The Role of the Trade Union Remains Relevant Both at the Workplace and for Wider Employment Relations - Case Study Example

ESSAY By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date The role of the trade union remains relevant both at the workplace and for wider employment relations concerns in the 21st century Introduction The employment relations system in UK is in a tough situation. Although, the Labour government introduced novel constitutional rights for both trade unions and workers, they did almost nothing to handle the setbacks that mystify trade unions, employees, and employers (Pontusson, 2013, p.798). According to Foster and Fosh (2010, p.560), employers grumble about red tape as well as over-regulation, and trade unions show aggression to the purported anti-union rules. In essence, the two approaches fail to speak much with regards to the two vital setbacks in the globe of employment: an extremely low level of workers commitment along with an extremely sophisticated inequality. Waddington (2013, p.335) posits that getting a rational policy approach for the public is hard since the errands for the place of work issues are extensively disseminated athwart the UK’s government. The instance for a revitalized Department of Employment is convincing, and yes setbacks subsist somewhere else, but unlike UK, other European nations do attain enhanced outcome and believe their systems for employment relations as means, wherein all aspects of the institutional framework supports each other (Hayter et al., 2011, p.227). Various stakeholders typify the setbacks in the workplace, to a certain extent in a different way. Company owners want deregulation while trade unions desire an enormous reform in the labour law programme, but the substantiation bracing the employer barney is feeble. In terms of global standards, the UK undoubtedly has an extremely frivolously controlled labour market, and so it is simple to employ and fire. Whereas it is factual that the 21st century employees are more tending to take their work-related cases to the instituted employment tribunals, Foster (2011, p.674) believes that this trend appears to be connected contrariwise to decline of membership in most UK’s trade unions. Enlivening institutions in the workplace to zip setbacks in the blossom may be a sound resolution, but scores of (possibly even nearly everyone) employers are opposed to this type of suggestion. For this reason, the study seeks to substantiate the fact that the role of the trade union remains relevant both at the workplace and for wider employment relations concerns in the 21st century. UK’s employment relations system Basically, most UK’s trade unions are fighting to retain as well as restore their declining membership, and this is factual regardless of the public policy special consideration. According to Parker and Rees (2013, p.525), it is trade and industry and particularly technological revolution, which is steering the trends in union membership, but not antagonistic public policy. For this reason, trade unions must be the driving force behind their own revitalization. Although knowledge about employment civil liberties is of importance to workers in UK, the acuity of inequality in scores of workplaces is still prevalent. Repeatedly the cases of inequitable workers treatment in workplace are far-off the confines of employment constitutional rights, and noticeably it have to do with organization culture, style and practices. In this regard, furnishing every manager to be an excellent workers’ leader could be an enormous stride in the correct course. Arguably, UK’s job quality is inferior as compared to a number of other similar countries, but it does not mean that jobs are usually appalling; however, in scores of UK places of work there is substantial room for perfection. The acuity of prevalent inequality in UK’s labour market is deepened by the fact that workers complain that the current working conditions are tougher than those that existed two decades ago. Furthermore, workplace independence as well as power over the work process has been declining consistently, although the two are vital indicators of first class employments. Regrettably, the UK unyielding labour market failed to make the situation better. Although UK employment was on the rise during the economic boom, the overall consequence was to push unemployed individuals into cheap, feebly remunerated jobs, and as a result the working poverty level escalated (Bethoux & Jobert, 2004, p.265). Every bit of such off-putting outcomes must be astonishing given that the HRM line of work has in the past two decades used up a lot of time seemingly attempting to improve management of workers. Sadly the human resource management failed to present the results projected theoretically. The jam-packed arrays of the purported progressive human resource are infrequently used in their entirety and the results are repeatedly unsatisfactory. A number of critics have claimed that the HR practices could be self-defeating except if they are established in a setting with well-built workplace trade unions that can compel the employers to keep their pledges (Pontusson, 2013, p.801). Besides that, others believe that HR theory is rooted more in belief than facts. Moreover, the letdown of progressive HRM assists to clarify why only a few workers are affianced in the present argot. In this regard, trade unions have played and continue to play an important part in openly shaping the working conditions of UK’s people, even though their impact based on this has reduced lately. Statistically, the percentages of workforce attached to trade unions declined drastically in the first decade of 21st century, even though this trend was self-effacing, and not salient as compared to the decline of the earlier three decades. Parker (2011, p.394) posit that the UK’s industries and companies exposure to more gravid market demands, the development in atypical employment and a rising tendency in outsourcing, company supported forms of representation and involvement, as well as the legal limits burden on unions capability to hire, systematize, cooperatively negotiate, has all bestowed to the sharp decline in trade unions membership. In spite of implementing numerous in-house strategies as well as the debut of laws recommending companies and industries to recognise trade unions, Foster (2011, p.679) posits that the descending membership trend has still been persistent of late, although at a more sluggish pace. Bethoux and Jobert (2004, p.263) affirm that how trade unions act in response to the opportunities and challenges offered by the shifting nature employment relations and work might be vital in ascertaining their influence level in the place of work in the future. The crumbling of UK bargaining structures and limitations on industrial action as well as governmental amendments brought in to stop the ’closed shop’, led to a reduction in the percentage of employees covered by mutual agreements, and as a result, the enterprise-level bargaining as well as entity contracts turned out to be the central means of controlling employees’ conditions and salary. Owing to such development, UK trade union are at the moment more concentrated on the enterprise level. Role of Trade Unions in Future Employment Relations The Employment Relations Act 1999 symbolized a friendlier legal progress for trade unions in UK. Hayter et al. (2011, p.233) claim that by permitting trade unions to apply for Statutory trade union recognition , the Act theoretically offered the trade unions with a chance to expand the footing subsequent to their move towards enterprise-level bargaining. What’s more, these new-fangled laws stopped the increase in companies’ endeavours to derecognise trade unions, and led to the signing of approximately three thousand fresh recognition agreements that covered almost 1.3 million employees in one decade (1995–2005). No matter the definite effect of legal reforms, fiscal alteration could have had an enormous effect on downward trend of trade union membership as well as authority in the workplace. Waddington (2013, p.342) posits that, employers have reacted to hard-hitting competition by ossifying work-related controls, as well as either resisting coping with trade unions in the least or dealing with trade unions just based on their responsibility. The increase in company-sponsored ways of worker representation as well as participation is as well indicative to the declining trend in union membership. In the last two decades UK has experienced an enormous rise in the percentage of workplaces making use of non-union methods (that is to say from 16 % to 46% between 1984-2004), which without doubt is tremendous decrease in workplaces using trade union (that is to say from 24% to 5% between the same period). Furthermore, there was a less vivid decrease in workplaces making use of ‘twofold voice’ systems, to be exact an integration of non-union and union methods (from 42% to 33%). According to Foster and Fosh (2010, p.572), several workplaces with a number of employee voice system has for some decades remain steady, which proves that craving for worker representation and participation is yet to fade away. Whereas the downward trend in unionised workplaces assist in illustrating how many employees have shifted away from trade unions, it as well depicts a change in employer inclinations. Parker and Rees (2013, p.527) pointed out that the tendency of UK companies to replace trade unions with non-union voice mechanisms proves the notion in the midst of employers that trade unions has and will never add value to their organisational or business goals. Still, a variety of studies have established that trade unions are the most efficacious channel for representing employee welfare, and also non-union voice mechanisms generate inadequate gains for organization with regards to productivity. Based on this notion, it is apparent that employers in workplaces with dual voice systems make use of non-union voice mechanisms in order to capitalize on control than to improve workers’ state of affair as compared to those only utilising trade unions. Given that trade unions might have been projected to adopt ways of representation and participation that endorsed objectives of both the union and employer to be followed. For this reason, the 2004 establishment of the Information and Consultation of Employees (I&CE) Regulations presented a chance to trade unions. Extreme assumption in relation to the employment relationship between employers and trade unions pre-dates the economic downturn, and as a result, opposing accounts have shoved for consideration. However, the downfall of the conventional employment deal along with its ending has been discussed plainly. Trends like swiftly developing outsourcing and IT are from time to time said to be driving a descending meeting with regards to workers’ employment experiences as well as slackening of employer-worker ties. Besides that, the internet has increased the perplexing or exhilarating panorama of orchestrating exclusive of trade unions: whereby workers can be gathered and disseminated on a task-by-task basis. On the other hand, another overriding thread of modern philosophy is that scores of companies, particularly those with no other apparent basis of competitive advantage, now view human capital as well as talent as the basis of their business paradigms that possibly denotes several enhancements in the growth of employment-capital relations. Owing to fiscal alterations, individual-owned enterprises whose achievement heavily relies on millions of defining moment in relations with customers, in industries such as hospitality are at the moment much more as compared to the last two decades. For the moment, enormous expectations of trade unions accomplishment as well as articulacy are being devoted in the workplaces. At some point, Britons were told that employment relations for some had turned out to be like ‘concerts’ rooted around a contemptuous, passing musician’s one-night commitment at the lounge of the airport. According to Pontusson (2013, p.799), the conventional ways of assuring employment standards, that is collective bargaining and trade unions have receded considerably, as the hope that worker employment rights, more competent workforce as well as the essentials of managing high performing companies that can carry out the trade union task also, continues to develop further. In other countries, scores of employers had come to respect how ill-suited traditional bureaucratic power structures were to companies’ existence in the thrilling 21st century, but they later realized that the change was virtually more complicated than projected. In a nutshell, there is very much of bits and pieces to reconsider. Arguably, the trade unions role in UK has evolved extensively in the last three decades. What’s more, international competition, legal restrictions, increasing trends in outsourcing, as well as employer supported means of worker membership and representation have pooled in hastened the noteworthy decline in UK trade union participation as well as the collective bargaining coverage. Hayter et al. (2011, p.241) project that the future similarly promises a turf time for trade union movement in UK, and how they will act in response to the opportunities as well as challenges in coming years will undoubtedly be essential in determining their authority level at workplace. It seems that trade unions are at the moment having a more irrefutable effect with regard to workplace disagreement as compared to the past years. During the 1980s, workers and employers in unionised workplaces seeming relations were less encouraging than non-unionised workplaces; however, the gap has tremendously reduced. What’s more, the damaging effect of trade unions on place of work economic functionality recognized in 80s has as well vanished. Foster (2011, p.681) notes that trade unions in UK may as well be encouraged by the affirmative mind-set of employees in unionised workplaces in relation to their efficiency. While 60% of trade union members as well as 54% of non-members in Waddington (2013, p.351) study concurred that UK trade unions were carrying out their responsibilities efficiently in mid 80s, the percentage has risen to 74% and 67% in that order. Based on this statistics, there is a possibility that trade unions in the future will declare themselves as instruments of conflict resolution and pacification, thanks to the increase of internet technology has made complaints in place of work more complicated to deal with. Bethoux and Jobert (2004, p.267) are of the view that a more disconnected labour market in UK has ensued because of destabilized trade union authority, the change towards enterprise bargaining as well as individual contracts, and the inclination in the midst of firms to farm out non-fundamental activities to other companies. High workers membership level, owing to the increasing immigration as well as benefit of work policies, has eased the development of indirect, short-term and atypical employment mechanism in the last ten years. Notably, representing employees and generating valuable labour standards, especially in places where indirect and atypical employment is utilised extensively has been the key setback for trade unions. Furthermore, breaking down the labour market, the global assimilation of production systems as well as product markets, and employment law rooted from a single employer paradigm have merged to make it harder for trade unions to retain a firm existence in UK’s modern workplace unlike the previous epochs. Conclusion In conclusion, the UK’s employment relations system is non-functional and is for that reason unable to meet the anticipations of trade unions, workers, or employers. Trade unions will have to depend more on global authoritarian mechanisms, strategies rooted around procurement and supply chains, and coalitions with organisations representing the civil society so as to successfully improve and protect income as well as labour standards athwart UK workers. It has been observed that, trade unions may continue facing trouble to attract new employees and workplaces except if they continue to familiarize themselves with ever-changing labour market contours, especially with regards to challenges like antagonism from managers in un-unionised industries and companies, and the surfacing organisations like job-related licensing. Nonetheless, the constructive-sum advantages of the trade union learning programme, the know-how that trade unions can convey to solve workplace clashes, as well as their readiness to search for compromise resolutions, especially during the 2009 fiscal depression, all prove that trade unions are probable to play a beneficial part in looking for solutions to challenges in labour market. Still, I do not concur with the fact that the role of the trade union remains relevant both at the workplace and for wider employment relations concerns in the 21st century. References Bethoux, E. & Jobert, A., 2004. A Look at North American and European Professional Relations: Evolutions and Perspectives. Sociologie du Travail, vol. 46, no. 2, pp.261-70. Foster, J., 2011. Marx, Marxism and the British working class movement: some continuing issues for the 21st century1. World Review of Political Economy, vol. 2, no. 4, pp.671-86. Foster, D. & Fosh, P., 2010. Negotiating 'Difference': Representing Disabled Employees in the British Workplace. British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 48, no. 3, pp.560-82. Hayter, S., Fashoyin, T. & Kochan, T.A., 2011. Collective Bargaining for the 21st Century. The Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 53, no. 2, pp.225-47. Parker, J., 2011. Reaching out for strength within? 'Social movement unionism' in a small country setting. Industrial Relations Journal, vol. 42, no. 4, pp.392-403. Parker, C. & Rees, J., 2013. Membership growth at a time of union decline: Usdaw, organizing and leadership. Transfer, vol. 19, no. 4, pp.521-38. Pontusson, J., 2013. Unionization, Inequality and Redistribution. British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 51, no. 1, pp.797-825. Waddington, J., 2013. The Views of Members towards Workplace Union Organization in Banking between 1999 and 2008. British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 51, no. 2, pp.333-54. Read More