Employee Relations in the Public Sector - Essay Example

? EMPLOYEE RELATIONS IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: CONFLICTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE By Word Count: 2,590 19 January Employee Relations in the Public Sector: Conflicts and Implications for the Future Introduction That employee relations in the public sector have generally been conflict ridden for some time is undeniable. The past decades were marked with the growing tensions in the relations between public sector employees, the government, and trade unions. The reasons of such conflicts are numerous and varied. The changing role of state and the rapid decline in the number of public sector employees over the past years produce significant influence on how the public sector operates. Privatization, organizational changes, and subsequent withdrawal of trade unions from the public sector further complicate the situation. Conflicts between employees and public sector employers reflect the growing complexity of their relations and reduced role of the trade union support in collective bargaining issues. Given that relatively little is known about public sector employee behaviors and their decisions, a deeper analysis of their conflicts and situations needs to be performed. The development of partnerships between public sector employees and trade unions, and the use of integrative management approaches to organizational change must guarantee active involvement of the public sector employees in the processes and decisions that influence the terms and conditions of their workplace performance. Employment relations in the public sector: Conflicts and underlying reasons That employee relations in public sector have been conflict ridden for some time is a well-known fact. Caverley, Cunningham and Mitchell (2006) are correct in that any conflicts in employee relations illustrate and expose a wide range of difficulties, many of which reflect employee resistance to organizational and other changes in work. Such resistance is relevant for all public sector employees, irrespective of the issues and conflicts that affect their performance. The latter may range from a disagreement over benefits and pays to the issues in scheduling in the workplace (Caverley, Cunningham & Mitchell 2006). In these situations, different parties take different positions and argue, make concessions, and reach a consensus (Caverley, Cunningham & Mitchell 2006). Unfortunately, public sector employees often fail to achieve such an agreement with their employees and external parties. For this reason, conflicts are becoming a definitive feature of employment relations in the public sector. The reasons of such conflicts are numerous and varied. Objectively, that the relations between employees and employers in the public sector are characterized by a number of peculiar features. First, the state is no longer a silent, neutral representative of the public employee interest but exemplifies a self-interested party in the employee relations field (Beaumont 1992). Second, the state is no longer a mechanism of reacting to the civil society pressures but an autonomous organism, which becomes even more autonomous during the major economic shakes (Beaumont 1992). Third, the growing autonomy of the state is directly associated with increased probability of inter-role conflicts in the public sector, when employees and employers either fail to understand or are not willing to accept the distribution of functions proposed by the state (Beaumont 1992). Ultimately, these are governments’ macroeconomic decisions and policies that usually lead to the growing discontent in public sector employees – therefore, political environment has far-reaching implications for the quality and stability of industrial relationships in the public sector (Beaumont 1992). In the 20th century, the state in Great Britain used to be the principal provider and, simultaneously, the key employer in numerous public sectors, including health, education, and social services (Prowse & Prowse 2007). As a result, the state was also the key player in the development of employee-union relations, the creation and maintenance of strong cultural ethic, and centralized principles of pay determination and bargaining in the UK (Prowse & Prowse 2007). It was not before the beginning of the 1980s that the rapid introduction of competition, private sector decisions, and competitive tendering led to “the changes in the structure of employee relations in the UK” (Prowse & Prowse 2007). Since 2001, the government has attempted to reform the public sector through modernization and privatization (Bach 2002). Following several government reforms in the public sector, privatization, organizational change, staff reductions, and the rapid withdrawal of unions became the defining features of industrial relations in the UK. All these factors further became the principal reasons of the conflicts between employees and employers. Privatization and competition are rightly considered as the key factors of conflict situations in public employment. According to Prowse and Prowse (2007), the effects of subcontracting and privatization on the public sector in the 1980-1990s were substantial. The rapid expansion of the privatization processes in the UK public sector led to the subsequent savings in pay, staff reductions, and a significant decrease in union membership (Prowse & Prowse 2007). The effects of privatization and its consequences were equally meaningful for all areas in the UK. For example, the integration of the private sector and healthcare systems was followed by the development and expansion of the marketization trends in healthcare, which had to reform public hospitals and make them “corporatized” (Lethbridge 2009). The latter implies that public hospitals in the UK would have to operate in accordance with the principles and values of private business (Lethbridge 2009). Privatization and corporatization of the public sector was felt by public sector workers in a variety of ways: the socioeconomic stability of employees had been severely undermined and the commodification of public services greatly affected employment terms and conditions (Lethbridge 2009). Employment in the public sector became extremely precarious, the migration of high-skilled workers to higher-income countries became a tragic reality, and the sense of insecurity in regards to the future quality of public services turned into an inevitable ingredient of employees’ daily routine (Lethbridge 2009). Privatization marked a profound change in the public sector consciousness, which not all employees could readily accept. However, privatization was not the only factor of employee conflicts in the public sector. Organizational change that followed the rapid commodification of the public sector in the UK turned out to be one of the most disturbing factors in the evolution of the industrial relations in the country. Needless to say, all organization face serious resistance and issues in their way to positive change, but “organizational change in the public sector is particularly challenging” (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009). The fact is in that “most models of organizational change are designed for private-sector organizations that focus on profit and enterprise goals […] this contrasts greatly with public-sector organizations that have legally based purposes, operate under a bureaucratic culture of rules and regulations and are focused on customer rather than market interests” (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009, p.386). In this situation, public sector employees, on the one hand, fail to understand and accept the need for change and, on the other hand, face serious difficulties in their striving to adapt to the new conditions of workplace performance. Public sector culture had been traditionally risk-averse (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009). Given that any change is associated with increased perceived risks, employees grow increasingly vulnerable to the feeling of insecurity, instability, and precariousness (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009). The lack of effective communication networks, the lack of transformational vision, as well as under-resourcing and under-staffing in training and technology add to these difficulties (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009). More often than not, employees in the public sector do not perceive any personal benefits from the organizational change and are not willing to support it. These difficulties result in the emerging conflicts between employees and public sector employers. The rapid withdrawal of trade unions from the public sector further complicates the situation. The past years were characterized by an unprecedented contraction of “collective employee relations in the public sector in the UK” (Bacon & Storey 2000). The rates of union recognition among public sector employees fell to only 45 percent in 1998 (Bacon & Storey 2000). 47 percent of public sector workplace did not have a single union member in 1998 (Bacon & Storey 2000). The lack of union recognition and the failure to promote the importance of collective agreements resulted in the creation of a “representation gap” in the British public sector (Bacon & Storey 2000). The latter means that employees in the public sector lack effective union representation, and the current state of public policy lacks a clear vision of how to close this gap. The representation gap in the British public sector is one of the essential preconditions for the emergence of serious industrial conflicts between employees and managers, when the latter acquire an unreasonable prerogative to impose their methods of work on employees. Apparently, all these changes have far-reaching implications for the stability of the public sector performance and its future. Employee conflicts in the public sector: Implications for the future Employee conflicts produce a multitude of negative effects on the quality of public sector performance in the UK. More often than not, these conflicts reveal and expose the existing misconceptions about employee behaviors and the role, which trade unions could play in the development of the stronger industrial ties within the public services area. Gall (2001) supports this belief, by saying that little is known about employee and union activists’ behaviors in Britain. Therefore, it is imperative for public sector employers, private organizations, and the government to undertake a more profound look into the factors that support and encourage positive employee development and growth in the public sector. The lack of such an insight is likely to result in the subsequent aggravation of the conflicts between employees and public sector employers. The marketization and commodification of the public services are directly associated with the changing nature of workplace terms and conditions in the public service. The worsening employment conditions are both the result of the lack of the government investment into the sector and the lack of efficient union representation (Carter 2001). The implications of these marketization tensions are two-fold: first, the government seems to lack a clear vision of the consequences of the measures and decisions that facilitate degradation of the working conditions; second, this lack of the clear government vision will ultimately lead to the development of new public sector workforce, which favors the growing tradition of militant resistance (Carter 2001). As such, the government must rethink its attitudes and approaches for marketization and corporatization of the public sector employment trends. A well-developed policy of organizational change could become a viable solution to the problems that current plague the public sector workforce. Had the organizational change in the public sector been more efficient and well-thought, most of the current problems in the public sector employment would have been resolved. Unfortunately, it is only now that the benefits of a well-developed organizational strategy begin to dawn on the public managers in the UK. Any decision or change in the public sector is necessarily associated complex social issues, and quick-fix, early-win outcomes have a potential “to impede positive evolution of industrial relations in the public sector” (Greasley, Watson & Patel 2009). However, even the lack of a comprehensive change vision is not as damaging to the public sector as the absence of unionization and the persistence of the representation gap. Throughout the past century, union involvement and union representation always served a critical factor or resisting illegitimate management actions (Redman & Shape 2006). The lack of union representation consistently implies that the public sector lacks a dynamic union organization, which could be ideally suited to defend the interests of public sector employees (Redman & Shape 2006). The decline in collective decision-making carries profound underlying meanings for the future of the whole public sector in the UK. That the public sector does not have sufficient number of workplace representatives is likely to lead to serious problems with hiring and retention of the most prospective employees (Prowse & Prowse 2007). Employees will have low influence on pay bargaining and will find it difficult to engage in pay negotiating with the public sector employers and government (Prowse & Prowse 2007). The representation gap makes the risks of decentralization and the loss of control over industrial relations extremely significant (Prowse & Prowse 2007). Employees often lack negotiation skills needed to defend their interests in employment relations (Caverley, Cunningham & Mitchell 2006). Frequent involvement of the public sector employees in whistleblowing procedures makes the situation even more difficult, as long as trade unions have long been recognized as the vital drivers in the development of whistleblowing procedures in the public sector (Lewis 2006). The only question in this situation is what can be done to improve the situation. The current state of research into industrial relations treats trade union partnerships as the new, promising trend in the development of stronger productive ties between public sector employers and employees. Rapid changes in organizational structures, decentralization of collective decision-making, and the decline in collective pay bargaining make the revival of unions virtually inevitable (Heaton, Mason & Morgan 2000). In this context, partnership arrangements have a potential to transform the traditional role of government employers (Grimshaw, Vincent & Willmott 2002). The development and implementation of the so-called integrative bargaining models could facilitate legitimate entry and presence of unions to the public sector (Roper 2000). Certainly, the idea of trade union partnership is not without controversy. Here, two questions deserve particular attention. First, will the development of partnerships in the public sector automatically cause a broader change in public sector management styles (Bacon & Storey 2000)? Second, how to ensure that public sector employers and unions develop stable committment to the new forms of cooperation between each other and between them and employees (Bacon & Storey 2000)? Ultimately, only partnerships that lead to increased union representation and support of employees in organizational change contexts has a potential to survive the current difficulties in industrial relations in the public sector. In the current state of the public sector development, and given the dramatic influence of the market forces on the position and prospects of employees, partnerships exemplify one of the best approaches for union revival. The development of partnerships between public sector employees and trade unions and the use of integrative management approaches to organizational change must guarantee active involvement of the public sector workers in the processes and decisions that affect the terms and conditions of their workplace performance. Conclusion In the past decade, employee relations in the public sector were ridden with conflict. The reasons of these misunderstandings between employers and employees in the public sector are numerous and varied. Privatization, commodification, and corporatization of public services resulted in the growing sense of employment insecurity, making public sector employment precarious. Organizational change had been one of the major difficulties, and the subsequent withdrawal of unions from the public sector further complicated the situation. These changes have far-reaching implications for the future of industrial relations in public services: employees lack union representation and fail to defend their rights. The representation gap will make it difficult to hire and retain the most prospective employees. Union partnerships exemplify the most promising trend in union revival in the public sector. The development of partnerships between public sector employees and trade unions, and use of integrative management approaches to organizational change must guarantee active involvement of the public sector workers in the processes and decisions that influence the conditions of their workplace performance. References Bach, SD 2002, ‘Public-sector employment relations reforms under Labor: Middling through or modernization?’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.40, no.2, pp.319-339. Bacon, N & Storey, J 2000, ‘New employee relations strategies in Britain: Towards individualism and partnership?’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.38, no.3, pp.407-427. Beaumont, PB 1992, Public sector industrial relations, Routledge. Carter, B 2001, Redefining public sector unionism: UNISON and the future of trade unions, London: Routledge. Gall, G 2001, ‘The organization of organized discontent’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol.39, no.3, pp.393-409. 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