LEADERSHIP THEORIES AND LABOR RELATIONS

Leadership Theories and Labor Relations

Leadership Theories and Labor Relations

Introduction

Labor Relations (LR), or Industrial Relations as it is often designated in Europe, is the interdisciplinary study of (a) work and employment, and (b) of the institutions, actors, rule-fixing processes, and outcomes in the labor market, often with a focus on the relationship between employers and employees and between their respective organizations of collective action.

The traditional focus in LR may be said—caricaturing only slightly—to focus on the male, white, full-time manual, unionized worker in a large manufacturing company. This employee type, however, represents a declining section of the workforce, not least due to the increase in female employment in the service sector, in part-time and in temporary employment, and in the increasingly multiethnic composition of the workforce. Manufacturing employment, conversely, now represents only 10-20 percent of aggregate employment in the advanced market economies.

Therefore, although LR is a well-established area of study, it has in recent decades been challenged both by a number of real-world factors, which have seemingly minimized the importance of LR and of a LR perspective on labor market matters, and also by the emergence of novel academic disciplines, covering to a large extent the same empirical field as LR; these include, among others, human resource management, personnel economics, and employment relations.

Discussion

The classic confrontational power tactic that has been used by the union is, of course, the strike—a withdrawal of services by union members. As has been noted earlier in this chapter, strike activity in the United States was at historic lows during the early 21st century. While the strike will continue to be a possible coercive weapon, it will remain at very low levels of use. Indeed, the strike will simply not have the economic power that it once enjoyed to pressure the employer. Employers with global operations may draw more heavily upon their international units and can function quite satisfactorily even though their American unit(s) may be idled. Also, employers will simply hire replacement workers to continue operations in many cases. In short, the strike will not be an effective weapon to coerce the employer in many cases.

While the classic strike action of total withdrawal will not be effective in many cases in 2025, unions will, when pressed to take action, use short-term and limited withdrawal job actions such as CHAOS (Create Havoc Around Our System). This maximizes the impact on management and minimizes the risk to employees. For example, in the airline industry, this could mean that the flight attendants would conduct a short mass withdrawal of services (i.e., 15 minutes), or simply strike certain flights, specific cities, certain gates at an airport and so on with no advanced warning to management. The short focused action will create significant problems for management and the system while minimizing the prospect of replacement workers or actions against specific employees.

Taking the real-world factors first, many of the advanced industrialized nations have experienced considerable decline in union density levels, especially so in the United States, the United ...