Industrial Action - Essay Example

Industrial Action The political “voice” of unions in the U.K appears to be stronger than it is. The Trade Union Congress is not affiliated with the Labour Party, but 36 large unions are. The collective bargaining process in the U.K. has been described as adversary in nature because of the arms length bargaining style and the minimal communications employed, although it is a “representational system” since the labor movement is not seeking to overcome the political economic system. In sum, the degree of external control placed on employers by unions in the U.K. is limited in international comparison. Conditions of employment are set at the firm level and therefore more likely to give employers more flexibility in adapting HR policies to the firm context, although at times these policies also limit managerial flexibility, to wit, the restrictive work practices that evolved in U.K factories. The extent of industrial action : In the UK, official statistics on the use of industrial sanctions relate only to strikes. They measure three dimension of strike activity – their number (how frequent they are), their size ( number of workers involved) and their duration (the number of working days lost). This last measure is often distorted by a few big strikes. For example, in 1979 an engineering industry- wide strike accounted for 55 percent of the 29.5 million working days lost in that year. In 2000 the number of working days lost in the UK was 499,00. However, disputes still happen – for example, the series of one day stoppages in 2002 on the railways over the widening of pay differentials between drivers, who were in short supply, and other railway employees. The dearth of drivers meant that the railway employees wanted to give them higher pay rises than other staff. The latter then went on strike because of the smaller increases offered to them. The year 2002 also saw strikes in teaching in London, and threatened strikes in local government, the fire service and the Royal mail. Employers and employees have to think carefully before imposing or threatening to impose industrial sanctions. There is little to be gained in imposing industrial action if it is unlikely to be successful especially if economic pressures may quickly mount as the organizations product market competitors take advantage of its industrial problems to poach its customers. It is pointless to relocate operations to another site unless an alternative be recruited at the new site. The number of strikes and the proportion of days lost through strike action have diminished significantly in the UK in the past few years. This reduction has been caused more by economic pressures than by legislation. Unions have had to choose between taking strike action, which could lead to closure, or survival on the terms dictated by employers with a fewer jobs. In addition, unions in manufacturing found that their members who remained in jobs did well out of local productivity bargaining and threatened strike action. Although dispute levels have declined through the 1990s and early 2000s, there are signs that some managers have been performing inadequately in managing their employee relations, in that there has been a dramatic growth in the number of complaints to employment tribunals by employees against employer’s behavior. In the 1980s the number of complaints reported to ACAS averaged about 45,000 per annum, but the number increased every year throughout the 1990s. In 2000 the number of such complaints exceeded 167,000.This would suggest arising sense of individual grievances among people at work. Table : Industrial Stoppages in UK 1980 - 2001 Year Number of stoppages in progress Number of workers involved. (000s) Number of working days lost (000s) 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 1,348 1,344 1,538 1,364 1,221 903 1,074 1,016 781 701 630 269 353 211 205 234 244 216 166 205 212 194 136 129 145 114 834 1,513 2,103 574 1,464 791 720 887 790 727 298 176 148 385 107 173 364 130 93 140 182 167 210 207 220 193 11,964 4,266 5,313 3,754 27,135 6,402 1,920 3,546 3,702 4,128 1,903 761 528 649 278 415 1,303 235 282 242 499 525 586 992 694 238 Industrial sanctions : Generally, industrial sanctions should be the last action as it proves to be costly on both sides to impose them on each other. The threat of the imposition of industrial sanctions can be important in bringing about a reconciliation of the different interests of employers and employees. The threat that one side might impose industrial sanctions, with their ensuring costs, on the other may actually be as important as if sanctions were imposed. It is the threat that can oblige the parties to adjust their position and negotiate a peaceful settlement. Both parties will be reluctant to go ahead and impose industrial sanctions because of their associated costs. However, the possibilities means that the parties have to have regard to them and adjust their behavior accordingly. In the current national statistics, the coverage of the various forms of industrial action ranges from the most restricted to the widest, i.e. from those limited to constitutional, legal or official strikes or lock-outs for which certain conditions have to be met under the law, to those covering all forms of action, whether or not the statutory procedures have been followed, whether or not there is stoppage of work, and whether the workers involved are employees or self-employed workers. The coverage is often linked to the relevant industrial relations legislation. Strikes are the most traditional form of industrial action, as is reflected by the original (and continuing) coverage of the statistics compiled by many countries. Over the years, however, many different forms of action have evolved, which fall short of strikes and lock-outs as there is generally no work stoppage. None the less, they usually affect the output or work of the workers involved, as well as of others. The existing forms of action and their incidence vary considerably between countries; an inventory would include go-slows, working to rule, overtime bans, sit – ins, blockades, load – out bans , boycotts and mass leave. Some of these other forms of industrial action have become more prevalent in the past few decades. They often occur when workers hesitate to strike because of the consequences for their jobs or incomes or if strikes are considered as a weapon of last resort, to be avoided except under the most extreme circumstances. These other forms of industrial action provide workers with opportunity to show their feeling without actually stopping work; little information is available regarding forms of action taken by employers other than lock-outs. Another indication of unrest, but which does not necessarily affect production or work, consists of strike notice; often a threatened strike does not materialize, but the threat is used as a bargaining tool. From the given table, we conclude that there has been a decrease in the incidents of strikes and days lost through strikes action as evidence of an improvement in the quality of employee relations. So we can see that a low incidence of strike activity may have relatively little to do with the quality of employee relations, it may simply be the result of such action being outlawed and/ or employees finding alternative means of venting their frustrations or mitigating their dissatisfaction, such as absenteeism, labor, turnover, working to rule, withdrawing cooperation or banning overtime, each of which may also be indicators of quality. Strikes, lock-outs or other forms of Industrial action do not exist without the presence of some type of conflict, but the conflict is not necessarily between workers and their employers. For example, disagreement may arise over government policies or decisions over which the employer has no influence. A group of self-employed workers may decide to take action to protest about conditions affecting their work. Workers may also take action to express sympathy for or solidarity with another group of workers, even though they themselves are not directly concerned by the labour dispute. Generalized or widespread action may occur, in which the target of the protest may be the authorities or employers, or a combination of circumstances. Official statistics on the incidence of labour disputes in 1999, published in June 2000, show that 242,000 working days were lost from 205 stoppages of work due to disputes – in each case the second-lowest totals since records began in 1891. The available figures for 2000 suggest that industrial action remains at historically low levels. Industrial actions included strikes by local government workers, health workers and unofficial local stoppages affecting postal services. The legal regulation of industrial disputes The freedom to take industrial action has traditionally been seen as offering the prospect of some kind of countervailing social power for employees via effective trade unionism. Recognizing the disparity between the bargaining position of individual employers and that of their employer. In Britain, there is no right to strike as such. Instead, the freedom to take industrial action has been conferred by granting trade unions, their officials and representatives Statutory protections or ‘immunities’ from common law liabilities which would otherwise make their action unlawful. Without these, the organizers of industrial action would be liable for civil wrongs (torts), including that of inducing breach of employment contracts, and would thus be exposed to injunctions and damage claims. The system of immunities was developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, culminating in the Trade Disputes Act 1906, and remains the cornerstone of the contemporary statutory framework for industrial action – having been briefly displaced in favor of ( highly circumscribed) positive rights under the Industrial relations Act 1971. What is clear is that by end of the year the UK will have to legislate for substantially enhanced information and consultation rights for employees – a development with highly significant implications for UK industrial relations in an area which until now has been largely unregulated by the Law , and one which will take the UK further away from its voluntarist traditions. REFERENCES :  Blyton, P. and Turnbull, P., (2004): The Dynamics of Employee Relations. London, Macmillan.  Cully, M., Woodland, S., O’Reilly, A. and Dix, G. (1999): Britain at Work. London, Routledge  Millward, N., Bryson, A. and Forth, J. (2000): All Change at Work. London, Routledge  Rose, E. (2004): Employment Relations, 2nd Edition, Harlow FT/Prentice Hall  The Journal of Industrial Relations 2002 vol. 44, no. 1. Mount Pleasant.  On the nature of work and union involvement: a study of London Busmen’, Industrial Relations Journal,   1974, vol. 5, no 2. Mount Pleasant.  Some reflections upon trade union recognition’, Industrial Relations Journal, 1985, vol. 16, no 1.Mount Pleasant  Work control in industrial society’, Industrial Relations Journal, 1976, vol. 7, no 3‘ Read More