Employment Relations in the British Hospitality Workplaces - Essay Example

Running head: Hospitality Management and Employment Relations Hospitality Management and Employment Relations [The of the appears here] [The name of institution appears here] Abstract Three issues that have been dealt with in this paper are: Hospitality Management and Employment relations Hospitality Management and HRM Hospitality and New Labour Introduction Hospitality employment across the globe can be characterized as 'vulnerable' employment, and is subject to regulation in areas such as minimum wages. Different economic, social, legal and political factors create particular cultures and diverse employment systems. Trade union membership is low but in some countries collective agreements have been extended to cover all workers. Knowledge boundaries need extending to convey a view of employment relations that is not western-centric and drawn from 'Anglo' countries. Literature Review Employment relations in the British hospitality workplaces are different on a national and private service sector comparison. Employment policies and practices continue to conform to the management-driven 'unbridled individualism' thesis, based on cost-control, but may also reflect a more affiliated and liberal managerial approach within a customer-service ethos. Employees are not necessarily alienated, and may trade off low pay for other compensations demonstrating 'enfranchised realism'. The employment relationship is both transactional and relational, and may also reflect 'resigned realism' and exploitation. Hospitality employees are different, providing more compelling evidence that trade unions face an even more daunting task in attempting to recruit members and organize workplaces. We need to develop our understanding of why managers and employees do not share commonly held assumptions of 'good' employment relations. We also need to determine how far the employment relationship, rather than the personal values of employees, affects the state of the psychological contract. - Customers, often interrelating with gender issues, are an important influence on the employment relationship. They are drawn into managerial control strategies in a number of ways including pay and reward systems based on tips and customer appraisal. Customer-service work can be highly rewarding, but unpredictable customers can both thwart managerial objectives, and make working stressful for employees. Labour may be manufactured to appeal to customers by internalizing (male) prejudices with strong gender implications for women. Flexible cost-control employment systems may perpetuate women's and young people's disadvantage. More studies are needed that embed customers, gender and youth within the analysis of employment relations. - Continuity is evident from managerial evidence, but employee evidence enables us to reassess the state of employment relations, and largely reject the 'bleak house' and 'black holes' scenarios. The locus of a socio-economic customer-service employment relationship is a function of dimensions related to managers, workers and customers within particular types of work mediated by the state. There is scope to reappraise the notion of legally enforceable state-sponsored collective bargaining on an industry basis, a more sophisticated version of wages councils with wider application. The extension of employment rights to workers would also provide greater protection for 'vulnerable' hospitality workers. Concept Hospitality services are other hospitality activities that take place within other parts of the economy. These are mainly concerned with the provision of food and beverage in areas such as in-flight catering, and meals in schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, care homes and prisons. These activities are not identified separately because workers in these sectors are included in the ISIC for the main business, e.g. public administration, education or health. Although many employees work in hospitality services jobs they have not been very widely researched. There will also be reference to the tourist industry (TI), although some activities, such as transport, are only very loosely hospitality-related. Tourism is not defined by the ISIC, although some activities more closely related to hospitality can be identified. There are three main reasons for the inclusion of the TI. First, the HI is not always recognized as a distinct entity and is considered to belong to the 'tourism characteristic industries' and therefore subsumed under tourism (ILO, 2001:6). As much of the international data do not distinguish hospitality from tourism, we shall necessarily refer to tourism data in these circumstances. Even so, international comparisons remain impeded by the fact that 'Hard data on the hotel, catering and tourism sector are not easy to come by as it is rarely singled out from the services sector in general' (ILO, 2001:2). Second, many HI activities are an integral part of the TI, notably in a holiday or leisure context, including resort hotels and country pubs. Third, some work is difficult to differentiate as either hospitality or tourism work, for example that performed by tour reps, back packers and flight attendants. These jobs share common attributes and are associated with both hospitality and tourism activities. In fact tourism literature rarely deals with employment issues, and one has to look within the social sciences to find any analysis of tourism work (Sinclair, 1997). Hence there are circumstances when we refer to the Hotel, Catering and Tourism Sector (HCTS). Managers reasserted the right to manage increasingly flexible and non-standard workers under the banner of 'managerialism', in workplaces that might be labelled 'bleak houses' (Sisson, 1993). An alternative version of management thinking stressed the benefits of 'commitment' over 'control' (Walton, 1985). Both approaches came to signify the two variants of HRM. 'Soft' HRM emphasized fostering commitment, improving quality and developing the human resource, whereas 'hard' HRM was contingent and calculating in its utilization of the human resource (Storey, 1989, 1992). If organizations were to survive the effects of adverse economic conditions, globalization and increasing competition, the imperative was to integrate HRM within business strategy (Storey, 1995;). The impact of HRM on industrial relations was widely debated. Other key issues in the wider academic debate included the extent of continuity and change in industrial relations, the sharp decline in trade union membership, the impact of deregulation and whether employment relations could be re-regulated. New Labour: new hope By the mid-1990s individual relationships were catapulted firmly to the forefront of analysis of the employment relationship (Beardwell, 1996). Recognition of this change had been apparent from WIRS in 1990, perhaps most notably within the HI. HI managers are free to exercise a high degree of managerial prerogative in the absence of unorganized labour, termed unbridled individualism. The election of a Labour government for the first time in nearly 20 years in 1997 raised expectations that there would be a new agenda for employment relations, although Heery's (1997:107) assessment was that 'it is extremely doubtful whether New Labour will issue in a new industrial relations'. New Labour's stakeholder economy is based on fairness and partnership. Fairness at work is to be achieved in two ways. The government signed up to the EU social chapter and set about introducing a new floor of minimum employment standards, including a National Minimum Wage (NMW), and family-friendly measures. Social partnership between employers and workers is designed to foster a more consensual and cooperative relationship between employers and employees. The Low Pay Commission (LPC), whose first task was to recommend the initial rate of the NMW, provides an early manifestation of social partnership comprising employer, worker and independent representatives. Although many of the Conservatives' trade union reforms remain in place, the introduction of statutory trade union recognition procedures might help reverse the steep decline in trade union membership. By the time of WERS in 1998 the system of collective representation had crumbled 'to such an extent that it no longer represented the dominant model' (Millward et al., 2000:234). In reality employment relations could conform to different and diverse patterns. Private service establishments employing 25 or more employees were numerically more important than private sector manufacturing and the public sector put together. Their share of employment increased from 26 per cent in 1980 to 44 per cent in 1998, reinforcing the point that alternative ways to view and reform employment relations were long overdue, particularly in circumstances of 'bleak house' (Sisson, 1993) or 'black hole' employment. Although we find these terms wanting in respect of the HI, they highlight the relevance of the industry as a unit of analysis. Consequently we shall show how these types of workplaces throw up major problems for employment relations reform. Discussion Three terms denote the relations between managers and workers in the employment relationship - industrial relations, employee relations and employment relations. These terms are often used interchangeably, but can also convey subtle differences of meaning. They may coincide with other fields of academic inquiry and practical activity concerned with 'people management', namely personnel management and HRM. In this economic exchange between the buyer (employer) and seller (worker) of labour, the parties do not share equal power resources. In common law the employer has the right to command and the employee has a duty to obey. The commodity at the heart of the bargain is the worker's labour power. The employer will seek to maximize control over that 'labour process' in order to generate a surplus as profit. The employment relationship, as an exchange and in recognition of its broader context, has also been termed the effort-reward bargain: 'an economic, social and political relationship, for which employees provide manual and mental labour in return for rewards allotted by employers' (Gospel and Palmer, 1993:3). Labour only becomes useful if it can be persuaded by management to work, but this is only the beginning. Workers must demonstrate commitment, continue working to the required standards, and not deviate from those standards. In other words workers must follow 'rules', otherwise management may need to deploy corrective or punitive measures via the disciplinary procedure. Bonamy and May (1997) argue that a weakening of employment relationships since the 1970s has given rise to the emergence of employment as a service relationship. This relationship demands increased recognition of the professional qualities of the 'autonomous' worker, which poses problems of incompatibility with an employment contract built upon subordination. Pay is determined by time worked, whilst idle time due to poor organization and absenteeism is reduced. This is manifested in new forms of employment contract (fixed-term and part-time), externalization of employment to agencies and the sub-contracting of activities. Employment relations do not rule out all variants within the employment relationship including: - Trade unions and formal collective bargaining; - Individually based management/workforce relations conducted informally; - Managerialism; more democratic and highly participative non-union relations; - Men, women and disadvantaged groups; - Employees and workers, including atypical workers and the self-employed. Further: - Employment relations is the main term used in the WERS sourcebook (Cully et al., 1999); - Industrial tribunals have been renamed employment tribunals; - The cornerstone of New Labour's industrial relations policy is the Employment Relations Act 1999. The notion of the customer in the employment relationship has been increasingly incorporated into the sociology of work, but less so in employment relations. Front-line workers, such as receptionists and servers in bars and restaurants, have to serve two 'masters': their superior manager and the customer. Individual workers can have a simultaneous and coterminous employment relationship with the organization and the customer. While rules may be the substantive rules of employment, e.g. pay and conditions of employment, implicit in the notion of rules affecting people is the concept of behaviour. Management's job is to control and direct workers' behaviour to perform work to the desired standards, and thereby ensure that the rules of employment are adhered to. Four key issues arise: - Rules are not always absolute and may be gendered. - Managerial control of workers' behaviour is underpinned by a power relationship. - This power relationship is unequal and may be gendered. - Managers have a choice of means to maximize control. The first point is that one should caution against perceiving rules in too absolute a sense. At one end of the spectrum rules embodied in the law of the land provide a good example of formal rules. Any breach may incur very severe penalties, e.g. health and safety. In a workplace setting rules in practice may derive from informal understandings that can in one set of circumstances be interpreted by the worker as a permissive concession or in a different set of circumstances as something to be observed at all costs. Strawberries as a worker's perquisite during the Wimbledon lawn tennis championship are a good example. Experienced workers know that taking home unwanted strawberries is 'permitted' during busy periods. When fewer staff are needed, increased managerial surveillance will be deployed to dismiss staff caught in possession of company property. In hospitality the social function of service work derives from the provision of a 'home away from home'. The service encounter entails 'emotion work' (Hochschild, 1983) - the assumption of a social-self, which effectively masks the individual's own personal dispositions to act, including the need to smile and be pleasant in an uninvolved way. We have already noted that 'aesthetic' and sexual labour may also be inherent in service work. It is the 'normalizing' social role of service labour that distinguishes it from other wage labour (Hochschild, 1983). Service work cannot be understood in terms of economic rationality alone. Examination must be based on the supposition that service work is the intended outcome of a necessarily social process in which some social interaction occurs between one or more producers and one or more consumers. The relations between three groups of people - managers, workers and customers - embody the potential for contradiction between, on the one hand, uncertainty, unpredictability, conflict and difference and, on the other hand, consent, team effort and concerted performance. Reference: Ackers, P. (2002) 'Reframing employment relations: the case for neo-pluralism', Industrial Relations Journal, 33, 1, 2-19. Beardwell, I. J. (1996) 'How do we know how it really is', in I. J. Beardwell (ed.) Contemporary Industrial Relations: A Critical Analysis, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bonamy, J. and May, N. (1997) 'Service and employment relationships', The Service Industries Journal,17, 4, 544-63. Cully, M., Woodland, S., O'Reilly, A. and Dix, G. (1999) Britain at Work, London: Routledge. Gospel, H. and Palmer, G. (1993) British Industrial Relations, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Heery, E. (1997) 'Annual review article 1996', British Journal of Industrial Relations, 35, 1, 87-109. Hochschild, A. R. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialisation of Human Feeling, Berkeley: University of California Press. International Labour Organization (ILO) (2001) Human Resources Development, Employment and Globalization in the Hotel, Catering and Tourism Sector, Report for discussion at the Tripartite Meeting on the Human Resources Development, Employment and Globalization in the Hotel, Catering and Tourism Sector, Geneva: International Labour Organization. Millward, N., Bryson, A. and Forth, J. (2000) All Change at Work, London: Routledge. Sehkaran, S. N. and Lucas, R. E. (2002) 'Hospitality to hostility: dealing with a low response rate in postal surveys'. Paper presented at 11th Annual CHME Research Conference, Leeds Metropolitan University, April. Sinclair, M. T. (1997) Gender, Work and Tourism, London: Routledge. Sisson, K. (1993) 'In search of HRM', British Journal of Industrial Relations, 31, 2, 201-10. Storey, J. (1989) New Perspectives on Human Resource Management, London: Routledge. Storey, J. (1992) Developments in the Management of Human Resources, Oxford: Blackwell. Storey, J. (1995) 'Human resource management: still marching on, or marching out', in J. Storey (ed.) Human Resource Management: A Critical Text, London: Routledge. Walton, R. E. (1985) 'From control to commitment in the workplace', Harvard Business Review, March/April, 77-84. Read More