Industrial Relations, Labour Relations and Human Resources Management

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Contexts – Actors are influenced by several environmental contexts:

Market and budgetary constraints – product market and labour market. Unions influence the supply and demand of labour. Management is constrained by budgets.

Technical Characteristics of the Workplace – the way work is structured and performed

Distribution of power in the larger society – the actor with the most power has the ability to influence the dynamics of the employment relationship and the terms and conditions of work.

Web of Rules

Processes for making rules and who has authority to make and administer the rules

Substantive rules – compensation, performance expectations, workers rights and duties

Criticisms of Dunlop

The model is descriptive – it lacks the ability to predict outcomes

It underestimates the importance of power and conflict in the employment relationship – it assumes a shared ideology

It is static in nature

Dunlop model cannot provide an explanation for the rapid decrease in unionization in the US. The model is grounded in the premise of unionized workplaces being the norm and this is clearly not the case in the private sector.

Craig’s Model

External Inputs:

Legal, Economic, Ecological, Political, Socio-cultural

Actors:

Labour, employers, government agencies, end users

Internal Inputs:

Values, goals, strategies, power

Conversion mechanisms:

Collective bargaining; grievances; day-today relations; 3rd party dispute mechanisms (interest arbitration, grievance arbitration, conciliation, mediation); joint committees; strikes/lockouts

Outputs:

Employer outcomes; labour outcomes; workers’ perceptions; conflict/conflict resolution

Seniority – the length of time a person has been a member of a particular union or unionized workplace. There are specific rules in each collective agreement around the accumulation of seniority.

Views of Industrial Relations

It is an inter-disciplinary field consisting of economics, psychology, sociology, history, law and political science

Neo-Classical Economics View – unions are seen as an artificial barrier to a free marker economy – they artificially influence the supply and demand of labour.

The Pluralist and Institutional Views – promoted by John Commons (1918) and Selig Perlman (1928) – referred to as the Wisconsin School in reference to the University of Wisconsin where John Commons was a professor of Labour Relations

The Wisconsin School asserts that labour unions act as a countervailing force in an attempt to balance the interests of the employer and employee. The name (Institutional) implies the need for strong institutions such as unions, governments and employers to establish a set of working rules that lead to stable labour markets, a level playing field in wage determination and democratic mechanisms for due process and voice in the firm. The terms pluralist refers to the multiple actors in the employment relationship.

The pluralist view is the dominant mainstream view of LR in Canada today.

Human Resources / Strategic Choice

Human resources strategies are linked to the firm’s overall business strategy. While not anti-union per se, HR strategies are often designed to foster cooperation between employer and employee and may minimize the need for unions if workplace conflict is significantly reduced.

Political Economy – this view of LR is grounded in socialism and Marxism. In these views, there is an inherent conflict between labour and management.

The radical view considers the struggles of the working class. The goal of Marxism was the over-through of capitalism and employee control of the workplace.