“Nonunionism” Will it be a reality ?????
After the industrial revolution
trade unions played most important role in ensuring rights of workers and their
intervention were very helpful for the workers to acquire more benefits from
the employers. According to (gov.uk, 2017) peak level of the trade union
membership in UK was arrived in 1979 and after that is declining. Not only in
UK but also in the world concerns , number of membership of trade unions are
declining and it raises a question that trade unions mediatory role for negotiations
is replaced by another substitute.
It can be identified three approaches according to the degree of union recognition as:
1.
Full recognition – (collective
bargaining)
2.
Partial recognition –
(negotiations)
3.
Single union deals.- ( single
union agreement, strike free) (Armstrong
and Tylor 2014).
The constitution of Sri Lanka provides for freedom of
association and allows workers to form and join trade unions and there are
2,074 registered labor unions in Sri Lanka, of which 54.5% are in the public
sector, 27.5% in the public corporations and 18% in the private sector
(WageIndicator 2018). The number of trade union membership reaches 9.5% of the
total labor force in Sri Lanka (WageIndicator 2018). Trade union
power in private sector is significantly lower than in public sector.
In Sri Lanka, collective bargaining power is vary
according to the size of membership and essentiality of their service to the
public. Trade unions which have relatively large number of membership and
trades which have an ability to influence the management or government due to
the essentiality of their service, exercise much bargaining power. On the other
hand there is an argument that some of their trade union actions exceeds
ethical limits too. Current increasing trend of union actions in Education,
health, transport and other sectors make difficulties in general public in
their day today activities. Some of these damages are irreversible and non-remedial.
Some firms prefer union membership and intend to
live together as they think it is costly to maintain an alternative to
communicate, handling grievances, and discipline and safety issues. On the
other hand these firms believe that unions are well established channel for
employee relations (Armstrong and Tylor 2014).
However
union actions may be unhealthy to organisations because it would negatively
affect to the reputation of the organisation, raise uncertainty in production
or service, customer satisfaction. Most organizations seem unions affect to
cost and operational efficiency by means of collective bargaining which may
increase cost for production and services (Dias, 2011). Therefore organizations
tend to provide safe working conditions, fair pay, and other benefits for their
employees in order to avoid forming unions (Dias, 2011). In unionized process
it is important to review employee relations. (Dias, 2011) In the management
perspective it’s safer to marginalize the trade unions than derecognize because
it may easier to deal communication , handling grievances, discipline and
safety issues with union than
establishing alternative to those which may costly and difficult to operate.
(Armstrong and Tylor, 2014) Some large organizations prefer nonunion relations
and adopted employment policies and pay packages which may attractive than
trade union membership. These organizations deal with employees individually
rather than collectively. Smaller firms deals with employees situational basis
and there are no substitution for trade unions (Armstrong and Tylor, 2014).
In
different perspectives, there are pros and cons in existing of trade unions.
The ultimate objective of trade unions are negotiating and bargaining for employee’s
betterment. If the employees’ objectives and employers’ objectives are met in a
same interface, union existence is not required. Therefore, modern human
resource development methods are fulfilling the requirements of the new
millennium towards “nonunionism”.
Reference
Armstrong,
M and Tylor, S (2014) Armstrong’s Handbook of Human resource management
practice. 14th edition
.Kogan page limited: United Kingdom.
Peiris, R., (2010) submissions in
relation to the Petition filed by AFL-CIO by the Employers’ Federation of
Ceylon. Available at: http://www.employers.lk/component/content/article/408?start=1
(Accessed: 28 March 2018)
WageIndicator
(2018) Trade Unions. Available at:
https://salary.lk/labour-law/trade-union
(Accessed: 28 March 2018).
Gov.uk,
(2017) Trade union membership 2016: statistical bulletin, Department for
Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/trade-union-statistics-2016. (Accessed: 01 April 2018).
Valuable informations were taken. I appreciate your evaluation & thank for providing kind of this blog contents.
ReplyDeleteHi Shenali,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points, it is very necessary to keep employees engaged and satisfied with what they are assigned to.
I feel, it is important HR department to keep all employees satisfied. But, there are still negative attitudes which cannot be satisfied at any point. So, it is a very important of role which HRD should perform during the human resourcing process. They should take the responsibility to hire candidates with high aptitude and high attitude.