HRM - Industrial Relations, Unions and Collective Bargaining

• Overview of Industrial Relations and Collective Bargaining in the UK.
• 80s and 90s - substantial decline in UK membership of trade unions
• individual orientations to work vs. collective orientations.
• employment legislation and regulation
• unitary perspectives and employer strategies emphasising individual and team approaches
• Pluralistic perspectives and managerial prerogative
• Union recognition
• What is ethical about strike action or protecting TU members with poor work performance ?
• Regulating the wage-work bargain and voluntary collective bargaining
• Procedural and substantive matters - the Collective Agreement - Binding in Honour only
• Bargaining Power/Leverage
• Distributive, Integrative and Intra-organisational Bargaining
• Unions, labour monopoly and altruism
• Employee relations, Marxism and concepts of class
• Public Opinion and public exploitation of public sector workers
• Unionism, income distribution and self-interest in a market
• Democratic traditions and TUs as lobby groups
• Fox on expediency and trust "Beyond Contract"
• Wage rises and cost savings
• A sea change - the role of trade unions and institutional IR in the 1980s and 1990s?
• Employer Perceptions and Non-unionism - New HRM?
  • Service-sector Shift
  • Derecognition and new recognition of unions post 2000
  • European Directive emphasis on Institutionalised, collective representation
  • Individual, personalised contracts over collective arrangements.
  • HRM and unitary framework

• Employee Participation
  • "Participation through the job itself"
  • Worker directors and worker councils (European Directive approach)
  • Share ownership and its problems.

Further Resources

• BOLA on Power
• Session 4: HRM and Industrial Relations
• DTI - Employment Relations