This concluding chapter provides an overview of the key themes covered by this book and reflects on the prospects for employment relations. It demonstrates just how varied and complex the regulation of work and employment relationships has become. However, it argues that employment relations cannot simply be understood as the study of how work and employment relationships are regulated; studying employment relations must also involve a concern with understanding workers' experiences and how they contest the terms of their employment relationships. Indeed, a central feature of this book concerns the need to recognize the experiences of workers. On a positive note, it appears that workers are better informed about workplace and organizational decisions than in the past. More negatively, however, it seems that genuine employee involvement and participation is rather limited in practice; workers have few opportunities to influence workplace or organizational decision-making.
Chapter
Conclusion: understanding employment relations
Chapter
Employment relations in the contemporary economy
This chapter examines the implications of developments in the contemporary economy for work and employment relations, particularly the labour market. It provides an overview of the impact of the ‘great recession’ following the 2007–2008 financial crisis on the economy and the labour market. Next, self-employment and the rise in the number of self-employed people are explained and interpreted. Afterwards, the chapter explores flexible employment, covering the topics of temporary and agency work, working time flexibility, and wages. Whereas there is undoubtedly a trend towards greater ‘knowledge work’, the chapter also shows that the nature of occupational change is in fact rather complex, with much work and employment continuing to be of an insecure, ‘precarious’ type. Overall the chapter points to the notable extent to which changes in the economy and labour market have contributed to the increased ‘commodification’ of labour, characterized by the attempts of employers to secure productive effort from workers at the lowest possible cost and render them more disposable.
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Globalization and employment relations
This chapter offers an international focus on contemporary employment relations, which is delivered through an examination of globalization and its implications. Globalization can be understood both as a process involving greater internationalization of economic activity and international labour mobility and as a neo-liberal project designed to open up markets and promote free trade. The question of how far neo-liberal globalization has promoted greater uniformity—or ‘convergence’—in employment relations is a matter of serious debate. Multinational companies (MNCs) are often viewed as powerful agents of convergence. The chapter next examines the influences on employment relations in MNC subsidiaries and considers the part played by MNCs, and their use of global supply chains, in undermining employment conditions and workers' rights and protections. Concerns about a ‘race to the bottom’ in labour standards have prompted a growing interest in how regulation can be established on an international basis. Finally, the chapter examines international trade union responses to globalization. Although globalization has caused unions some major difficulties, their efforts to organize workers and improve labour standards, often by engaging in conflict, are integral features of employment relations in a globalized world.
Book
Introducing Employment Relations is composed of five parts. Part 1 introduces the nature of employment relations. The second part covers the dimensions of employment relations and includes chapters on the contemporary economy, the politics of employment relations, and social divisions and employment relations. The third part introduces key elements of employment relations, with individual chapters focusing on managing employment relations, trade unions and worker representations, pay determination, and working time. The next part looks at conflict and employment relations. It considers labour conflict and its resolution. The last part looks at wider issues such as globalization.
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Labour conflict and employment relations
This chapter examines the main influences on strike levels and the key features of the legal framework governing industrial action by trade unions. The concept of ‘labour conflict’ is used to refer to a variety of behaviours undertaken by workers and their allies, both inside and outside the workplace. These reflect the basic antagonism underlying the employment relationship and are designed to challenge the interests of employers and/or governments. Mobilization theory explains the circumstances under which workers' grievances translate into instances of actual labour conflict. This conflict, when it does arise, can take a variety of forms, and is not just restricted to strikes.
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Managing employment relations
This chapter examines how the management role in employment relations developed in a context of growing unionization. It starts by tracing the historical development of employment relations management and highlights that an emphasis on managing with trade unions used to dominate the managerial agenda. The chapter then focuses on the nature, scope, and dimensions of the managerial challenge to trade unionism that has come to dominate employment relations. It considers the implications of legislation that obliges employers to recognize a union where this is wanted by a majority of the workforce. Union decline supposedly provides employers with opportunities to innovate when it comes to managing employment relations. This chapter also critically examines the main features of a sophisticated human resource management (HRM) approach to managing employment relations. This is based on attempts to drive performance improvements through higher levels of organizational commitment and engagement on the part of employees. However, as the chapter shows, there are some inherent major challenges and tensions when it comes to managing work and employment relationships which impede managerial efforts to promote commitment-based approaches.
Chapter
The nature of employment relations
This introductory chapter considers the nature of employment relations. Employment relations is a field of study concerned with understanding work and employment relationships, specifically how these relationships are regulated, experienced, and contested. Employment relations affect the lives of most people in contemporary societies. As such, the chapter begins with a focus on the nature of work and employment relationships in market economies. Second, the main perspectives that have been applied to employment relations as a field of study are assessed. Third, the chapter introduces the main actors and processes in employment relations, highlights the principal outcomes of employment relations, and explores the dimensions of employment relations. To conclude, this chapter then emphasizes the value of studying employment relations.
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Pay determination and employment relations
This chapter looks more closely at key developments in pay determination. The initial focus is on the joint regulation of pay through collective bargaining with trade unions. It covers the evolution, development, and decline of collective bargaining as a means of setting pay, set against an appreciation of the important degree to which collective bargaining has proved to be resilient in the public sector. The chapter then considers one of the key implications of the diminution of collective bargaining, that is, the greater level of unilateral managerial control over pay determination, particularly in private firms. Finally, this chapter explores efforts to mitigate low pay, with a particular emphasis on the background to, and the operation and consequences of, the National Minimum/Living Wage. It is also concerned with understanding efforts to promote a ‘real’ living wage in companies such as the UK bookshop chain Waterstones, as shown in the introductory case study.
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The politics of employment relations
This chapter is concerned with the political dimension of employment relations. One of the most distinctive features of employment relations as a field of study is that it is highly politicized; in other words, employment relations arrangements, institutions, and processes are infused with, and cannot be understood without reference to, politics. The chapter provides some historical context, outlining the main developments in public policy prior to 1997, when Tony Blair's first Labour government was elected to office. It then covers the main employment relations policy developments under Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. Next, the chapter focuses on the changes enacted by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government and during the first year of the subsequent Conservative majority administration. The influence of the European Union (EU) on employment relations, particularly the waning importance of the ‘social dimension’—encompassing social and employment matters—of European integration, is also explored. As well as covering Theresa May's domestic policy agenda between 2016 and 2019, the final main part of the chapter examines the employment relations issues relating to Brexit.
Chapter
Resolving labour conflict
This chapter explains employment relations procedures, particularly those used to resolve labour conflict and employment disputes. It starts with arrangements for resolving collective disputes arising between trade unions and employers. It considers the process of negotiation as well as the part played by external, third-party arrangements for collective dispute resolution, including the Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service (ACAS). The chapter next switches to procedures for handling disputes that arise when individual employees have complaints about their treatment, are alleged to have breached organizational rules in some way, or have their performance deemed substandard—namely grievance and disciplinary procedures. There is growing interest in ‘alternative’ methods of dispute resolution, such as mediation. Finally, the chapter looks at the role of the state in resolving employment disputes and enforcing rights at work. There is a particular emphasis on the system of employment tribunals (ETs): quasi-judicial bodies that adjudicate in employment disputes in the UK. Given that a major problem with the tribunal system is its failure to make sure that people's employment rights and protections are upheld, there is growing interest in other, perhaps more effective means of enforcing them.
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Social divisions and employment relations
This chapter focuses on the influence of social divisions—aspects of disadvantage and inequality that are socially constituted, reflecting people's shared social characteristics. The aim of this chapter is to provide a good knowledge of the nature, and principal features, of inequality and disadvantage in employment relations, and to develop a critical understanding of the main efforts to address them. The starting point is a brief assessment of the dimensions of inequality and disadvantage at work, including a discussion of divisions based on social class. Following on from this, the evolving legal and policy framework governing equality and diversity issues, including family-friendly and work–life balance measures, is explored. Finally, the chapter is concerned with understanding and interpreting employer-led equality action and diversity management initiatives; it also examines the role played by trade unions in promoting equality.
Chapter
Trade unions and worker representation
This chapter turns to trade unions, which continue to be highly relevant organizations in contemporary employment relations. It provides an introductory case study which demonstrates how workers in the video games industry are looking to unionize in order to protect and advance their interests. Unions have a crucial role to play in ensuring that workers have their interests represented. The chapter demonstrates that declining unionization levels have reduced the extent to which workers enjoy effective representation of their interests. The onus, then, is on how unions have responded to decline, and tried to revitalize themselves, in ways that improve their representational capacities. Four major approaches are assessed in this chapter: ‘servicing unionism’, ‘partnerships’ with employers, ‘organizing unionism’, and ‘community unionism’. However, in order to understand developments in the representation of workers properly, there is also a need to consider non-union systems of employee representation, including an assessment of the implications of EU legislation concerning information and consultation rights for workers.
Chapter
Working time and employment relations
This chapter turns to working time—its length, its pattern, and its use. It commences with an overview of the importance of working time as an employment relations issue and how it can be understood before discussing some key trends relating to the duration of working time. Next, the chapter switches to flexible working time arrangements, including a critical assessment of the rise of employment contracts that do not offer any guaranteed minimum hours of work, so-called ‘zero-hours contracts’ (ZHCs). The chapter then examines how working time is used, with a particular emphasis on explaining increased levels of work intensity. The EU Working Time Directive and the Working Time Regulations (WTR) in the UK mean that some working time matters have become more strictly regulated by law. The chapter looks at this legislation, explains why it has been controversial, and considers its implications.
