HRM and leadership 2 - Essay Example

The management of its human resources can be considered to be so well done that its employees in certain countries have tended to side with this corporation whenever any move was made by both the various individuals or rival companies to disrupt its operations (Malone & Roberts, 1996). While in many cases, the process of globalization alongside the liberal economic policies which have come with it and have come to be accepted in many countries have worked towards weakening the strong foundation upon which many trade unions have been built, this has not been the case with those unions that are related to General Motors.

One would take the trade unions of Britain and Germany as examples of just how efficient the human resource management of General Motors has become. Despite the fact that the internationalization of the car industry has intensified the economic competition among the various carmakers in the world, General Motors has not had to encounter any of the frictions that other companies in similar business have had to encounter with their trade unions In most cases, the liberal policies that have been adopted by various governments because of globalization have tended to work more in favour of the employers than the workers do.

These policies advocate for the flexibility of the labour market and this has meant that the labour market, especially in the automobile industry, has been deregulated and that automakers have been empowered in areas the hiring of workers, their firing, the choice of how much to pay them, as well as the choice of the use of labour (Heffelfinger, 2009). As a result of this, informal employment and other cheap forms of labour have become prevalent because automakers prefer them not only for the cheapness of wages paid to them, but also for the fact that they do not have to cover them in such matters as insurance and safety.

This has made it very difficult for trade unions to be able to organize workers into a powerful force because many of these informally employed people are not members of unions. This has not been the case with General Motors and this is because of the fact that this corporation has chosen to adopt a stand where it cares for all of its employees on a global level, so that many of those who work for it tend to be secure in their jobs, hence being more productive (Brondo & Baba, 2010). The management of General Motors has ensured that it provides the necessary leadership to its employees in matters pertaining to their employment so that the latter have come to appreciate their working conditions as well as feeling secure in their employment, especially in the current world of economic uncertainties.

Fair Working Environment The swift change in the development of equipment as well as the globalization of the economy has led to the acceleration of structural adjustment. With the division of labour on the international scene, some of the companies in the automobile industry of developed countries have opted to shift those operations that they consider labour intensive to other countries, such as China and India, where there is cheaper labour. This has led many of their employees in their home countries to lose their jobs and this may account, to some extent, to the high job cuts in the automobile industry in the western countries (Dietrich & Krafft, 2011).

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