Strike activity is the ultimate employee weapon – that is, withdrawal of labour. Strike activity is a strategy adopted by unions when, despite considerable discussion about various employee disputes, there is total failure to agree. Strikes might also be the strategy adopted when management refuse to engage in discussion or as a reaction to an unsatisfactory pay agreement. The workforce, in this instance, may refuse to work again until an improved offer is made. The strike is the ultimate bargaining tool for the union. Withdrawal of labour will have, at least in the long term, potentially profound implications for organizational functioning. Management is primarily concerned with profits, whereas unions are more concerned with terms and conditions. Usually, a working compromise is achieved without resorting to strike activity. Most companies have ‘dispute procedures’ designed to avoid the costs of industrial action. The threat of strike can be used as a negotiating tactic to convince the management of the strength of union feeling.
Strikes can be official and unofficial. An official strike is one pursued according to union rules (for example, ballot, called by a full-time trade union official). If a union member is instructed to strike, he or she is obliged to do so (or else risk being disciplined). The unofficial strike is one pursued outside of union rules and regulations – that is, wildcat. The British strike scene is predominently unofficial, often called in the heat of the moment to demonstrate strength of feeling on a particular issue. Unofficial action tends not to last very long, whereas official strikes can last for long periods of time, accounting for about 25 percent of days lost (Green, 1994). Hyman (1994) provide a more detailed analysis of strike activity characteristic of the British industrial relations scene up until the 1970s:
· the infrequent large-scale industry wide dispute;
· the frequent workplace stoppage, often functioning as a token demonstration at a company level;
· party-political bargaining activity – that is, plant-level, symbolic protest designed to pressurize management at ‘arms length’ and the economy-wide token action to influence government decision making.
By the 1970s, growing trade union consciousness amongst employees coupled with the attempts of employers to economize resulted in a diverse pattern of conflict: national token stoppages, protracted industry or service-level strikes, and localized disputes in the strategic services like public transport. Many strikes were unofficial, resulting from company-level disputes concerning the imposition of reorganized systems of work and employment in the light of company pressures to economize.
In the 1980s, another qualitative shift is said to have occurred in strike patterns. Company-level struggles against restructuring and large-scale redundancy reached a new height in the UK and abroad. Later on in the 1980s, this type of dispute became less frequent, perhaps due to systematic attempts by companies to contain disruptive conflict for mutual benefit. In the 1990s, the unions adopted an increasingly defensive role (for example, resistance to job loss, work intensification and declining pay).
While it is true that the majority of strikes are about pay and hours of work, it is often not this in itself that gives rise to strike. In organizations with poor industrial relations mechanisms, something relatively trivial can precipitate strike action. Conversely, in organizations with sophisticated industrial relations mechanisms, negotiation procedures may afford a solution to even the most major disputes without the need for strike activity in the longrun. Employees in organizations that do not acknowledge the existence of conflict (that is, those which operate with unitary or neo-unitary assumptions), and thus do not have systematic procedures for dealing with conflict are more prone to strike activity. The ideal scenario is where groups, despite divergent interests and objectives, can cooperatively co-exist.
Attempts by employers to secure industrial harmony and peace has prompted them to evolve various ‘strike-free’ deals (for example, employee participation, flexibility plus single-union recognition and a no-strike clause.
The Multi- vs. Single-employer Industrial Relations System
The multi-employer industrial relations system has tended to neutralize the workplace as a site for trade union organization and activity. However companies within this system are not precluded from determining pay and conditions in terms of their own local business requirements, and thus permit considerable ‘local’ flexibility. In Britain, multi-employer agreements are binding in honour only, whereas in other countries like Germany, the agreements are legally binding and impose a uniform set of instutionalized arrangements on companies. In Britain, patterns of industrial relations and employment practice are more contingent on management and trade union organization at sectoral and company levels.
However, with the move towards European integration, there is pressure for the development of EC-level directives or agreements, and thus new forms of European industrial relations regulation. The impact of the European Work Council on industrial relations is expected to be particularly profound in the UK, which is the host country for many transnational companies and for transnationals based elsewhere is the most important host economy. Most UK managers have had little experience of the concept of statutory employee participation at a non-trade union level. Employee participation (that is, forums for information dissemination and consultation) strategies are likely to remain distinct from those concerned with collective bargaining which are in turn more and more likely to be devolved to a local level. In the words of Marguson and Sisson:
companies will want to maintain this institutional separation, otherwise they increase the risk of giving trade unions a platform to become involved in the key strategic business issues of investment and deinvestment. (1994: 44)
This tendency is also likely to be maintained by the trade unions for fear of losing national authority and resources to European-level organizations.
Marginson and Sisson (1994) see the European work council as especially important for the development of a European system of industrial relations. The overall effect, they envisage, is likely to be a growing convergence in conditions of employment (though not necessarily in levels of pay) and what they call the ‘Europeanization’ of industrial relations.
Inter-group Conflict
Disputes can also be categorized as disputes of rights (pertaining to a claim under a current agreement) and disputes of interest (pertaining to a term or condition that is not currently covered in substantive agreements, a claim for something new). In the case of ‘right’, the actual application or interpretation of the right can be the source of dispute. In the case of ‘interest’, some may construe the interest as ‘right’, which can add further complication to an issue.
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