Regulating the Employment Relationship and Managing Conflict

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Regulating the Employment Relationship and
Managing Conflict

• Collective bargaining

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Regulating the Employment Relationship

• Managerial Regulation
• Unilateral Regulation
• Custom Practice
• Legal Regulation
• Joint Regulation Collective bargaining

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What is Collective Bargaining?

• A process of decision-making between parties
  representing employer and employee interests
  which implies the negotiation and continuous
  application of an agreed set of rules to govern
  the substantive and procedural terms of the
  employment relationship
• (OECD, Windmuller et al. 1987)

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Collective Bargaining

• Collectivist v Individualist
• Key element in pluralist Industrial relations
• Joint regulation of employment relationship (or
  parts thereof) varies in Depth, Scope, Level and
  Form
• Contains conflict between parties
• In some orgs scope and depth of joint regulation
  considerable
• Scope and depth often dependent on level at which
  bargaining takes place often more than one level

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Collective Bargaining Levels

• National (Country-wide agreements)
• Regional (Regional agreements)
• Industry (Industry framework agreements)
• Company (Company agreements)
• Establishment (Factory/Office agreements)
• Workplace (Often Informal agreements)

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Participation and Collective Bargaining

• Collective bargaining one form of employee
  participation and industrial democracy
• Much of post-war period
• Industrial democracy collective bargaining
• Containment and institutionalisation of
  industrial conflict
• Popularised by pluralists in USA and UK
• In Europe Collective bargaining part of (legally
  constituted) dual system industry wide
  collective bargaining and participation at
  company level

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Collective Bargaining

• Fulcrum of employee/industrial relations system
  for much of post-war system in most advanced
  economies
• Delivered Substantive (Pay, hours, holidays) and
  Procedural rules regulating employee relations
• In most European economies industry or regional
  bargaining covering majority of workforce
  dominated
• Remains important at this level in Germany,
  France, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Denmark

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Collective Bargaining Coverage (Source ILO 2005,
OECD 2007)

• TU Density
• Australia 21
• Canada 25
• Finland 61
• France 11
• Italy 75
• Netherlands 25
• Spain 23
• Sweden 89
• UK 26

• CB Coverage
• Australia 37
• Canada 27
• Finland 62
• France 95
• Italy 84
• Netherlands 76
• Spain 60
• Sweden 85
• UK 37

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Collective Bargaining

• In some countries US, Denmark, collective
  agreements legally binding
• In others UK, terms of collective agreements
  are incorporated into individual contracts of
  employment
• Part of legal regulation of the employment
  relationship
• Industry agreements often built on and extended
  by local (company, factory, departmental,
  workgroup) agreements

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European Union Traditions

• European Union
• Dual system CB at industry/regional level
  firm level legally constituted representative
  structures
• Works councils, works committees at establishment
  or organisational level Austria, Belgium,
  France, Greece, Portugal Luxembourg, Netherlands,
  and Spain, similar structures in Denmark and
  Norway
• In some countries formal systems of
  co-determination at company level see Germany

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Collective Bargaining

• Decisions about CB arise from decision to
  recognise trade unions
• Decisions focus on
• - Bargaining Agent
• - Bargaining Unit
• - Bargaining Scope
• - Bargaining Level
• - Bargaining Form
• All of which are to some degree under management
  control

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Collective Bargaining

• Collective bargaining generates outcomes Rules
  regulating employment relationship Substantive
  and Procedural
• Procedures (procedural agreements) to
• Regulate negotiations negotiating procedures
• Regulate day-to-day employee relations
  Discipline, grievance, attendance
• Resolve problems when negotiations break down
  disputes of right

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Collective Bargaining

• Collective Disputes Procedures
• ACAS often advise
• Procedures normally stipulate stages for parties
  to go through before they can initiate a ballot
  for industrial action
• Procedure may require conciliation or mediation
  or provision for arbitration
• New Style Agreements compulsory conciliation
  (Nissan, Toyota) or arbitration

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Collective Bargaining

• Traditional arbitration is normally voluntary
  and involves splitting the difference
• In some agreements Arbitration has been
  compulsory pendulum

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Trends in Collective Bargaining

• In UK clear trends are discernible
• Overarching change has been in bargaining Level
• Decentralization, move away from centralised
  industry-level bargaining to company or
  establishment level, at least in private sector
• Increasing narrowing of the Scope of CB
• Change in the frequency and content of
  negotiations move towards flex-agreements
  (something for something)

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Trends in Collective Bargaining

• Reduction in the number of Bargaining Units as
  move to company and establishment level
  bargaining
• Wish to move away from agreements based on the
  going rate towards a business ability to pay
  and to secure more control over labour costs
• Moves towards recognising a single Bargaining
  Agent
• Moves towards single table bargaining
• In some areas of the Public Sector Pay groups
  have been taken out of CB and moved to Pay Review
  Bodies Police, Teachers, Nurses

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Summary

• CB one of a number of forms of employment
  regulation
• CB retains important regulatory function in many
  countries
• In much of EU CB remains part of vibrant dual
  system
• Remains important in UK Public sector
• In UK CB declined against growth of other forms
  of regulation and other forms of EI
• Where it remains company level, diminished
  scope

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Summary

• 1980 attempts to re-regulate employment
  relationship
• Marked increase in attempts at unilateral
  management regulation of the employment
  relationship
• Greater individualisation of employee relations
• Increased focus on EI, dual channels and
  unitarist concerns with communications,
  involvement and engagement
• Increasing degree of statutory regulation of
  employment relationship

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Further Reading

• Brown, W., Deakin, S., Nash, D., Oxenbridge, S.
  (2000), The Employment Contract From Collective
  Procedures to Individual Rights, British Journal
  of Industrial Relations, 38(4) 611-29
• Brown, W., Nash, D. (2008), What has been
  happening to collective bargaining under New
  Labour? Interpreting WERS 2004 Industrial
  Relations Journal Vol. 39(2)