Logic of Trade Union Representation

 Reading a case study from 4 country 

According to the writer:

This book goes further, to argue there are two distinct logics of association on labour’s side, and as the title suggests – two logics of trade union representation.

1. The one logic is that of workers coming together, acting to fight for their rights. 
2. The other logic is that of trade unions and employers’associations, sometimes together with high-ranking officials of the state, negotiating labour market conditions. 

In both logics, membership is essential for the status, functioning and efficacy of the trade union. This is the unifying feature of both logics, singling out trade unions from other forms of association with similar objectives. 

Hence, the pivotal reference for understanding that the two logics of labour’s collective action is centred on membership. However, membership and its derivative traits – democracy, accountability, power and legitimacy – work in different ways.

Read more: https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_741934.pdf

Identity of Organizational Conflict Framework:

Findings

The results of study showed that there is no significant difference between the causes of organizational conflict based on the gender. Also, there are significant differences among the causes of organizational conflict based on the variables of age, education and work experience.

Finally, we can conclude that conflict was an inevitable process in the organization and must manage, and each person may be involved with conflict in the workplace, according to conditions of gender, age, culture, occupation, etc. Therefore, according to the results of the study, managers recommended to decrease conflicts with emphasis on the main targets among the various levels based on incompatible goals.

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Alternative labour protection movements in the United States: Reshaping industrial relations?

 Trade Union 

The United States is one of the developed countries that have experienced the steepest declines of unionization and collective bargaining in recent decades. Its traditional industrial relations institutions, premised on the prevalence of “standard” employment relationships, have long been eroded by restrictive legislation and employer opposition. Meanwhile, precarious employment, sub‐standard conditions and marginalization have become widespread features of the labour market, leading to the spontaneous emergence of alternative, often community‐based initiatives to protect vulnerable workers using highly innovative strategies. “Worker centres”, in particular, have been very active to that end, often teaming up with formal trade unions to pursue their objectives.

Reference: Fine, J. 2015. “Alternative labour protection movements in the United States: Reshaping industrial relations?” in International Labour Review 154 (1): 15–26.

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Testing Collective Action Theory

 TRADE UNION 

The goal of this book is to attempt to extend, expand and test empirically the implications of the Collective Action Research Program. This set of rational theories began with Mancur Olson (Olson 1965). It broke with the prevailing theory of pluralism, which posited that groups would form around the interests of citizens. Yet, empirical research showed that, instead of knitting,bird-watching, and classic auto clubs, 90% of the organizations comprised only labor and management. Clearly, pluralism was wrong. Olson put his creative thinking toward the process of mobilization. In other words, how would one recruitmembers of an interest group to lobby Congress? Olson thought through the problem systematically: first, it would be necessary to have a public good, that is, some goal that could not diminish with use and would be available to everyone in a region. Economists call these nonrival or noncompetitive goods. Examples of such objectives are clean air, defense, clean water, lower taxes, or more tax subsidies. Given that this is the case, a second conclusion is necessary: no particular person would have to participate to receive the public good. Thus, he reasoned, most people would not participate.And indeed, 95% of people do not participate (Lichbach 1995). These non-participants are called free-riders. They gain the benefit of a new public policy, but do nothing toward its implementation. This conclusion created yet another problem: how would one be able to recruit members to lobby? Given that success would benefit everyone in a class, the incentive to participate would necessarily be larger for active members. Olson (Olson 1965) called these selective incentives, special payments in favors, goods or money to active members that were unavailable to free-riders. Suddenly the empirical world of labor and management groups and the absence of bird-watching groups made sense: pluralism was wrong, but collective action theory worked. And this theory differed from its predecessors in a fundamental way: it assumed that people think. Structural models force people to act by conditions, but Olson focused on individuals.

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Introduction: Causes, consequences and cures of union decline

 TRADE UNION

In 2000 the political leaders of the European Union declared that strong economic growth and advance towards a knowledge society, together with a high degree of social cohesion, would be the pre-eminent goals for the subsequent decade. 

A question never asked was what would happen, and what remedial action would be taken, should the conditions conducive to growth and the knowledge economy conflict with the political and institutional underpinnings of social cohesion. 

What if strong employment growth turned out to be founded on the destabilization of the standard employment contract, or if the advance towards a knowledge economy brought about a sharp rise in social inequality and polarization between skilled and unskilled workers and between those with and without stable jobs? 

Would trade unions be willing and able to counteract or attenuate such trends and bridge the differences between the new haves and have-nots? Or would they be marginalized, slowly but irreversibly, together with the stable employment relationships that characterized the mid-20th century?

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Effect of Strike/ Industrial Action on Organizational Conflict

Strikes are the  most  significant  aspect  of  industrial conflict.  Strike  is  defined  as  the  temporary stoppage  of  work  in  the  pursuance of  grievance or demand. In practice however, it  has been  difficult  to separate  strike  from  other  forms  of  expression  of industrial dispute as employer lock out workers and workers themselves embark on strike action. It is more useful to view both phenomena as part and  parcel  of the conflict  situation,  not  as  opposite. Rarely  does a  strike  occur  over  a  single  issue  for  an  obvious cause may be linked with several other issues that not immediately apparent  to the observation that have caused  dissatisfaction because  solutions to  them have been  long in  coming.  The  actual  occurrence  of  strike depends  on  several  factors  including  prevailing circumstances (Adetiba, 2012)

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The Value Of trade union

The value of trade unions in Wales

Trade unions are an essential part of the economic landscape in many parts of the world. While many countries in the Western world have seen a marked decline in trade union membership in recent decades, trade unions continue to play a vital role in managing industrial relations, as well as contributing to the broader development of the economy and society (Jonathan et al., 2019)

 Reference: Jonathan Webb, Suzanna Nesom, Craig Johnson and Helen Tilley. 2019. The value of trade unions in Wales. Wales Centre for Public Policy. 

Dimensi Kolektif

 Kepentingan tindakan kolektif dan keadaan ketenangan buruh di seluruh dunia memerlukan analisis yang baru. Menurut Kelly (2015 : 1), tema bagi keterlibatan berdasarkan tiga sumbangan utama dalam hubungan pekerjaan. Menurut Kelly (2015 : 1) lagi:

 “Hanya di bawah 50 tahun lalu, selepas gelombang mogok dunia 1968-74, konflik antara buruh-pengurusan menjadi topik penyelidikan utama di Britain dan di tempat lain. Sejak itu, konflik perindustrian telah menurun secara drastik dan juga telah mempengaruhi minat akademik. Walaupun Kegigihan yang begitu meluas tentang apa yang dijelaskan oleh Shalev (1992) yang digambarkan sebagai “labour quiescence”. 

Tindakan kolektif masih menjadi topik utama kajian yang mempunyai tiga sebab utama. Pertama, mogok mempunyai dua ramalan utama yang berkaitan dengan ekonomi dan politik, menganggu aliran pendapatan majikan dan hal “serangan politik”dikatakan akan mencabar dasar kerajaan. 

Kedua, tindakan mogok dan tindakan kolektif yang lain menyebabkan berlakunya pertembungan asas perhubungan yang akan menjalinkan hubungan yang tidak sihat.

Ketiga, corak tindakan kolektif dan pengurusan organisasi tidak memberi nilai dalam pergerakan buruh dan perjuangan kelas (Vandaele, 2010). 

Implikasi utama dari transformasi ini adalah menyumbang kepada keharmonian perindustrian yang menjadi keutamaan atau syarat penting Syarikat Langsung Asing (FDI) yang beroperasi di Malaysia. Namun, telah mempengaruhi pergerakan kesatuan sekerja sehingga menyebabkan “labour quiescence” yang bermula pada tahun 1980-an hingga 2000-an. Sepanjang tempoh itu, kesatuan sekerja terus berfungsi namun tanpa ‘hak untuk mogok’ dan menghadapi banyak halangan daripada pihak majikan terutamanya berkaitan kesatuan sekerja. Selain itu, amalan ‘union busting’ oleh pihak majikan terus berlaku dengan hanya sedikit kawalan daripada pihak agensi kerajaan. Semua amalan ini telah mencipta perdebatan mengenai bagaimana perjuangan pemimpin kesatuan sekerja dan berfungsi dalam konteks tersebut dan bagaimana mereka dapat berjuang. Berdasarkan hal ini, beberapa bentuk tindakan kolektif baru telah muncul yang disebabkan oleh perubahan pola struktur hubungan pekerjaan dan perkembangan revolusi 4.0. Kewujudan dan kepentingan komunikasi dan teknologi digital telah memberi kelebihan kepada kesatuan sekerja dalam melaksanakan fungsi kesatuan sekerja dalam mobilisasi. 

Menurut Hirsch (2015): “berbeza dengan kesatuan yang mempunyai kepakaran dalam melakukan tindakan kolektif- media sosial yang berbentuk digital memainkan peranan penting terhadap pekerja yang tidak berorganisasi. Hal ini disebabkan oleh, kebanyakan pekerja tidak mempunyai pengalaman terhadap kesatuan dan tidak mempunyai kepakaran dalam berkesatuan untuk dapat menghasut serta mengekalkan tindakan kolektif.

 Oleh itu, komunikasi elektronik dilihat dapat membantu merapatkan jurang tersebut. Kelebihan ini akan dikaji dalam kajian ini dengan menghubungkan perubahan struktur kerja dan jenis tindakan kolektif yang baharu di Sabah.

A Theory of Union Collective Action

 

SOROTAN KARYA

YONATAN RESHEF, (2004)

Memahami hubungan diantara sikap kepimpinan (Kerajaan) dan tindakan Kolektif kesatuan sekerja.

Kajian kes dilakukan terhadap tindakan kolektif Kesatuan Alberta dan Kesatuan Ontorio.

“Merujuk kepada asas penulisan artikel yang dilakukan adalah bertujuan untuk memahami hubungan diantara corak kepimpinan kerajaan yang menjadi pendorong kesatuan sekerja untuk bertindak secara kolektif dalam melibatkan tindakan kolektif bagi mengatasi tingkah laku majikan yang telah mengancam kepentingan mereka dalam organisasi dan keselamatan.

Penulis, menjelaskan 2 persoalan kajian yang menjadi dasar kepada kajian dalam memahami tindakan kolektif yang diambil oleh kesatuan dan menjelaskan dengan lebih terperinci menggunakan 3 teori. Berikut merupakan 2 persoalan yang kajian;

1) Apakah yang faktor yang memudahkan/ menghalang  tindakan kolektif kesatuan?

2) Apakah asas pembentukan proses tindakan kolektif?

Melalui persoalan ini terdapat 3 teori yang telah disesuaikan bagi tindakan kolektif yang dilakukan oleh Kesatuan Alberta dan Kesatuan Ontorioa;

1) A Preliminary Model

2) Model Modification

3) Model Development

Terdapat kenyatan yang telah menarik dalam artikel ini;

Collective Action is the effort of successfully mobilization”

 

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