Industrial Relations (IR): Concept & Scope
Industrial Relations (IR): Concept
& Scope
IR
means a Harmonious employment relations. Hence, it is broader in meaning and
wider in scope. IR is dynamic and developing socio-economic process. As such,
there are as many as definitions of IR as the authors on the subject. Some
important definitions of IR are produced here.
According
to Dale Yoder’, IR is a designation of a whole field of
relationship that exists because of the necessary collaboration of men and
women in the employment processes of Industry”.
Armstrong
has defined IR as “IR is concerned with the
systems and procedures used by unions and employers to determine the reward for
effort and other conditions of employment, to protect the interests of the
employed and their employers and to regulate the ways in which employers treat
their employees”
,
An industrial relations system consists of the whole harmonious
relationships between employees and employees and employers which are managed
by the means of conflict and cooperation.
A sound industrial relations system is one in which relationships between management and employees (and their representatives) on the one hand, and between them and the State on the other, are more harmonious and cooperative than conflictual and creates an environment conducive to
economic efficiency and the motivation, productivity and development of the employee and generates employee loyalty and mutual trust.
Actors in the IR system:
Employers: Employers possess certain rights vis-à-vis labors. They have the right to hire and fire them. Management can also affect workers’ interests by exercising their right to relocate, close or merge the factory or to introduce technological changes.
Employees: Workers seek to improve the terms and conditions of their employment. They exchange views with management and voice their grievances. They also want to share decision making powers of management. Workers generally unite to form unions against the management and get support from these unions.
Government: The central and state government influences and regulates industrial relations through laws, rules, agreements, awards of court ad the like. It also includes third parties and labor and tribunal courts.
A sound industrial relations system is one in which relationships between management and employees (and their representatives) on the one hand, and between them and the State on the other, are more harmonious and cooperative than conflictual and creates an environment conducive to
economic efficiency and the motivation, productivity and development of the employee and generates employee loyalty and mutual trust.
Actors in the IR system:
Employers: Employers possess certain rights vis-à-vis labors. They have the right to hire and fire them. Management can also affect workers’ interests by exercising their right to relocate, close or merge the factory or to introduce technological changes.
Employees: Workers seek to improve the terms and conditions of their employment. They exchange views with management and voice their grievances. They also want to share decision making powers of management. Workers generally unite to form unions against the management and get support from these unions.
Government: The central and state government influences and regulates industrial relations through laws, rules, agreements, awards of court ad the like. It also includes third parties and labor and tribunal courts.
SCOPE:
The concept of industrial relations has a very wide meaning and connotation. In the narrow sense, it means that the employer, employee relationship confines itself to the relationship that emerges out of the day to day association of the management and the labor. In its wider sense, industrial relations include the relationship between an employee and an employer in the course of the running of an industry and may project it to spheres, which may transgress to the areas of quality control, marketing, price fixation and disposition of profits among others.
The scope or industrial relations is quite vast. The main issues involved here include the following:
1. Collective bargaining
2. Machinery for settlement of industrial disputes
3. Standing order.
The concept of industrial relations has a very wide meaning and connotation. In the narrow sense, it means that the employer, employee relationship confines itself to the relationship that emerges out of the day to day association of the management and the labor. In its wider sense, industrial relations include the relationship between an employee and an employer in the course of the running of an industry and may project it to spheres, which may transgress to the areas of quality control, marketing, price fixation and disposition of profits among others.
The scope or industrial relations is quite vast. The main issues involved here include the following:
1. Collective bargaining
2. Machinery for settlement of industrial disputes
3. Standing order.
4. Workers participation in management
5. Unfair labor practice
5. Unfair labor practice
Legal framework of Industrial Relations.
For long several commissions and commissions
debated reforms to industrial relations seeking to amend trade union act to
make registration requirements relatively more stringent than at present (from
any 7 being able to form a union proposed to be revised to 100 or 10% of the
employees), provide for statutory mechanism for recognition, deny industrial
relations to unregistered/minority unions, and specify more clearly not only
trade union rights, but also trade union obligations/responsibilities. The
Dispute Act is also proposed to be amended to provide for more emphasis on
relations than disputes and set up an independent Industrial Relations
Commission in the place of existing dispute resolving machinery. Proposals have
also been made to consider constitution-negotiating councils where there is
more than one union.
The central law, Trade Unions Act, 1926 provides for trade union registration, not trade union recognition. By convention, all registered unions have begun to have industrial relations rights, de facto, though not de jure. With the law permitting any seven employees being able to form and register a union, the ground was open for a variety of craft, category, caste, etc., based unions. Labor being a concurrent subject, certain state governments (like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh) have passed separate legislations provided mandatory mechanism for trade union recognition. Certain states like Andhra Pradesh made secret ballot a must. But statutory provisions concerning union recognition did not, unfortunately, ease conflict on this count. The biggest strike in post-independence India occurred in the Bombay Textile Industry in 1982 over the issue of, primarily, representative character of two rival unions. A variety of methods are available for determining the representative union. It can be done through any of the following methods: secret ballot, check-off of membership verification. Union shop method is not prevalent in India. However, selection of representative union for recognition as collective bargaining agent which is necessary to engage in collective bargaining has itself become a major problem because different national federations of trade unions did not agree to a common methods and left the problem for settlement according to location realities! Even the National Labor Commission has left it vaguely. Proposals to alter the situation, along with other major changes in the Trade Unions Act have become abortive since 1978.
In India, the role of national federations of trade unions and employers' organizations is limited, in collective bargaining, to a small nucleus of industrial associations which have a long tradition of collective negotiations with their counterpart trade union federations of workers. Among such employer associations, notable mention may be made of the Ahmadabad Mill Owners' Association, Ahmadabad, the Bombay Mill Owners' Association, Bombay, the Indian Sugar Mills Association, New Delhi, the Tea Association of India, Calcutta, the Indian Jute Mills Association, Calcutta, the Cement Manufacturers' Association, New Delhi, the United Planters Association of South India, , the Southern India Mill Owners' Association, Coimbatore, the Indian Banks Association, Bombay and the Indian Port Association, New Delhi. The confederation of Indian Industry, which till last year (1991) represented mainly the engineering Industry, which negotiating region-cum-industry agreements for member firms who assigned to them in writing such responsibility.
"The role of industry associations in collective bargaining seem to vary depending upon the profile and background of industry and entrepreneurship. In a traditional, the engineering industry, profession managers are the charge of variations in processes and outcomes are discernible in each case which merit detailed study."
In some Industrial centers, both trade unions and employers, particularly have set up coordination committees to adopt a joint/collective strategy to deal with collective bargaining and related matters. This process has started in Bangalore and Hyderabad and spread to other places. Industry wise coordination is also taking place with the commencement of industry wide agreements in core sectors like coal and steel. Oil industry, all of which is in public sector now, also has a coordination committee though it does not have an industry wide agreement.
For public employees, Joint Consultative Machinery and Board of Arbitration have been constituted. Public pay is revised through pay commissions which are usually adopted once every 12 years or so. The significant gap between central government pay systems and industrial pay systems created considerable heartburn and discontent to those who feel they were adversely affected particularly in the wake of some Supreme Court judgments pronouncing public sector as the State.
In a few industries such as cement arbitration has replaced collective bargaining over wages and working conditions while in others like media (newspapers) and sugar wage boards still decide the wages and working conditions. In all other cases, with all its distortions, collective bargaining is the main mechanism through which wages and working conditions are decided. Over the years, the scope of collective bargaining has been widened to include virtually every possible aspect of working relation including the quantum of overtime, shift manning, discipline promotions and transfers, for instance. An industrial society is highly complex and dynamic arrangement of differentiated groups, activities and institutional relationships intertwined with a variety of attitudes ad expectations. Consequently, any specific social phenomenon, such as industrial relations, cannot and should not be viewed in isolation from its wider context. The 'context' of industrial relations may usefully be divided into three major elements
The central law, Trade Unions Act, 1926 provides for trade union registration, not trade union recognition. By convention, all registered unions have begun to have industrial relations rights, de facto, though not de jure. With the law permitting any seven employees being able to form and register a union, the ground was open for a variety of craft, category, caste, etc., based unions. Labor being a concurrent subject, certain state governments (like Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh) have passed separate legislations provided mandatory mechanism for trade union recognition. Certain states like Andhra Pradesh made secret ballot a must. But statutory provisions concerning union recognition did not, unfortunately, ease conflict on this count. The biggest strike in post-independence India occurred in the Bombay Textile Industry in 1982 over the issue of, primarily, representative character of two rival unions. A variety of methods are available for determining the representative union. It can be done through any of the following methods: secret ballot, check-off of membership verification. Union shop method is not prevalent in India. However, selection of representative union for recognition as collective bargaining agent which is necessary to engage in collective bargaining has itself become a major problem because different national federations of trade unions did not agree to a common methods and left the problem for settlement according to location realities! Even the National Labor Commission has left it vaguely. Proposals to alter the situation, along with other major changes in the Trade Unions Act have become abortive since 1978.
In India, the role of national federations of trade unions and employers' organizations is limited, in collective bargaining, to a small nucleus of industrial associations which have a long tradition of collective negotiations with their counterpart trade union federations of workers. Among such employer associations, notable mention may be made of the Ahmadabad Mill Owners' Association, Ahmadabad, the Bombay Mill Owners' Association, Bombay, the Indian Sugar Mills Association, New Delhi, the Tea Association of India, Calcutta, the Indian Jute Mills Association, Calcutta, the Cement Manufacturers' Association, New Delhi, the United Planters Association of South India, , the Southern India Mill Owners' Association, Coimbatore, the Indian Banks Association, Bombay and the Indian Port Association, New Delhi. The confederation of Indian Industry, which till last year (1991) represented mainly the engineering Industry, which negotiating region-cum-industry agreements for member firms who assigned to them in writing such responsibility.
"The role of industry associations in collective bargaining seem to vary depending upon the profile and background of industry and entrepreneurship. In a traditional, the engineering industry, profession managers are the charge of variations in processes and outcomes are discernible in each case which merit detailed study."
In some Industrial centers, both trade unions and employers, particularly have set up coordination committees to adopt a joint/collective strategy to deal with collective bargaining and related matters. This process has started in Bangalore and Hyderabad and spread to other places. Industry wise coordination is also taking place with the commencement of industry wide agreements in core sectors like coal and steel. Oil industry, all of which is in public sector now, also has a coordination committee though it does not have an industry wide agreement.
For public employees, Joint Consultative Machinery and Board of Arbitration have been constituted. Public pay is revised through pay commissions which are usually adopted once every 12 years or so. The significant gap between central government pay systems and industrial pay systems created considerable heartburn and discontent to those who feel they were adversely affected particularly in the wake of some Supreme Court judgments pronouncing public sector as the State.
In a few industries such as cement arbitration has replaced collective bargaining over wages and working conditions while in others like media (newspapers) and sugar wage boards still decide the wages and working conditions. In all other cases, with all its distortions, collective bargaining is the main mechanism through which wages and working conditions are decided. Over the years, the scope of collective bargaining has been widened to include virtually every possible aspect of working relation including the quantum of overtime, shift manning, discipline promotions and transfers, for instance. An industrial society is highly complex and dynamic arrangement of differentiated groups, activities and institutional relationships intertwined with a variety of attitudes ad expectations. Consequently, any specific social phenomenon, such as industrial relations, cannot and should not be viewed in isolation from its wider context. The 'context' of industrial relations may usefully be divided into three major elements
The Industrial Relations 'System'.
The roles, relationships, institutions,
processes and activities which comprise the phenomena of industrial relations
exist both in a wide variety of industries and services and at a number of
levels ranging from the suborganisational (work group, section or department)
and organizational (site or company) levels through the industry level to the
national level. This inevitably creates a pattern of internal influences both
horizontally (between different organisations/industries) and vertically
(between different levels). Consequently, the industrial relations system, in
terms of the attitudes and activities existing within it at any point of time,
provides its down context or climate for the individual industrial relations
situations.
• Other Segments of Social Activity. Industrial relations is only one segment of a society's structure and activity and as such is influenced by, and in turn influences, other segments of the society's activity. The economic, social and political segments are of particular importance in this respect. Actions or changes in these areas may directly stimulate or constrain specific industrial relations activities as well as indirectly influence the attitudes of the participants. It is important to recognize that these environments exert an influence at all levels of industrial relations and therefore, as Fox argues, "organizational issues, conflicts and values are inextricably bound up with those of society at large".
• Time. The present is only part of a continuum between the past and the future; consequently, current industrial relations owes much to its past (whether last week, last year, the last decade or even the last century) and the participant's goals and expectations for the future. At the micro level, the time context may be evidenced in two ways: (a) today's problem stems from yesterday's decision and its solution will, as the environment change, become a problem in the future, and (b) the attitudes, expectations and relationships manifest by the participants are, at least in part, the product of their past individual and collective experiences. At the macro level, industrial relations as a whole is subject to adjustment and development as society, expressed through changes in the economic, social and political environments, it change and develop.
At the same time it is important to recognize that the 'mass media' provide an additional, and very significant, context for industrial relations by virtue of their role in shaping attitudes, opinions and expectations. Any individual, whether as a manager, trade unionist or part of the 'general public', has only a partial direct experience of the full range of activities present in a society. Most knowledge and appreciation of economic, social, political and industrial relations affairs is, therefore, gained indirectly from the facts and opinions disseminated through newspapers and television.
APPROACHES TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
The term 'industrial relations' is used to denote a specialist area of organizational management and study which is concerned with a particular set of phenomena associated with regulating the human activity of employment. It, is however, difficult to define the boundaries of this set of phenomena, and therefore the term itself, in a precise and universally accepted way. Any more specific definition must, of necessity, assume and emphasize a particular view of the nature and purpose of industrial relations - consequently, there are as many definitions as there are writers on industrial relations. For example, the two most frequently used terms of 'industrial relations' and 'employee relations' are, in most practical senses, interchangeable; yet they have very different connotations. The former, more traditional, term reflects the original historical base of unionized manual workers within the manufacturing sector of the economy whilst the latter has come into greater use with the development of less unionized white collar employment and the service and commercial sectors of the economy. The term may be used in a very restrictive sense to include only the formal collective relationships between management and employees (through the medium of trade unions) or in an all inclusive sense to encompass all relationship associated with employment (those between individuals at the informal level as well as those of a formal collective or organizational nature). However, it is doubtful whether the two approaches can, or should, be separated so easily-informal, interpersonal or group relationships are influenced by the formal collective relationships which exist within the industrial relations system and, it may be argued, the formal collective relationships are themselves in part determined by the nature of individual relationships within organisations cannot provide a natural boundary for the subject matter of industrial relations. The way we perceive the overall nature of this area of organizational study determines to a very large extent not only how we approach and analyze specific issues and situations within industrial relations but also how we expect others to behave, how we respond to their actual behavior and the means we adopt to influence or modify their behavior. In examining the different approaches it is useful to differentiate between those approaches which are concerned with the industrial relations system itself
• Other Segments of Social Activity. Industrial relations is only one segment of a society's structure and activity and as such is influenced by, and in turn influences, other segments of the society's activity. The economic, social and political segments are of particular importance in this respect. Actions or changes in these areas may directly stimulate or constrain specific industrial relations activities as well as indirectly influence the attitudes of the participants. It is important to recognize that these environments exert an influence at all levels of industrial relations and therefore, as Fox argues, "organizational issues, conflicts and values are inextricably bound up with those of society at large".
• Time. The present is only part of a continuum between the past and the future; consequently, current industrial relations owes much to its past (whether last week, last year, the last decade or even the last century) and the participant's goals and expectations for the future. At the micro level, the time context may be evidenced in two ways: (a) today's problem stems from yesterday's decision and its solution will, as the environment change, become a problem in the future, and (b) the attitudes, expectations and relationships manifest by the participants are, at least in part, the product of their past individual and collective experiences. At the macro level, industrial relations as a whole is subject to adjustment and development as society, expressed through changes in the economic, social and political environments, it change and develop.
At the same time it is important to recognize that the 'mass media' provide an additional, and very significant, context for industrial relations by virtue of their role in shaping attitudes, opinions and expectations. Any individual, whether as a manager, trade unionist or part of the 'general public', has only a partial direct experience of the full range of activities present in a society. Most knowledge and appreciation of economic, social, political and industrial relations affairs is, therefore, gained indirectly from the facts and opinions disseminated through newspapers and television.
APPROACHES TO INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS
The term 'industrial relations' is used to denote a specialist area of organizational management and study which is concerned with a particular set of phenomena associated with regulating the human activity of employment. It, is however, difficult to define the boundaries of this set of phenomena, and therefore the term itself, in a precise and universally accepted way. Any more specific definition must, of necessity, assume and emphasize a particular view of the nature and purpose of industrial relations - consequently, there are as many definitions as there are writers on industrial relations. For example, the two most frequently used terms of 'industrial relations' and 'employee relations' are, in most practical senses, interchangeable; yet they have very different connotations. The former, more traditional, term reflects the original historical base of unionized manual workers within the manufacturing sector of the economy whilst the latter has come into greater use with the development of less unionized white collar employment and the service and commercial sectors of the economy. The term may be used in a very restrictive sense to include only the formal collective relationships between management and employees (through the medium of trade unions) or in an all inclusive sense to encompass all relationship associated with employment (those between individuals at the informal level as well as those of a formal collective or organizational nature). However, it is doubtful whether the two approaches can, or should, be separated so easily-informal, interpersonal or group relationships are influenced by the formal collective relationships which exist within the industrial relations system and, it may be argued, the formal collective relationships are themselves in part determined by the nature of individual relationships within organisations cannot provide a natural boundary for the subject matter of industrial relations. The way we perceive the overall nature of this area of organizational study determines to a very large extent not only how we approach and analyze specific issues and situations within industrial relations but also how we expect others to behave, how we respond to their actual behavior and the means we adopt to influence or modify their behavior. In examining the different approaches it is useful to differentiate between those approaches which are concerned with the industrial relations system itself
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