Table of contents
1. Abstract………………………………..…3
2. Introduction………………………………3
3. Main body
3.1 The role of trade union…………………4-6
3.2 The role of employee representatives…6-7
4. Conclusion……………………………….7
5. References……………………………8-9
1. Abstract
Storey (1992) suggests that the traditional approach to Labour/employee contracts has undergone significant change. It is unarguable that the environment where employers, employees and trade unions find themselves has dramatically transformed in the past few decades. Conceivably outsourcing, subcontracting and the continuing fragmentation are the most significant changes of employment relations. Traditional structures and assumptions that surround employment relations are becoming invalid and needed to renew. The paper will examine the change in the relationship between an organization and its trade unions.
2. Introduction
Segmentation, demographic transformation, individualisation, compound contractual interactions, distant management, and in the years ahead, employment relations will have to face a challenging environment created by a vacuum in representation for both employers and employees. The assumption regarding traditional employment relationship containing one employer is no longer existed. For example, in the past, ‘Industrial relations’ was referred to the relationship between employers and employees collectively. However, employers no longer used the term widely. The CIPD’s Professional Standards included a module called Employee Relations, yet the two are not synonymous. Today the term ‘industrial relations’ is understood as a set of employment relationships that no longer exist broadly, except in particular fragments and, even there, in altered form.
The purpose of the paper is to identify and discuss the change in the relationship between the organization and its Trade Unions by examining the role of the Trade Union and employee representative in the relationship between them and the employer.
3. Main Body
3.1 The role of the trade union
Diminishing trade union membership is the common feature in most developed countries during the last quarter century according to Ebbinghaus and Visser, (1999) and Visser (2003). While in the employment of public sector, unionization remains as an essential feature, in the private sector union density has been declined rapidly. The situation is similar in Britain. There has been a considerable deterioration in the tendency of workforces joining unions and a reduction in the occurrence of union recognition by companies for pay bargaining within the workplace. There is a common assumption that union deterioration is an inevitable outcome of the economy’s structural transformation and the break-up of large-scale manufacturing plants. Certainly, fall in one strong union supporters of the economy has depressed unions of members, although employer association with trade unions is not simply a role of industry location. Recently, there has been an occurrence of a voluntarist climate change saying that it was an employer choice, though a controlled one manipulated by employer and employee bargaining power. Moreover, it is not necessary to follow that unions will be removed from new workplaces and new occupations. Similarly the decline in union density is expected to involve a shrinking in the influence unions have on employees and firms.
Undoubtedly the unions influence on employees and firms within the economy will weaken with deterioration in their occurrence. However, there is an argument claiming that it is uncertain which influences trade unions will have on the workplaces that stay unionized. Unions’ influence will differ basing on their capability to do what they have done traditionally such as
