The Right for Workers to Strike - Essay Example

?The right for workers to strike: How the right to strike is different than the need to strike and whether or not it should be defined by restrictions when the need arises. Introduction The right for a group of workers to strike against a company should never be impeded by the government. A strike occurs when a group of workers feel that their needs are no longer being met or considered by the company for which they work. When this right is exercised it causes serious economic consequences for the company so that pressure is applied and the company becomes more willing to discuss changes within the employment conditions in order to put their business back on track One of the reasons that this concept becomes necessary is because of the shareholder model of corporate governance. However, if companies adopt a stakeholder model of corporate governance, the need to strike might be averted. The stakeholder model of corporate governance becomes relevant in the issue of a strike because the structure of the philosophy of governance, when geared towards a shareholder model becomes a microcosm example of survival of the fittest. Each member of a shareholder model is serving his or her own interests because the overall corporate culture is geared towards only protecting the interests of the owners at the expense of all other considerations. Improvements in employment conditions do not occur unless they are of a benefit to the shareholder’s interests. Layoffs and terminations are made liberally with high levels of turnover when the interests of all parties are usurped by an upward flow of actions that are geared solely towards the owners. In a stakeholder model of corporate governance, all parties, including the employees, are taken into consideration when making the decisions that affect the company. Everyone’s concerns and needs are addressed, and most are met, in order for all to receive the benefits of the interests of the company. The Right to Strike The U.K. has very strict regulations on the right to strike by workers. According to EurActivity (2004, updated in 2010), one of the primary issues that has delayed the signing of the EU Constitution by the U.K. is that the right to strike issues would open up the tightly held existing regulations, thus this had put the government at odds with the European Union. While the Constitution has since been signed, the issues were important enough that it delayed the U.K. in agreeing to all the terms within the document. Part of the regulations that define the right to work in the UK are structures on how a strike must be approached and voted upon. Although, as pointed out by Mr. Hendy during a debate in Parliament in 2009, all governments have restrictions on the right to strike, the British government has set up structures that limit those rights to a point that the international community has voiced objections that have had to be addressed (Great Britain and Dismore 2009, p. 25). Therefore, the debate over the right to strike has been an ongoing issues within the U.K. However, the right to strike extends beyond the laws that currently and previously structured the rights of the employee to protest his or her conditions within the work place. The right to strike is the right to help define how a social group, that group defined by the workers, has the ability to designate boundaries under which they will allow themselves to be used for the purposes of commerce. The right to strike is a legal concept, but it is also a human rights concept that must be considered when there are problems within the work place that are impeding the basic human condition. According to Amnesty International (2010) the right to strike is a human’s right’s issue that can be held as a standard in regard to the level of human rights that are available within a nation. When a country cannot afford its workers the rights to organize and protest conditions that are not conducive to the welfare of their lives. Issues such as fair wages and worker safety can create problems that must be addressed. When a legal strike cannot be undertaken, the balance between the worker and the ownership has been tipped, thus creating a power struggle that will victimize the side without any empowerment. The Need to Strike Ideally, however, there should be no need for a group or union to strike against a business. The power of collective bargaining allows for both sides to negotiate the terms of employment without the need for an aggressive act. A strike is like a declaration of war, although it is most often not a violently positioned act of aggression. According to further comments made by Mr. Hendy, it is the responsibility for the state to create mechanisms to facilitate collective bargaining. He stated that from 1896 until 1979, there were policies in place to facilitate collective bargaining and this has been furthered since that time by legislation (Great Britain and Dismore 2009, p. 25). Collective bargaining, while policy, was still done through a voluntary measure. There was a policy that collective bargaining be used in order to settle disputes between management and the workers, but there was no way to enforce this concept. The Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) was established in 1976 in order to act as a service that can answer the questions of workers about their rights, to establish codes of practice for collective bargaining, and to act as mediators for disputes (Brenninkmeijer 2006, p. 98). Saying that there should be no need for a strike is not to suggest that workers should not aggressively fight for their rights. However, to effectively run a business and avoid suffering from a shut down over the issues of workers, a company should take care to sufficiently create an work culture in which all parties are working towards the best interests of the business, thereby continuing their own best interests and satisfying the needs of all parties involved. Shareholder Model of Governance One of the ways in which both U.S. companies and U.K. companies fail in creating an environment in which worker strikes are not really necessary is in creating structures in which shareholder models of corporate governance frame the way in which the employees, management, and the owners work against one another. The shareholder model of corporate governance is based upon the premise that the all aspects of the company must be run with the interests of the owners in mind, thus creating a Darwinian atmosphere in which adversarial relationships are developed between management and workers, with management looking to their own interests independently of the ownership who are formally the focus of all business decisions. Thus, the loyalty of each of the parties is in question with each sector being motivated to look only to their own needs. There are measurable differences between the challenges and goals of managers and shareholders, thus creating a work force that is the pawns of both. According to Hoffman (2007), a shareholder model of corporate governance is the primary structure within the U.S. and the U.K., but it is not the common model within the rest of Europe and Japan (p. 29). Shareholder models are concerned with short term goals and increasing immediate profits. Short term needs are satisfied through market strategies that lead to decisions that are not made with human consequences under consideration, but financial and market affects in predominance (Zu 2009, p. 67). The advantages to this type of structure is that the short term goals and decision making processes lead to market strategies that offer high yields in a shorter frame of time than long term strategies intended for longevity of all concerned parties. Employee relations under the short term goal philosophy of a shareholder value model are denied meaningful participation in the decision making processes of the corporation. Unions are not considered a valid entity from which to seek input on the decision making process (Budd 2006, p. 94). In the relationships between the various parties, the needs of all but the owners are immaterial to the way in which the corporation makes its decisions. Therefore, the value of the business is only through the value it has for the ownership. Once that value comes into contradiction with short term goals, that value has no use. Stakeholder Model of Corporate Governance In most of Europe and in Japan the stakeholder model of corporate governance is the primary structure that is adopted in which all affected parties are considered when decisions about the business are considered. This extends to the point where employees are often included on decision making boards or employee committees are given the opportunity to voice their needs and concerns as decisions are faced by the business. There is a consensus of scholarly commentary about the two models, and most have agreed that the stakeholder model is a more successful model than the short-sighted point of view of the shareholder model (Marsden 1999: Hoffman 2007). However, in countries where the shareholder model is more prominent, there has been little interest shown in shifting to a stakeholder model of corporate governance. While the stakeholder model includes the interests of not only workers, but of banks and the community, these three entities have rarely shown any interest in becoming part of the decision making process (Marsden 1999, p. 267). The comfort zone of the mostly adversarial nature of the shareholder model negates the collaborative effort that is offered by the stakeholder model, thus making that model a less comfortable form of relational corporate structure. Adversarial Entities Therefore, the entities that come together to work towards the goals of a company stand in an adversarial standoff, a position of temporary armistice in which a decision can set off a series of events that end in the aggressive act of a strike as the employees declare ‘war’ against their management team in order to force their needs into the business. In this situation as the needs of the owners are the primary concern, other parties must enforce their needs through whatever effective means can be legally used to create change. Therefore, while the right to strike must be allowed, it must be held to certain standards in order to protect the greater good. If certain services, as an example police or medical personnel, were to be given the right to strike without restrictions, lives could be affected in ways that could not justify the right to strike. This is relevant to a great number of professions without which there would be chaos should the workers choose to strike. In 1981 in the United States the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) decided to strike, leaving their positions without adequate coverage and putting lives at risk. President Ronald Reagan spearheaded action against PATCO that changed the nature of employee relations within the United States. The strike violated federal law that provided for a restriction against strikes performed by federal employees. Therefore, President Reagan fired all of the employees and had them blacklisted against getting gainful employment in any related field (Shostak and Skocik 2006). The actions of President Reagan have been in controversy for years, but the nature of the power of employees shifted during that event, thus changing the climate within the U.S. where the empowerment of the employee suffered by the blatant subjugation by the federal government. However, the needs of the safety of those who used air transport did supersede the needs of the employees. So the situation was a quagmire of rights and reasons for each side to behave in the manner that they behaved. The reasons that the employees decided to strike was that the high pressured value of their jobs was creating real problems with the overall health of the individuals who were in those positions. They were also in dire need of upgrades to their systems that had been promised for year. Higher pay was also an issue, but it was secondary to their basic needs to be given both the tools and the health in which to perform their duties in such a way to create a more safe environment. In this case, the needs of the employees were in concert with the overall safety of the people who were flying and be served by their work, but it was clear that the government was not going to bed to the aggressive nature of the strike. Therefore, while their cause was brought before the media, their actions cost more than 11,000 employees their jobs and set back the nature of the balance of power between employees and their employers within the United States (Shostak and Skocik 2006). This case shows both the importance of regulations on the right to strike and the needs of the general public in regard to denying that right. More importantly, this shows that the adversarial nature of the general work culture in a society that has primarily shareholder models of corporate structures, thus creating a philosophical environment that promotes an adversarial nature within the relationship between management and labour. This adversarial culture creates a threatening atmosphere where when one doesn’t bend to the will of the other, an aggressive act may be the result. Non-Adversarial Communication There are several avenues that do not include the need for the threat of a strike. The first is to create work cultures that are based upon stakeholder models of corporate governance where all groups within the organization are working towards the success of the business. In this model, a trust is built between the various factions which creates loyalty between management, owners, labour, banks, and the community which area all part of the success of the business and all beneficiaries of its growth. A comparison can be made in which the atmosphere of a U.S. company is compared to a Japanese atmosphere within a corporation. In the U.S. company, “trade unions are typically marginalized and management tends to hold the right to make decisions unilaterally” (Wilton 2011, p. 280). However, in a Japanese company, a collective atmosphere can be observed where employees are involved in the decision making process. This difference diffuses the adversarial nature of employee relations in a shareholder model Collective bargaining is encouraged by the U.K. government, but there is a general policy to interfere as little as possible. Therefore, the responsibility and the control over how bargaining occurs is within a voluntary structure in which management can either agree to talk or deny the discussion a hearing. Therefore, the power is balanced towards management until it is pulled back through the threat of a strike. However, if management holds an open door policy in which complaints and concerns can be addressed through either formal or informal dialogue. Creating relationships that include collective bargaining in order to come to an agreement when circumstances have come to the point of a confrontation provides for a better result for all parties. Conclusion The right to strike should be available to any group of employees so that they can have a resource of power over the company when it is necessary. It is not, however, possible to let all employee groups strike whenever they choose and with as many people removed from their positions as they might like to remove for a protest. However, the need to strike should be eliminated, thus diminishing the adversarial nature of the management/labour relationship. When corporate governance structures are changed to reflect a stakeholder structure, the company benefits from a vast number of advantages, although the best advantage comes from the methods of governance that provide for the support of all interested parties rather than just the ownership as in the shareholder model. The right to strike should always be a liberally allowed right with strategies and structures in place where regulation is required in order to support employee needs. More importantly, the need to strike should be diminished and a spirit of collaboration and cooperation become the norm of employee relations. References Amnesty International Public Statement. (2010). Document - Egypt: Sweeping reform needed to protect workers’ rights. Amnesty International. Accessed on 18 January 2011 from http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/a sset/MDE12/020/2010/en/8608a99a-8ce1-435f-a6d3- 2940851e9e70/mde120202010en.html Brenninkmeijer, Alex F. M. 2006. Effective resolution of collective labour disputes. Groningen: Europa Law Publ. Budd, John W. 2006. Employment with a human face: balancing efficiency, equity, and voice. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. EurActivity. 15 June 2004, updated in 2010. UK fearful of new “right to strike” in EU Constitution. EurActivity. Accessed on 17 January 2011 from http://www.euractiv.com/en/future-eu/uk-fearful-new-right-strike-eu- constitution/article-117883 Great Britain, and Andrew Dismore. 2009. Any of our business?: human rights and the UK private sector : first report of session 2009-10. Vol. 2, Oral and written evidence. London: Stationery Office. Hoffman, Michael. 2007. A critical analysis of the balance scorecard - with special consideration. Norderstedt, Germany: GRIN Verlag. Marsden, David. 1999. A theory of employment systems micro-foundations of diversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shostak, Arthur B., and David Skocik. 2006. The air controllers' controversy: lessons from the PATCO strike. Lincoln, NE: Authors Choice Press. Wilton, Nick. 2011. An introduction to human resource management. London: SAGE. Zu, Liangrong. 2009. Corporate social responsibility, corporate restructuring and firm's performance: empirical evidence from Chinese enterprises. Berlin: Springer. Read More