Trends in Employment

Relations UNIT 19 CULTURAL ASPECTS OF

EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS
Objectives
After going through this unit, you should be able to understand:
● the various cultural aspects of employment relations;
● the recent developments in employment relations.; and
● the influence of power and authority in industrial relations.

Structure
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Technological Revolution
19.3 Specialisation and Centralisation
19.4 Globalisation
19.5 Recent Developments in Employment Relations
19.6 Equity and Fairness
19.7 Power and Authority
19.8 Individualism and Collectivism
19.9 Rights, Duties and Obligations
19.10 Integrity and Trust
19.11 Conflict Versus Cooperation
19.12 Summary
19.13 Self-Assessment Questions
19.14 Further Readings

19.1 INTRODUCTION
From the preceding chapters, we have seen that ‘industrial relations’ encompasses
several phenomena, both inside and outside the workplace, concerning the regulation
of employment relationship. This presupposes that ‘industrial relations’ does not occur
in a socio-technological vacuum, but a complex range and variety of social, political,
economic, technological, cultural and legal factors exercise a decisive impact on the
approaches of the parties, i.e., employers and workmen towards each other. These
factors are so closely interlaced that they, in turn, influence each other in several ways
making the situation even more complex and, sometimes, unpredictable. ‘Industrial
relations’ is culture-specific to the extent that the theory and concepts, important
though they are, cannot be readily transplanted from one cultural context to another.
Such attempts are likely to result in a total failure of the system, and may, in some
cases, even result in dysfunctional consequences. Culture can be broadly defined as a
system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours and material objects that the
members of a society use to cope with their world and with one another. This
definition includes not only patterns of behaviour but also patterns of thought, i.e.,
shared meanings that the members of a society attach to various phenomena, rites and
rituals. In short, culture includes almost any form of behaviour that is learned rather
16 than instinctive or inherited. For instance, we can broadly divide the global culture
into occidental and oriental on the basis of the above definition. The beliefs, Cultural Aspects of
perceptions and convictions of the people living in eastern hemisphere are quite Employment Relations
different from their western counterparts. These beliefs and perceptions in turn
influence their attitudes towards life, work, people, and affect their social behaviours
in several ways. Within each of these two broad classifications lie different cultures,
which may be specific to the national, social or even religious contexts. Each national
culture may be composed of several sub-cultures, which can be different inter se in
certain fine aspects. The fact that cultures differ from one another predicates that the
beliefs and values considered appropriate in one cultural setting may be considered
inappropriate in a different cultural context.

19.2 TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

In the industrial relations context, setting up large-scale manufacturing facilities
coupled with mechanization, i.e., the replacement of human and animal labour by
mechanical devices and enabling human beings to vastly increase the amount of
product derived from one unit of labour, can be considered as the single most
important development during the last quarter of 20th century. Labour is increasingly
devoted to the management and maintenance of machinery rather than to the products
themselves. The whole field of robotics is a case in point. Specialists in
programming and maintaining industrial robots are now key personnel in heavy, light
and service industries. The Information Technology revolution has witnessed the
replacement of the traditional ‘skill’ workers by ‘knowledge’ workers. Technological
advancement has transformed our idea of work. There has been an unprecedented
growth of service sector as compared to manufacturing sector all over the world.

19.3 SPECIALISATION AND CENTRALISATION

Some key components of the industrial era are as important for their cognitive as for
their technological effects. The view of the world as a machine underlies the concept
of the assembly line, a concept in which various tasks are broken down into simple
components. This division of labour permitted the employers to engage unskilled
labour with the worker becoming one more component in the productive process.
Workers often came to see little of themselves in their product. Their labour was used
impersonally and they responded in kind. Industrial employers began realizing that
this was not the most efficient way to organise production in a high-technology
society. For example, General Motors now operates facilities at which teams of
workers have responsibility for producing the entire car and not the parts that go into
the making of the car. Increasing amounts of knitwear are being manufactured in New
England homes, reviving the cottage industry that had almost died out by the end of
the nineteenth century.

19.4 GLOBALISATION
Globalisation has brought about a sea change in the cross-cultural interactions on a
scale unprecedented in the history. The increasing congruence of world’s cultures is a
direct product, in the first instance, of industrialization and, in the second,
globalisation of the late 20th century. Advanced transportation and communication
systems such as e-mail, along with international migration, have brought peoples once
isolated into contact with other societies. Above all, the economic forces of
international market system have broken down the geographical barriers. Products
are manufactured on one continent from the raw materials of another and sold on still
another. The decisions made by Iowa wheat farmers in the United States affect the 17
Trends in Employment price of bread in India; the cost of oil in the Persian Gulf helps determine the cost of
Relations corn in the United States. In essence, the world’s people are coming to live and
produce under increasingly similar economic conditions.
The concept of ‘employment relations’, in its wider sense, includes issues relating to
employment, non-employment, terms of employment and conditions of labour. Each of
these expressions is profound in its content and import. The concept of ‘employment’
has three ingredients, namely, the employer; the employee and the contract of
employment. ‘Employer’ is one who engages the services of others in the production
of goods and services. ‘Employee’ is one who lends his knowledge, skills and
expertise to the other in return for remuneration. The ‘contract of employment’
stipulates the terms and conditions on which the employer and employee agree to
conduct their working relationship. ‘Non-employment’ is not to be confused with
unemployment. It presupposes the existence of employment relationship between the
employer and employee in some form or the other and at some point of time.
Secondly, it also presupposes the denial of that relationship by one party, normally by
the employer as, for instance, his refusal to continue to employ the employee, or the
termination or dismissal of the employee from service. ‘Terms of employment’ refers
to the express and implied terms stipulated in the individual contract of employment or
in the standing orders or service rules. The concept of terms of employment extends to
those terms, which are superimposed by the law of the land. Examples of the terms of
employment are: the tenure of service (casual, temporary, probation, permanency), the
basic wages and allowances payable, the job title, grade and position, norms and
standards of performance, rules of discipline, rights and obligations of parties towards
each other, etc. ‘Conditions of labour’ is a general expression with a wider
connotation, but has come to be used in a restricted sense to mean physical conditions
of work such as health, welfare, safety, leave, holidays, overtime wages for extra
hours of work, etc.

19.5 RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN EMPLOYMENT

RELATIONS
As discussed earlier, the traditional IR is passing through a critical phase. Several
factors are responsible for this, significant among them being the free market economy
in the wake of globalisation, which has been exerting tremendous pressure on business
organisations in terms of survival in a competitive environment. Employees and trade
unions have come to realize that their own survival in an organizational context is
closely intertwined with that of the organisation. This has resulted in a major
departure in terms of union attitudes and approaches towards production, productivity,
quality, customer-orientation, etc. Downsizing and de-layering of organisations with a
view to cut costs and stay competitive added a new dimension to the industrial
relations management all over the world. Today’s unions and employees are less
militant and less non-cooperative than their counterparts of 1960’s and 1970’s. There
has been a marked tilt towards bipartism in the recent past in preference over third-
party intervention in the settlement of industrial disputes. Bipartism refers to the
initiatives taken by the employer and the union to resolve disputes mutually across the
table in a spirit of give and take. Tripartism or third-party intervention refers to either
settlement of disputes with the help of a mediator (conciliation) or through the medium
of a judicial or quasi-judicial authority (adjudication). The advent of Human
Resource Management with its focus on soft skills, individualism, non-unionism and
performance management is yet another factor which has been impacting industrial
relations in its traditional sense.

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Activity A Cultural Aspects of
Employment Relations
Briefly explain the recent developments in employment relations in your organisation
or any organisation you are familiar with.
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19.6 EQUITY AND FAIRNESS

Although the concept of ‘fairness’ or ‘equity’ is implicit in the conduct of industrial
relations, it is explicitly most frequently associated with considerations of salary
differentials and termination of the contract of employment. In an environment in
which collective bargaining agreements are to be replaced by individual, one-to-one
bargaining between the employer and the employees, particularly, in matters of wage
and salary determination, the whole process may result in a heterogeneous
employment relationship coupled with wide disparities among employees of the same
skill level, grade and position. This may eventually affect employee motivation,
productivity, and quite often hike the turnover rates due to inequity - perceived or real.
Inequity is said to exist in a setting if equals are treated unequally or vice versa.
Inequity, whether real or perceived, plays an important part in the nature and quality
of employment relationship. ‘Equity’ can be viewed from three different perspectives.
‘Individual equity’ is the perception of individual employee about the fairness of the
employer in compensating him commensurate with his skills and contribution, i.e.,
whether he is being under-paid by the employer relative to the output given by him.
‘Internal equity’ is the perception of the employee about the fairness of the employer
in compensating him relative to other employees who are similarly placed in terms of
knowledge, experience, skill, performance, etc., i.e., whether he is being treated on par
with his peers in matters of rewards and compensation. ‘External equity’ is the
perception of employees as to the fairness of their employer in compensating them
relative to what is being paid for similar level of knowledge, skills, etc., by other
organisations in the region, i.e., whether they are being paid less than the ‘going rate’.
In the traditional culture, where wage revision is determined by collective bargaining,
problems of inequity do not, as a general rule, exist as the demands made by the union
and negotiated and settled between the parties take into account the region-cum-
industry practices, productivity considerations, and the skill-based or grade-based
wage differentials, and therefore, there is less dissatisfaction among employees on this
count. But in the new scheme of things with its focus on individual bargaining,
inequity can exercise a major impact on the nature and quality of employment
relations.
Reverting to discharge and dismissal, the Indian law provides sufficient safeguards
against unfair discharge or dismissal. Section 2-A of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947
permits an individual workman to raise an industrial dispute in the event of his
discharge, dismissal, retrenchment or termination otherwise whether or not the said
dispute is espoused by a group of workmen. Section 11A confers appellate powers on
the labour courts and tribunals to set aside an order of discharge or dismissal and to
order reinstatement or to impose any other punishment short of dismissal or to give
such other relief as they deem fit and proper. Thus, at least in the Indian context, the
legal framework has adequately insured workers against managerial unfairness in
respect of discharge and dismissal. 19
Trends in Employment That takes us to the issue of retrenchment of surplus labour. While industrial
Relations establishments employing less than 100 workmen can retrench workmen without the
prior permission from the appropriate government, establishments employing 100 or
more workmen have to make out a case and seek the prior permission of the
government before retrenching any workman in terms of Section 25-N of the ID Act.
This rigid legal position has prompted industrial establishments in the medium and
large-scale sector to resort to Voluntary Retirement Schemes (VRS) to reduce surplus
manpower. The VR Schemes provide for attractive compensation worked out on the
basis of both the service rendered and the remainder of service. In almost every
industrial organisation, VRS has become the accepted norm of downsizing manpower.
These downsizing exercises have their own after-effects on the residual workforce
with reference to job security, motivation, belongingness and commitment. This is a
major IR issue, which is confronting the organisations.

19.7 POWER AND AUTHORITY

The concept of ‘power’ and ‘authority’ have a significant influence in industrial
relations. The employment relationship is inherently a ‘power/authority’ relationship.
The expressions ‘power’ and ‘authority’, though used interchangeably, are different.
power is a wider concept and can be defined as the ability to influence others, whereas
authority means the formal power possessed by, or delegated to, a person by virtue of
the office he holds in an organisational setting. Authority thus implies the right to
decide what should be done and includes the right to do it or to get it done by others.
In a typical industrial organisation, managerial personnel exercise formal authority in
relation to their employees. Extrapolating this to a trade union, the office-bearers
exercise certain formal authority vis-à-vis the members, as stipulated in the by-laws
and rules of the union. In addition, individual leaders exercise power over the
employee-members in the sense they are capable of influencing the behaviour of the
latter. In the industrial relations context, power is primarily exercised over people in
the service of collective interests. French and Raven identified five major inter-related
sources of power within the organizational relationship:
● Reward Power: This source of power depends on the person’s having the ability
and resources to reward others.
● Coercive Power: The source of power depends on fear. The person with
coercive power has the ability to inflict some punitive measure on another
person.
● Legitimate Power: This power stems from the formal position held in an
organisation, which confers authority on him to reward and punish others.
● Referent Power: This type of power comes from the desire on the part of the
other persons to identify with the person wielding power. The others grant the
person power because he or she is attractive and has desirable resources or
personal characteristics.
● Expert Power: This power is based on the extent to which others attribute
knowledge and expertise on the power seeker, and consider him to be superior to
others.
At the organisational level, ‘authority’ is reflected in the notion of ‘managerial
prerogatives’, which, in the traditional sense, mean that the management has an
inherent right to direct production and to command the workforce; that, in the context
of employment relations, it has the exclusive authority to recruit, compensate,
promote, transfer and terminate the service of any employee at its sole discretion and
as dictated by the operational exigencies. Many of these prerogatives enjoyed by
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employers up to the first quarter of 20th century suffered erosion due to State Cultural Aspects of
regulation of employment relationship and trade unionism. The whole of the second Employment Relations
half of 20th century witnessed the long-drawn battle between employers and trade
unions, with the former seeking to preserve their managerial prerogatives intact and
the latter making inroads into them through their collective power. Indeed, the trade
unions succeeded to a large extent in making a dent into the prerogatives by obtaining
substantial concessions, which were inconceivable some 100 years ago. In their
efforts to achieve this objective, trade unions have, in many instances and national
contexts, assumed militant stance against employers.
With the onset of free-market economy and globalised competition, employment
relationship is taking a somersault to the position of status quo ante in so far as trade
unions are fast losing the power and authority that they gained after decades of
struggle. The managerial prerogatives, most of which vanished into thin air under the
renewed assault from trade unions, are being restored. In the current context, the
managerial focus is increasingly on flexibility (of work, time, tenure and pay),
outsourcing, performance-based rewards, and teamwork. Of these, flexibility is
critical because of its enlarged scope. Flexibility can be defined as the ability to
change the methods and processes at short notice with least friction or dislocation.
Flexibility of work refers to the right of employer to transfer employees from one job
to another, which presupposes that the employees possess multiple-skills in striking
contrast to the traditional narrow, single-skill specialization. Flexibility of time (or
flexi-time) refers to the right of employer to break the work period into smaller chunks
(with intermittent breaks), during which he can direct the employees to work instead
of the traditional 8-hour long shift. This system is particularly in vogue in IT industry
and certain other service sector industries. Flexibility of tenure refers to the fixed-
term or close-ended contracts of employment, which stipulate a date on which the
contract comes to an end. This is in sharp contrast to the traditional open-ended
contracts, which have been in force for well over 5-6 decades and, which imply that
the contract is deemed to last till the time the employee attains his age of
superannuation. Flexibility of pay refers to the right of employer to pursue a policy of
differential pay even in respect of employees who are similarly placed. It further
recognizes the right to link pay/increments to merit/performance unlike the traditional
job-based and/or seniority based pay. These concepts have a decisive impact on the
employment relationship in the years to come.
Activity B
Briefly explain the role of power and authority in employment relations, citing
instances from the organisation you are working in or any organisation you are
familiar with.
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19.8 INDIVIDUALISM AND COLLECTIVISM

‘Individualism’ refers to the philosophy that the employer has an inherent right to deal
with each employee in his individual capacity and on a one-to-one basis in matters
concerning the tenure of service, pay and allowances, performance-based rewards and
other conditions of service. This is in sharp contrast to ‘collectivism’, which refers to
21
Trends in Employment the right of employees to organise and bargain collectively with the employer on
Relations matters concerning their conditions of service. The concept of ‘collectivism’
predicates that, where the employees have formed a trade union, the employer has an
obligation to negotiate with the union on matters relating to the workers as a class,
and he is further prohibited from bargaining with individual workers. Any such
individual bargaining in an unionized context is considered as an unfair labour
practice. While the former approach excludes trade union, the latter not only includes,
but also confers a right on the trade union to represent the workers and bargain with
the employer on their behalf. Thus, ‘individualism’ and ‘collectivism’ represent two
extremes and the one is the antithesis of the other, and refer to three different aspects
of industrial relations.
● Management is free to deal with its employees as it sees best without any
intermediary constraint or filter of a trade union, or trade unions, as the
collective representative of employees, regulate the work situation on an equal
and joint footing with management;
● Employees are treated differentially, with individuals doing the same work
receiving different pay dependent on their individual attributes, abilities or
performance (individual contract), or employees receiving the same terms and
conditions of employment (common collective contract), irrespective of their
individual attributes, abilities or performance;
● The individual perceives his or her economic or social well-being to be a matter
for his or her own efforts independent of any peer group (the concept of
egotism), or the individual perceives a bond with fellow employees and believe
that individual needs can only be met via collective action (the concept of
fraternalism).
The challenge posed by Human Resource Management to the traditional employment
relations is being felt on an increasing scale in a few advanced economies like: USA
and, to some extent, in UK. Individualism in the management of employee relations
are likely to result in the abuse of power, exploitation and arbitrariness which may
eventually produce its own antithesis in the form of the workers organizing themselves
against management. Further, the Indian Constitution guarantees the fundamental
right to freedom of association, and the Trade Unions Act, 1926 provides for the
formation and registration of unions and also grants immunities to the trade unions
from civil and criminal actions in respect of certain actions taken by the unions in
pursuance of the legitimate causes and demands of their member-workers. Chapter
V-C of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947 (Unfair Labour Practices) read with Schedule-V
thereto makes it punishable with imprisonment or fine, if the employer interferes with,
restrain from, or coerce workmen in the exercise of their right to organise, form, join a
trade union. It follows that any overt act on the part of the employers against the
suppression of unionization by using threats of termination, etc., will attract the penal
provisions. Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence all over the world towards
individualism in so far as employers prefer a one-to-one, direct bargaining with
individual employees over the representative, collective bargaining.

19.9 RIGHTS, DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS

A ‘right’ is something, which a man can stand on, something that can be demanded or
insisted upon with embarrassment or shame. It is something that he is legally entitled
to from certain other person or persons or the world at large. Right is the correlative
of duty in so far as, a right, in its strict sense, has a corresponding duty. In other
words, the existence of a right in one person means that some other person is under a
corresponding duty. Typically, industrial law confers a host of rights on the
22
employees/workmen and imposes corresponding duties on the employer. In addition, Cultural Aspects of
the collective agreements arrived at by managements and unions also grant certain Employment Relations
rights and impose duties mutually on the parties in matters concerning performance,
rewards, conditions of service, etc. The concept of ‘rights’ is closely linked to the
concept of ‘power’ discussed in the preceding paragraphs, in so far as ‘power’ is a
species of the genus ‘rights’. For instance, the right to job security as provided for in
the IR legislation has undergone significant change during the recent past. The fact
that the termination of service on the expiry of the time stipulated in a fixed-term
contract in terms of sub-clause (b) is excluded from the definition of ‘retrenchment’ in
s. 2(oo) of the ID Act, 1947 signals the point of departure from the standpoint of ‘job
security’, a concern that was the backbone of industrial law for a long time. This legal
position coupled with globalisation and the corporate concern for cutting costs and
staying competitive in market has led to the proliferation of close-ended or fixed-term
contracts valid for a few months or a couple of years in striking contrast to the
traditional, open-ended contracts of employment. The process of contractualisation of
industrial employment has begun modestly during the mid-1990s and is fast becoming
the accepted norm of employer-employee relations in the changing dispensation. This
approach has its own side effects touching employee morale, commitment,
belongingness and loyalty, which are the four pillars on which productivity, quality
and customer-service rest. One of the pre-requisites for commitment and loyalty is the
perception of the employee that his job security is assured, and, secondly, his
determination to stay and look for a long-term career within the organisation spanning
a few decades. Once these two ingredients are removed and replaced by casualised
and contractualised employment, there is no reason why the employees should not
view the organisation as a stopgap arrangement and as a transit house. A few
pertinent questions that are being raised in this regard are: “why should the employees
be committed to the organisation, when they know that their stay in the organisation is
limited to a few months or years?”; “what kind of loyalty (in the traditional sense in
which the term is understood) does the employer expect his employees to display
towards the organisation, and to what ultimate effect?”

19.10 INTEGRITY AND TRUST

The conduct of personal relations which form the background of industrial relations is
concerned to a large extent with the values of integrity and mutual trust – whether it is
between the employee and his supervisor, or between the union and the management.
Integrity can be defined in terms of the individual acting in accordance with his
personal values and beliefs (ethics) rather than in terms of the individual acting
according to some ‘universally accepted’ code of conduct. Where the organisations
have moved from the narrow, protected ‘national’ economies to an unprotected
‘global’ economy with pressures of competition and threat to survival looming large,
the traditional values are likely to suffer erosion in some degree or the other. The
corporate war that is going on between two international giants in soft drinks is a case
in point. The industrial realm in the world over is presenting a highly complex and
fuzzy picture characterized by takeovers, mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, on the
one hand, and price wars geared to wean away customers from the competitors.
Industries operating in the manufacture of cars and white goods, and those in the
business of mobile phone connections, bear ample testimony to this fact. The civil
aviation industry is the latest to join the price war. Going by the saying, “all is fair in
love and war”, a problem may often arise for the individual employee where his
personal beliefs and values come into direct conflict with the organizational demands
placed on him. In such a situation, the incumbent is left with no alternative than to
compromise and subsume his beliefs and values in those of the organisation or refuse
23
Trends in Employment to meet the organisational demands and quit the organisation. This is a difficult choice
Relations to make for individuals for, if personal integrity is compromised, the trust and respect
of others which he has all along been enjoying is lost; if not, he may have to look for
alternative employment elsewhere, but strangely with no guarantee that similar
demands would not be made on him by the new employer.
Inter-personal trust exists where the individuals have confidence in, and able to rely
upon, one another, and not to seek actively or even passively to harm each other.
According to Salamon, ‘trust’, in industrial relations, does not require that the
individuals will be completely ‘open and frank’ with each other because within their
relationship each recognizes that the other may be seeking maximum gain in a
situation where there are competing interests and objectives. Rather, the establishment
of trust requires the individual not to seek to subvert the other’s position or
relationship with third parties; to keep his or her word and agreements; to keep ‘off the
record’ information between them confidential; and, above all, to accept the legitimacy
of the other’s role and objectives. It is equally difficult to establish trust, but easy to
lose it. Moreover, trust is not automatically transferable to new role incumbents,
because it is based on interpersonal relationships between individuals.

19.11 CONFLICT VERSUS CO-OPERATION

In an organization with a business orientation, where individuals and groups are
engaged in the production of goods or rendering services, it is natural that the interests
of the organisation on the one hand and that of individuals and groups on the other
frequently come into conflict. As a general rule, the focus of employers is on cutting
costs and increasing productivity whereas employees focus on increased wages and
benefits and less work. This leads to mutually inconsistent positions and clash
between the parties. Conflict of interests is inherent and is inevitable in employer-
employee relations. Equally inevitable is the satisfactory resolution of conflict to the
mutual advantage of both the parties on a give-and-take basis. That is what collective
bargaining and other mechanisms of conflict resolution are all about. Included in the
bargaining process are wages, allowances, benefits, leave, holidays, productivity-
linked incentives, conditions of service, etc. Similarly, the employer may also prefer
counter-demands on the union/employees on matters concerning improvement in
productivity, quality, technology up-gradation, change in work-processes, reduction in
absenteeism and wastage, etc. Once an agreement is reached between the parties, the
agreed conclusions are reduced to writing in the form a settlement under provisions of
the Industrial Disputes Act, which is binding on the parties.
Where the parties fail to arrive at a settlement at the bi-partite level and the dispute is
alive, the next step in the Indian context is adjudication by a labour court or industrial
tribunal. Resorting to direct action in the form of strike or lockout is an option
available to the parties, if they are in a non-public utility service. However, in a
public utility service, it is quite difficult to resort to strike or lockout, as the provisions
of the Industrial Disputes Act are stringent to such an extent that a legal strike or a
legal lockout is almost impossible. As a general rule, neither party can resort to direct
action during the pendency of a conciliation or adjudication proceeding or during the
pendency of a settlement in respect of any matter covered thereunder. The industrial
relations history discloses the fact that, in the process of settling industrial disputes,
the weapons of strike and lockout have been generously used by employers and
employees/unions not only in India, but also in advanced economies like USA, UK,
and Japan. This predicates that industrial strife and direct action need not necessarily
be viewed as a menace, but could as well be looked at as viable means to resolve
dispute, when all other avenues are exhausted.
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The difference between a collective bargaining situation in the IR context and a Cultural Aspects of
market-place bargaining for commodities, etc., is that in the latter, if no bargaining is Employment Relations
struck between the vendor and vendee, the vendee leaves the place and moves to
another vendor in the hope of extracting a competitive price. In striking contrast, no
such option is available to the employer or the employees in a collective bargaining
situation and they have to continue to work together even after the failure of the
negotiation process. This one cardinal distinction places collective bargaining in a
unique position coupled with a note of caution to both the parties that,
notwithstanding the initial rejection of demands or refusal to accept the offer made by
the other side, the parties have to invariably arrive at an amicable settlement sooner or
later in a spirit of give and take. In this sense, they are inter-dependent, and not
independent of each other.
The kind of militancy, strikes, lockouts, and violence that rocked several industrial
belts such as Bombay-Thane-Belapur, Bangalore-Whitefield-Hosur, Hyderabad-
Sanatnagar-Patancheru and the whole of West Bengal, during the 1970’s and 1980’s,
is now a thing of past. Workers have come to realize that, what they have to fight is
the common enemy – the competitor – and not their employers and that their own
survival is inextricably intertwined with that of the organisation which employs them.
By the same token, they no longer view ‘productivity’ and ‘quality’ as bad words that
they used to be a few decades ago. Today’s unions and workers are more receptive to
proposals presented by managements geared to: (a) up-grading the technology and
rationalization even if it meant re-deployment and reduction of manpower, (b) quality
improvement and wastage reduction, (c) customer care and customer –orientation, etc.
This does not mean that conflict is completely stamped out from the industrial
relations realm. It only signals a change in the mindset, beliefs and values of people in
general towards their work, organisation, market dynamics and customer-satisfaction.
All the same, it is a welcome change and will go a long way in transforming the
erstwhile conflict-ridden industrial relations into one of conflictual co-operation with
greater tilt towards co-operation.

19.12 SUMMARY
Summing up, the management of industrial relations at the industry or enterprise level
in the fast changing business environment will present an odd picture in which the
conflict between the traditional beliefs and values which have evolved over a period of
50-60 years and internalized into the mindsets of employees and trade unions will be
pitted against the new imperatives driven by product-market considerations. That the
trade unions and unionism are on the defensive with their numbers depleting
continuously is not in dispute. It is also not in dispute that the Governments in many
countries, which have all along been playing a protective role with a clear tilt in
favour of working class, are gradually distancing themselves from trade unions under
pressure from a globalised economy. While the trade unions are by and large subdued
in their approaches and attitudes, the employers have become militant particularly in
USA extracting, from the unions (wherever they are present) and employees (where
there is no trade union presence), concessions that were unthinkable during the 1960’s
and 1970’s. Examples can be found in ‘shorter’ workweeks with reduced pay, lay-
offs, downsizing, delayering, outsourcing, etc. Some of these concepts have made their
way into the Indian industrial relations realm. The Business Process Outsourcing
(BPO) to India and China on the sole consideration of cutting labour costs have given
rise to major politico-economic controversies in USA and UK. The sum-total of the
resultant situation is anything but clear, and it remains to be seen on white lines
‘industrial relations’ is going to evolve in the years to come.

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Trends in Employment
Relations 19.13 SELF-ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS
1) Explain various cultural aspects of employment relations. Discuss the recent
developments in employment relations.
2) Explain the impact of specialisation, centralisation and globalisation on new
employment relaltions.
3) How power and authority would play a role in industrial relations? Explain.

19.14 FURTHER READINGS

Bates, D.G. & Fratkin, E.M. (2003), Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed., Pearson
Education.
Hyman, R. & Brough, I (1975), Social Values and Industrial Relations, Blackwell.
Fox, A (1974), Beyond Contract: work, power and trust relations, Faber.
Salamon, M (2000), Industrial Relations: Theory and Practice, IV ed., Prentice Hall.

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