UNION TRADE AND EMPLOYEE RELATIONS

Union Trade and Employee Relations



Union Trade and Employee Relations

Q1: How do you account for the global decline in trade union membership in the past 25 years? Critically assess whether this is a trend to be welcomed or deplored.

Labor unions, sometimes called trade unions, are collective associations of workers in industrialized capitalist economies. Though unions widely vary in their activities and structures, they exist to represent the material interests of a group of workers in a given profession, industry, workplace, or entire economy. Most unions use collective bargaining, strikes, political action, and the principle of solidarity to achieve their ends. The basic premise of labor unions is that, by working together as an organized group, workers can achieve their goals more successfully than if they work alone. Historically, unions have been one of the primary institutions that restrain the extremes of free market capitalism.

The Effect Of Unions On Business And Government

In unionized political economies, labor unions have forged strong alliances with mainstream political parties to alter fundamentally the distribution of wealth and the management of business. In the 1930s, national labor movements in most countries forged relationships with one (or more) electorally competitive political party, be it Social Democratic, Socialist, Communist, or Liberal. Unions remained significant partners of governing parties in many countries through the end of the 1970s. In some cases, such as the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, the labor movement has constructed and directed parties to use as a political instrument to further their own interests in the government. While the traditionally close alliance between labor movements and left-ofcenter political parties remains intact in most countries, it has come under strain since the 1980s, and unions have had to compete against other new interest groups and social movements to affect government policy.

Union Trade Decline and UK

Since the early 1980's new-style agreements (sometimes referred to as individual union / no strike deals) have received considerable attention. Its use has been pioneered by Japanese manufacturing transplants in the field of consumer electronics in the UK - including Toshiba and Hitachi. In late 1991 there were 56 Japanese transplants in the field of consumer electronics in the UK and 20 (35 percent) of them had signed new style agreements (NSAs) covering a total of 9,719 workers. Non-state actors have been examined as a package and individual components, such as arbitration and no-strike clause, have been analyzed. They have also been discussed in the context of the management strategy of labor relations during the 1980's. In this case, the underlying principles are discussed actors. This is followed by an examination of whether the basic principles of the agreements are translated into practice at two Japanese manufacturing transplants in the field of consumer electronics in the UK. The results of these case studies are used to assess the extent to which some of the concerns and criticisms of non-state actors are justified. (Son, 1994, 52)

May the spirit and intent behind non-state actors, it tends to displace labor relations of ...