Week 8 - Trade Unions and Employee Representation

Question 1

Name some participative practices for developing trust and employee voice

Answer 1

• communication (no EV)
• Information sharing (no EV, but increasing trust)
• Consultation no implementation (involved employees)
• Prior consultation (greater employee understanding)
• Joint decision making

Question 2

What is employee voice?

Answer 2

• From an employee perspective it describes how employees raise concerns, express and advance their interests, opinions and ideas, solve problems and contribute to and participate in workplace decision making
• From an org. perspective it is a form of governance for employment contracts that exists where institutions or processes are present to generate two way communication between managers and employees that can be either direct or indirect.

Question 3

What is direct employee voice?

Answer 3

It refers to direct communication between individuals and / or small groups of employees and their immediate managers. The emphasis is on enhancement of productivity and employee commitment as a consequence of these interactions

• It is consistent with the guitarist perspective on ER and therefore with strategic and sophisticated HRM approaches
• It claims to be superior to indirect voce through trade unions.

Question 4

What is indirect employee voice?

Answer 4

Refers to communication and interaction between management and an employee intermediary, union rep or other rep and typically orientated towards the enhancement of employee participation in managerial decision making

Question 5

What are the benefits of employee voice?

Answer 5

• Often a key element of a high performing work system and of high involvement and high commitment management approaches. The benefits are:
• increased org. performance and a more favourable workplace relations climate
• employee satisfaction, commitment and organisational citizenship behaviours through harnessing discretionary effort
• positive superior-subordinate relationships through more effective due process, process control, decision control

Question 6

Benefits of union collective voice

Answer 6

• Trade unions in most countries are independent representatives of employee interests and democratically accountable to their members rather than being ‘inside’ the organisation
• they have at their disposal collective power
• a channel for employees to suggest improvement in working practices and therefore potentially enhance productivity and organisational heath.

Question 7

What are some employee voice considerations with respect to trust

Answer 7

• regular face to face meetings b/w senior mgt and staff are most strongly associated with trust in mgt, followed by semi-autonomous workgroups or teams
• management hostility to trade unions reduced employee trust in management, even if employees were not union members

Question 8

Trade union definition

Answer 8

• a continuous association or wage / salary earners
• membership open to equals i.e. same trade, profession, occupation giving rise to different types of unions
• democratic in ideology but not necessarily in practice because it must counter the employer ideology
• an organisation of predominantly employees who principle activity includes negotiation of rates of at and conditions for its members

Question 9

What are some reasons for joining a trade union

Answer 9

• instrumental being that the individual does a cost/benefit of joining
• ideological
• normative / feeling of obligation
• peer group pressure, closed shop, nature of the industry, geographical location

Question 10

What are the purposes and objectives of trade unions?

Answer 10

central purpose is to permit workers to exert collectively the control over their conditions of employment which they cannot hope to possess as individuals and to do so largely by compelling the employer to take account in policy and decision making of interest and priorities contrary to his/her own

Question 11

What is the role of the ACTU?

Answer 11

• umbrella association for the trade union movement and develops overall strategy
• federal policies for unions
• raising community awareness of legislative changes including impact on employee rights
• representing workers at the ILO
• training and education

Question 12

What shapes union policy and strategy?

Answer 12

• technical and social characteristics of the workplace
• market constraints
• legal systems (workchoices versus fair work act)
• power of actors in the wider society including attitudes of media
• system of property ownership
• structure and model of the union
• strategic position of the union in the economy

Question 13

Reasons for trade union decline

Answer 13

• In 1951, 60% of Australian workers were members of a trade union. Now it is about 18%.
  1. Changing nature of work (part time casual work, service industries, company cultures, demographic changes and gen Y having a more individualist rather than collectivist orientation)
  2. Increase in diversity of people in paid employment (women, younger workers, perceptions of unions being sexist or having a masculine culture, migration and culture in country of origin)
  3. External factors, level of unemployment, state of the economy, media portrayal of unions, professionalisation of HR
  4. Unions slow to adjust to external environment and member demands
  5. Political and legal protections that unions have had for much of their history, meaning that unions have not focused on organising, close relationship between ALP and unions
• decline not equal in all industries