Parties to industrial
relation
THE PARTIES TO INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS
The parties to industrial relations are:
 The Government
 The trade unions;
 Shop stewards or employee
representatives;
 Management;
 Employer’s organizations;
The Government
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The government plays multiple roles in
shaping employee relations. These include
being a major employer in its own right that
sets standards of good employee relations
practice, and acting as a paymaster in both
the public sector and through private
contractor services of employment, as an
economic manager by influencing prices and
wages, as a rule maker and legislator of
employment rights and standards, and as a
peace maker by providing services such as
conciliation and arbitration.
Trade unions
 The
main purpose of trade unions is to
promote and protect the interests of their
members.
 Employers are almost always in a stronger
position to dictate the terms of the
contract than individual employees.
 Therefore, They redress the balance of
power between employers and
employees.
Trade Unions Cont.
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They provide workers with a ‘collective voice’ to make their
wishes known to management and thus bring actual and
desired conditions closer together.
This applies to terms of employment such as pay, working
hours and holidays, grievances, discipline and redundancy.
Trade unions let management know that there will be, from
time to time, an alternative view on key issues affecting
employees.
Unions also participating with management on decision
making on matters affecting their members’ interests.
Provide protection, support and advice to their members as
individual employees.
Provide legal, financial and other services to their members.
Employee Representatives
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Shop stewards or employee representatives responsible for
negotiations within the organizations.
A union steward, also known as a union representative or shop
steward, is an employee of an organization or company but is
also a labor union official who represents and defends the
interests of his or her fellow employees.
The duties of a shop steward include organising workers;
representing workers to management; negotiating workers’
issues (including women’s issues) with management; ensuring
implementation of agreements; building support for the union;
educating members about trade unionism and the workers’
movement; and communicating with the workers.
They involved in settling disputes and resolving collective
grievances and in representing individual employees with
grievances or over disciplinary matters.
They may be members of joint consultative committees, which
could be wholly or partly composed of trade union
representatives.
The value of shop stewards as points of contact and channels
of communication.
Management
The balance of power has shifted to managements who now
have more choice over how they conduct relationships with
their employees.
 If managers in large establishments and companies wanted to
make changes they looked at ways of doing so within the
existing arrangements.
 Because managers found that the unions did not stand in their
way they saw no reason for getting rid of them.
 They argued that management’s industrial relations objectives
are now generally to:
** control the work process;
** secure cost-effectiveness;
** reassert managerial authority;
** move towards a more unitary and individualistic approach.
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Employers
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Employers’ organizations bargaining collectively for their
members with trade unions.
In general, they aimed to protect the interests of those members
in their dealings with unions.
It was believed that multi-employers or industry-wide bargaining
allowed companies to compete in product markets without
undercutting their competitors’ employment costs and
prevented the trade unions ‘picking off’ individual employers in
a dispute.
The trend towards decentralizing bargaining reduced the extent
to which employers’ organizations fulfil this role
However, some industries such as building and electrical
contracting with large numbers of small companies in
competitive markets have retained their central bargaining
function.
End