The Reasons for the Recent Decline in Collective Bargaining Processes and Practices in the UK - Coursework Example

? Exam Questions 2 and Section # of Critically explore the underlying reasons for the recentdecline in collective bargaining processes and practices in the United Kingdom? Collective bargaining is a practice undertaken by the trade unions which aims at reaching certain agreements through the process of negotiation with the employers of an organization or an industry (when considering on a wider scale). This is an approach towards making ends meet at both the local firm level, or even at national level, the latter is usually with regards to the settlement of public sector dissensions. Collective bargaining is a formal process of reaching agreements which are written and kept secure for a specified period of time, and is not just a matter of ‘understanding’ between the two parties, but a legal agreement which can be referred to in case one side breaches the contract (Page, 2010). Since collective bargaining is a process directly associated with the trade unions, it can be rightly concluded that a fall in trade union membership would reduce the collective number of workers the unions represents, and therefore would lead to a decline in the collective bargaining practice itself. Union membership in the UK was in a consistent decline period from 1979 to 1998, and this can be attributed to a certain set of factors, both direct and underlying reasons. The direct causes of the dramatic decline of union membership are as below (Millward et al., 2000): Unions failed to gain a bargaining presence where it was necessary in the newly established workplaces, as the British manufacturing industry declined, which led to the establishment of new workplaces The union membership in places where they were previously recognized led to people leaving the trade unions as a follow up to other. The decline however is not due to these simple factors only, there are certain underlying factors which must be identified and critically analyzed in order to complete the study. Firstly, the macroeconomic conditions of UK underwent a change during the decline era, there was massive unemployment which led to a weakened status of the employees who did not want to lose their jobs by undertaking the risk of contradicting the employers, since the number of layoffs were high, this consciously instigated the workers to leave trade unions, thus leading to decline in membership and collective bargaining. Secondly, the legal and institutional policy framework established by the state government led to an automatic decline, since the policies were anti-union and unfriendly, the unions could not reach agreements since they no longer held a powerful position, thus resulting in declining membership. Thirdly, the policies instated by the management itself focused on meeting individual needs rather than coordinating with the trade union’s representative to reach a consensus, this change in policy abolished the need of having joined any trade unions, thereby reducing the membership number by dramatic numbers. And lastly, according to Metcalf, the aggregate number of union membership is not just a function of environmental factors, but it also accounts for the way in which the trade union responds to the environmental changes, and in UK, the trade unions did not respond diligently, while making the recruitment plan more strenuous, and by ignoring the environmental changes leading to no major changes in the union’s agendas, thereby resulting in further decline (Metcalf, 1991, 22). In light of all the reasons stated and explained above, it can be rightly concluded that there were major underlying reasons which led to a decline in union membership which simultaneously caused a decline in the collective bargaining process and practices in the United Kingdom, since they are directly proportional to each other. The decline of one will inevitably result in the decline of other, because collective bargaining is a practice undertaken by trade unions to meet their objectives, and striking agreements with the employers through a negotiation process which includes members from both the parties who write and sign the contract, adhering to this contract is incumbent on both the representative parties. 2) Using the concept of overt and covert conflict, critically examine why the fall in strike activity throughout most developed economies does not mean that conflict at work has necessarily been eliminated. Conflicts in the workplace, usually referred to as ‘Industrial Conflicts’ are one of the most central concepts which interest the researchers, and without which the study of employment relations would be incomplete. However, the statistics and data analysis of this phenomenon is unfortunately confined to many limitations, which make the analysis unreliable and therefore more research needs to be conducted in this important area. Despite the dearth of data available, there are still some scholars who have made significant contribution to the analysis of industrial conflicts, especially with regards to its components. It has been observed by Hebdon and Stern in their work ‘Tradeoffs among Expressions of Industrial Conflict: Public Sector Strike Bans and Grievance Arbitrations’, with the help of the findings of other prominent scholars and analysts, that the major stress has been laid upon the ‘strike activity’ component of conflicts at work, while other components remain ignored. They claim that a reduction in strike activity is taken to be an indicator of contentment in the workplace environment, since there is no visible demonstration of the frustration and grievances of the employees at work, while ignoring the fact that strike activities are a mere overt form of conflict, and there remain certain covert or hidden expressions of grievance which remain unexplored or go unidentified in the eyes of the management. Most of the prominent scholars such as Barbash, Knowles and Ozaki etc., claim that there is a significant tradeoff between overt conflicts and covert conflicts, thus any reduction in strike activity does not merely translate into a reduction in workplace conflict, but it indicates that the expression of conflict has shifted to other forms, which are covert, such as absenteeism, sabotage at work, increased employee turnover rate, job jumping, reduced productivity and ineffectiveness, and lack of motivation etc. This is significantly applicable to the developed nations, especially in the UK, where the state government has banned certain forms of visible demonstration of resentment, such as industrial actions, strike activities, picketing etc, which leads to the workers’ being unable to express their inner state of emotions and non-cooperation with the employers in an overt manner. Hence, it leads to the submission of the employees to the more covert forms of conflict expression, which reduce the overall performance at work, and affects the administration in a way which makes it cumbersome to handle and rectify (Hebdon and Stern, 1998, 204-206). These findings have also been backed up by empirical data, which finds the correlation between strike activities and other forms of conflicts at work (covert mostly), such as absenteeism and sabotage at work etc., as mentioned above. It has been found that there exists a significant amount of negative correlation between these components, which leads to the claims that as one variable decreases, the other decreases, thus resulting in a trade off between the various forms of workplace conflicts. Hence, it can be rightly concluded that a fall in strike activity in developed economies does not mean that the conflict problem at work has been successfully resolved; it is just an indicator of a more crucial problem: that the resentment expression has shifted to more hidden forms, and would now be concealed from the naked eye of the management. The management would need to put in more time and effort to pick out these covert forms of conflict and resolve them in order to instate peace at work (Knowles, 1952, 225). 3) Compare and contrast the concept of industrial democracy in the UK and Germany, giving your views as to why employers in the UK are less likely to adopt the idea? The workers’ control movements reduced and almost diminished in the United Kingdom, and in order to advance the rights of the workers another approach was used, it was the participatory approach, which meant that the workers would participate in the decision making process, and this was undertaken in order to give workers the right over the way their working lives were designed, thus their right to tale part in the industrial decision making process was highlighted and this is what Clegg refers to as ‘industrial democracy’ in his work regarding the topic (Clegg, 1960, 3). The seminal study pertaining to the concept of industrial democracy has been conducted by the Webbs, in their work Industrial Democracy, in which he claims that trade unions were the rudimentary basics of this process, since they are the prime agents, since their main focus is protection of workers’ rights, and this protection was ensured through various practices such as collective bargaining and legal enactment, which are the foundational factors of ‘industrial democracy’, thus in order to ensure the existence of industrial democracy, the recognition and influence of trade unions must be immense since they are the representative component of this notion (Webb, 1902, 150). In Germany, there is agreement upon the notion that there must prevail some sort of democratic representation of workers at workplace, however the extent and content to which this must be instated is still a dilemmatic issue, therefore the forms of industrial democracy and their future proposals cannot be integrated and compiled into the form of one report which can be reviewed for ease purposes. The main concept or form of industrial democracy in Germany centers on the concept of cooperation, rather than codetermination or contractual model which are the other secondary forms of industrial democratization at workplace. This means that the Germans focus on attaining a floor for cooperation between the employees and management in the decision making process, such that both the parties reach an agreement through mutual consensus rather than industrial action. The nation of Germany gives legal and institutional right to the workers to participate in the decision making at work; hence their opinions are voiced at almost every stage and at all levels of the organizational decision making, especially at the supervisory board level the worker participants are very active and representative. However, some union members are contradictory of the importance of the notion of industrial democracy to their rights, they claim that workers have to cooperate with the management in a way that their demands are overruled and they are left with giving up their demands and rather compromise in the name of cooperation, thus they believe that the traditional role of trade unions as a bridge between the management and employees is a better approach rather than democratization of the decision process (Furstenberg, 1977, 44-46). The United Kingdom’s position pertaining to industrial democracy is in stark contrast with that in Germany, despite their agreement on the claim that industrial democracy must exist at some level in the organizations in order to provide a sense of belonging to the workers. In the UK, the trade unions are under a constant decline phase, and this consistent fall has led to a weakened position of the workers at workplace, this loss in influential power and collective bargaining would lead to the workers succumbing to the demands of the employers, and disable them from voicing their opinions where necessary due to the fear of losing their jobs, and since the employers are in the dominant phase, they would overrule the workers interests in order to achieve their own objectives. Hence, the economic and environmental factors in the UK is one of the major reasons why industrial democracy is not a common phenomenon in the UK and why the employers would be unwilling to accept this notion at any stage. Furthermore, the prevailing conditions of this concept are only restricted to certain levels, and unlike Germany, it is not present at all stages of decision making. Also, the state government does not back the participatory right of the workers through any legal enactments, and the employers have also not institutionalized the concept in the decision making process, resulting in the ignorance of this phenomenon in the United Kingdom as opposed to its prominence in Germany (Farnham et al., 2003, 1-13; (Furstenberg, 1977, 44-46). 4) Fox (1966) argued that Pluralism was the most appropriate way to analyze industrial relations. Given the rise of the unitarist perspective towards people management, discuss the relevance of this assumption at the present time. Pluralism was a concept that emerged as both a political theory and as an industrial relations concept, it however is the same concept in both the dynamics. In this essay answer, we will focus on the notion of pluralism with regards to industrial and employment relations specifically. When an industry or an organization comprises of a variety of individuals who come from different cultural backgrounds or regions, thereby having a distinct approach towards tackling certain situations and responding to environmental circumstances, in order to maintain harmony at the workplace, these individuals must be dealt with in accordance with their distinctions, or else it would lead to de-moralization at work. It is however extremely difficult to maintain a set of rules which govern an organization culture that would incorporate the numerous values and interests associated with every different employee, thus increasing the costs of an organization. The notion of pluralism entails that all these cultural identities in a workplace must be accorded their due rights, and thus identities should be represented in ‘plural’ form rather than any one dominating another. Initially when the organizations focused on employees as being an entity which was against the firm management, and which worked in order to meet their own objectives through trade unions, the aims which were in contrast with the management’s objectives, they tried to tackle the problem of multicultural diversity at work through the theory of pluralism, by allowing a share of representation to everybody in order to harmonize the industrial relations. This led to the claim by Fox in 1966 that Pluralism was the most appropriate way to analyze industrial relations. However, as time went by and industries grew, with organizations becoming large and diverse, it became impossible to incorporate all the different entities at work. Globalization led to a widened base of employees coming into an organization to work, they interact on daily basis and have different approaches which clash with each other, it became a cumbersome job for the management to tackle the issues associated with these diverse employee base, hence they came up with another theory to govern the industrial relations at the work place- Unitarism. According to the approach of the unitarists, as the name itself suggests, there should be one unique form of culture which should be developed in an organization, usually known as the organizational culture, this is headed by a common set of goals, objectives, rules and approaches to handle situations. The unitarist approach ignores the diversity at work, and through the help of the human resource management and its practices such as training and counseling, it manages to create a new culture which is common to all at the workplace. The unitarist approach reduces conflicts at work and regards the management and the workforce as one, thus ensuring through a set of practices that both the entities have to move towards a common goal, and when both parties are aware of this notion, then they tend to ignore their internal dissents which were a product of diversity at work and thus tend to progress towards common goals, leading to a common unitarist organizational culture. Hence, Unitarism has become the new approach which is most appropriate to analyze industrial relations in the contemporary times, rather than pluralism which has been reduced as an obsolete concept today due to the prevailing circumstances. 5) The current Labour Government is union friendly. Critically appraise this statement. The new Labour Government of the United Kingdom has come up as a party representing the interests of the workforce, however as it organized into the form of a political party, it had to manage a variety of issues which widened the horizon of the issues it had to deal with. Hence, the Labour party has to increase its agenda base, trying to satisfy the various sectors of a community. This increase in the scope of the Labour Party led to a decrease in its representation of the workers force, and it thus became political organization which tried to play the middle ground. Its worker favoring policies can deceive the visible eye at first glance, since they claim to protect the workers by granting foundational recognition rights to the trade unions etc., however, when critically appraised, it can be observed that the Labour Government is actually union unfriendly. When the Labour Government assumed office after deposing Tory’s conservative government, it left the anti-union laws intact, and did not make any effort to revise the policies and rules put in place by the conservationists, thus leading to a continuous dismissal of the trade unions and the rights of the workers. According to the numerous employment acts enacted by the conservative government, from 1980 to 1993, several of the rudimentary rights of the trade unions were curbed, leading to a union unfriendly environment. These policies were not reversed by the Labour government. The initial stance that the state took was the abolishment of all sorts of recognition rights for the trade unions, which hence became unrecognized, leading to a fall in the membership number as well since employees did not want to join a union which wasn’t recognized and could not voice their concerns. The picket line numbers were restricted to a minimal amount of 6 people, resulting in a non-influential form of industrial action against the employers. One of the basic activities conducted by the trade unions is the closed shop practice, which was banned by the state and collective gatherings and the right to hold solidarity actions was restricted. Furthermore, it was banned for the employees of one organization to collaborate with employees of the same organization in another country (multinational corporations, or global and transnational companies etc.); this led to workers feeling they did not belong to one organization as a whole since they could not voice their opinions through one channel. Strike activities, collective bargaining and legal enactments are the most basic activities of a trade union, in the conservative era, these activities were at times banned an sometimes restricted in order to disrupt the process of the trade unions, this abolished the rights of the workers to go against the management for their conflicts and disputes, and hence had no platform to raise their voice, and there was no influential umbrella which could protect them. It further restricted the employees to carry out any form of industrial action only against their direct employer and not the industry as a whole, reducing the influence of industry wide unions, it made industrial unions’ actions illegal, and thus they were weakened, and also restricted the employees to take any political action. If a strike or any form of industrial action was done by the employees under trade unions, they could be sacked, and thus losing jobs in a time with peaking unemployment resulted in declining membership of trade unions, and a dramatic fall in the overt form of conflict at work. Furthermore, if the industrial action led to a loss or damage to the organization’s management, then the employees engaged in the conflict were liable to pay for the losses, this also reduced the number of strikes, but infuriated the employees who were not protected by the government. The Labour Government continued with these policies in place, and thus incessantly ignored the demands and rights of the trade unions, and in turn the employees. Resulting in the conclusion that the Labour Government’s current regime is not union friendly, but it is a mere continuation of the anti-union Conservative Government of Tory in the United Kingdom. References Clegg. H (1960) A New Approach to Industrial Democracy. Oxford. Blackwell Publications Farnham. D; Horton. S; White. G and Dennison. P (2003) ‘The Search for Industrial Democracy in British Public Services’. Available from [Accessed April 24, 2011] Friedrich Furstenberg (1977) ‘West German Experience with Industrial Democracy’. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 431, 44-53 Hebdon. R P and Stern. R N (1998) ‘Tradeoffs among Expressions of Industrial Conflict: Public Sector Strike Bans and Grievance Arbitrations’. Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 51, 2, 204-22 Knowles,K (1952) A Study in Industrial Conflict. Oxford. Basil Blackwell Publication Metcalf, D. (1991). ‘British unions: dissolution or resurgence?’. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 7, 1, 18–32 Millward. N; Bryson. A and Forth. J (2000) All Change at Work. London. Routledge Inc Page. K L (2010) Understanding Trade Unions and Collective Bargaining. Available from < http://www.suite101.com/content/understanding-trade-unions-and-collective-bargaining-a244704> [Accessed April 24, 2011] Webb. S. and Webb. B (1902) Industrial Democracy. London. Longmans Publications Read More