement. This will vary between different organisations. While pay rates are common items covered by
negotiation, others include hours of work, staffing levels, physical working
conditions, new technology and redundancy. Trade unions aim to extend the
scope of collective bargaining, while management may wish to limit it,
depending on its approach to managing the employment relationship.
A further trend has been to move
away from industry-level bargaining to agreements made at the level of the
employer: in other words, agreements have become decentralised, away from the industry or national level. Of
particular importance is the renewed ability of employers to focus bargaining
on operational issues concerning cost. Pay
policies are now much more closely tailored to organisational performance and
the achievement of business objectives. Therefore, while business decisions
over production, marketing and budgets have been decentralised, it is likely
that pay negotiations and setting pay levels will stay at the level of the
business unit.
In sum, there are a number of
identifiable trends:
• Limited continuation of multi-employer
bargaining and an increase in decentralised bargaining.
•
Simplifying bargaining through single-table
bargaining, bringing the issues under discussion closer to operational
arrangements. Single-table bargaining occurs where all issues to be negotiated
take place within a single forum, limiting multi-union involvement.
•
New style collective agreements. These are also known
as ‘no strike’ or ‘single union’ agreements and emerged in the 1980s. Sole
bargaining rights are granted to one trade union, strikes are banned, manual
and non-manual employees have single status so all terms and conditions except
pay are common to all staff, a works council or other comprehensive
communication system is established and traditional demarcation between jobs is
abolished.
Figure 14.1 Movements in
management style in employee relations (Source Storey and Sisson, 1993, p. 10)
The diagram shows how both
individualism and collectivism take different forms and the combination of both
results in different ‘ideal-typical’ approaches to managing the employment
relationship.
Individualism can take three different forms:
•
employee
development – where employees are viewed as a valuable resource, to be
trained and developed accordingly, and can move around on an internal labour
market
•
paternalism
– where a welfare-based approach is designed to win the loyalty of
employees
•
cost
minimisation – where employees have commodity status and are bought in from
the labour market when they are required.
Collectivism can also take three different forms:
•
none
– at its lowest point, no unionism is allowed, and employees are actively
discouraged from forming consultative groups
•
adversarial
– bargaining takes place but bargaining positions are polarised and
compromise is commonplace
•
cooperative
– this relationship implies a partnership between management and unions where
joint, formal and informal approaches are taken to resolve problems.
Combining these two dimensions in
a matrix results in a set of different identifiable ‘management styles’.
Characteristics of the different ideal types can be summarised as follows:
• Traditional:
A fire-fighting approach. Employee relations not important until there is
trouble. Low pay. Hostility to trade unions. Authoritarian. Typical in smaller,
owner-managed businesses.
•
Paternalist
and modern paternalist: Unions regarded as unnecessary because of employers
coverage of the same issues. High pay. Concentration on encouraging employee to
identify with business objectives. Modern paternalists also formally consult
with the workforce.
•
Sophisticated
consultative: Union participation encouraged through recognition.
Problem-solving, informal approach to employee relations. Emphasis on two-way
communications.
•
Bargained
constitutional: Similar to sophisticated consultative, but emphasis on
formal agreements to regulate relationship between two powerful protagonists.
•
Sophisticated
human relations: Similar to paternalist approaches, but instead of focusing
on employee welfare, a conscious effort is made to invest in and develop the
human resource, and promote internal labour markets.
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