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时间：2024-03-19
MGMT 5701 Global
Employment Relations
Lecture 1
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 1
Course introduction: course organisation and assessment.
• Course brings together practice, policy and theory in an area crucial to both international
management/business and HRM
• I welcome class participation in lectures, but not electronic messaging to me during lectures.
• There is so much to read, discuss and learn about this topic, we need to make choices
• My choice for lectures: some broad-brush cross-national comparisons on core concepts (weeks 1-2, 10), plus
• In-country focus on a few ‘types’ of countries/employment relations (ER) systems: Europe, North America,
Australia and East Asia (weeks 3-9).
• You will need to submit your Learning Journal summaries for each week before your tutorial. E.g. Learning
Journal summary for reading in Week 3 before Week 3 tutorial.
• NB Tutorial Presentations and general discussion topics follow one week after we discuss them in lectures. E.g.
Week 4 Tutorial Presentation questions relate to Week 3 lecture, reading and Learning Journal summaries. (see
Weekly Activity Guide for details.)
• Course assessment is designed to encourage you to:
• read, understand, summarise and communicate in writing (Learning Journal summaries)
• read, understand, summarise and communicate in oral presentations (Tutorial Presentations)
• practise research skills, critical, contextual and comparative thinking and report writing (Research Briefing)
• practise higher-order critical thinking, skills in synthesis and comparative analysis (Take-home Exam)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 2
Employment Relations and ER systems. Road map for lecture: some core concepts
a. the world of work
b. the employment relationship;
c. employment relations (ER) and ER systems
d. The main actors in ER systems (with more discussion next week:
a. employers
b. employees
c. (trade or labour) unions
d. employer associations, and
e. the state
e. Avenues of regulation and democracy: collective bargaining, works councils
f. State regulation of individual and collective rights
g. Models of ER systems: unitarism; pluralism; corporatism/tripartism; statism, radicalism (moved back to
Week 2)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 3
The world of work – a little bit of history: some things change, others don’t and yet others return
The world of work in pre-modern societies e.g., hunter-gatherer or fisher-gatherer; subsistence
agriculture. Most ‘production’ occurs within a family group, tribe or small clan or village.
• the world of work in those very small societies is marked by production:
for self-sufficiency and survival: food, clothing, shelter, medicines
work and personal meaning, engagement with own skills and knowledge and the natural world
work and group culture, engagement with human and rest of the natural world: production of religious artifacts
contributing to advancing family, tribal, clan fortunes
very little and rare payment for the work itself; only for products, perhaps in exchange for other
products (by barter).
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 4
Modernization processes:
settled populations, rising populations, urbanisation,
more specialized agricultural and then industrial development
‘outsourcing’ of some work beyond family groups
payment in non-money terms; payment might be ‘in kind’ (at least partly): some of the product, provision
of housing and food and clothing mixed with ability to sell surplus output
emergence and spread of payment for work done, not just the product.
with development of money-based exchange societies , increasing use of money to represent the perceived
value of the work , as well as value of a product.
The world of work increasingly dominated by larger and more sophisticated labour markets, based on
supply and demand, price and output/work provided.
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 5
Labour markets and employment relationships
• Modern societies are increasingly marked by economies dominated by labour markets and employment
relationships: the relationship between:
• employer (provides work and payment) and employee (provides working time/output)
• These developments reflected the gradual development of:
• large-scale commercial agriculture and factory systems
• development of large, stable public and private sector employers with (mostly) permanent workforces
• much more recently, development of vast and growing private services sectors, multinational enterprises
(MNEs) and global supply chains
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 6
Characteristics of employment relationships
NB processes of development are neither smooth or uniform when viewed cross-nationally
Legal/contractual (including informal understandings) specifying parties, length and nature of contract
For both employer and employee, the practice of employment relations starts with a contract of employment (written or verbal
– and then inferred).
This establishes an individual employment relationship between them.
Contract as statement of agreed expectations regarding economic exchange: workdays, hours of work, place of work, allocation of
tasks and responsibilities, pay and any employee benefits (paid annual leave, sick leave, carer’s leave, festival leave, pensions)
Economic exchange: payment in exchange for production/time worked
o Question (for later?): Are labour markets the same as other sorts of markets? Eg a market for cabbages? If so, why? If not, why not?
o What might be the implications of either answer?
Psychological contract:
What is tacitly considered fair for each side of the employment relationship to give and get. Why is this important? What builds it,
what undermines it? Normally strongest (deepest, widest for employee on being hired or promoted). Can shrink with time and
experience.
Cultural understanding – what does employment and employment relations mean in different societies and at different times?
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 7
An example from a study of the history or ER in China
Chen, Su and Zeng (2016)
‘Path Dependence and the Evolution of HRM in China’, International Journal of Human Resource Management.
• Figure 2 Resemblance between social and workplace networking structures in pre-industrial China
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 8
Figure 3 Concentric circle-shaped employment regulation system in pre-
industrial China
(Chen, Su and Zheng, 2016)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 9
Employment and management
Organising employment and work is a central task of ‘management’, an organisational function and process directing
the organisation for the employer.
‘Management’ are also the people carrying out those tasks or in those roles on the employers’ behalf.
Their organisationally-legitimated power through their formally-delegated positions provides them with substantial
influence for achieving the managerial purpose of getting work done through other people on behalf of the employer .
Larger and more complex organisations usually require more managers and managerial levels as well as more managerial
employment relations specialists due to the added ER complexities.
Furthermore, every new employee hired encounters an existing ER context for their employment relationship.
All this occurs within a broader environment of labour, product and financial markets and institutions, including those of
the state.
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 10
Employment relations (ER) – and ER systems
ER captures the various aspects of individual employment relationships:
o legal
o economic
o social/welfare
o psychological
o cultural
ER systems bring together the interacting individual and collective dimensions of employment and work, and the formal
and informal forces shaping them, from the workplace and outside.
Wilkinson, Dundon, Donaghey and Colvin (2018: 3) provide a very industrial relations (IR)-flavoured definition
employment relations comprises:
o ‘the regulation and governance of rules, rule-making processes, institutions, attendant behaviours of actors, and relevant outcomes
such as co-operation, equity, performance and conflict in employment .’
However, ER includes the overlapping fields of industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM). Storey
(2016: 195), defines HRM broadly as: ‘theories and practices relating to the way people are managed at work’.
Yet, the world of ER is greater than the sum of its IR and HRM parts. This is because interactions among distinctively IR
and HRM elements dynamically re-shape experiences within organisations, particularly where there is a patchwork of
regulation by employers’ own rules, law, collective bargaining and union activity. See e.g. Kim and Chung, (2016)
Explaining organizational responsiveness to emerging regulatory pressure: the case of illegal overtime in China. IJHRM
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 11
Examining employment systems in international comparison
Institutions of representation, voice and regulation: Trade unions and employer associations
Trade Unions (unions): definition and brief historical explanation
a. Combinations (or collectivities) of workers formed to pursue shared, collective interests
b. Mostly these workers are employees but they could also be self-employed or contractors and their
employees
c. Unions may be formal or informal organisations, although historically they mostly start as informal
organisations and, at a certain point, achieve or choose a formal status
d. Originally, in most countries, unions begin in single workplaces to deal with one or more specific
problem or grievance (dangerous working conditions, wage cuts – or demands for wage rises, working
hours, managerial bullying etc)
e. Over time, workplace-based unions join others with whom they share some common interest or
characteristics – in the local labour market, in the same trade or occupation (or both: local and craft)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 12
What is/has been the purpose of unions?
• Main union concerns (include):
• Workplace health and safety
• Hours of work – including regulating meal breaks, overtime, which days worked,
• Wages – against wage cuts; pushing for wage rises, payment schedules, penalty rates for
shiftwork, overtime, difficult working conditions etc
• Staffing levels: quantity and quality (minimum requirements for roles)
• Unfair dismissals; job security more generally
• Fairness and democracy at work: against favouritism or bullying by management
• Pensions and other welfare issues that flow from contracts of employment
• Broader socio-economic policy: un/employment, training and skills, regional development,
welfare states
• Central contributing role in socio-economic policy making (tripartism/corporatism)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 13
Union structures (recruiting domains)
• workplace and company/organisation
• craft/profession:
• printing; hairdressing, pharmacists, hospital doctors.
• local:
• Manchester, Chicago, Munich, Wuxi, Sydney
• regional:
• North-west England, Illinois, Bavaria, Jiangsu, NSW
• national: UK, USA, Germany, China, Australia
• industry/sector:
• coal mining, car-making, agriculture, public service, childcare, hospitality, retail work.
• political or religious allegiance:
• eg in Italy, historically, CGIL (PCI – Communist Party); CSIL (Christian Democratic Party/Catholic Church);
UIL (Socialist Party). Similar stories in eg France, Spain
• general unions
• employer or state-dominated unions
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 14
What strategies and tactics do unions use? These include – and students to read in your own time
to be discussed in Week 2:
• Strategies – often combine multiple elements – along different continua, depending on issue, place and time
• strategic focus: workplace/labour market based (mobilisation and action) vs focus on court intervention/government (lobbying etc);
• top-down or bottom-up (organised by senior union professionals vs rank-and-file representatives);
• focused on more narrow membership interests vs broader interests – working class, least advantaged
• continuum: cooperation with management <-> militancy
More particularly:
• Fostering solidarity among groups of workers, at all levels, or broader working class
• Collective and individual ‘voice’ for employees to management, formal and informal mechanisms (use of job representatives, as well as
professional union officers);
• Representation for employees to management using more formal mechanisms: grievance processes, appeals processes etc
• Collective bargaining with employers (see below)
• Collective industrial conflict: strikes, bans, picketing etc
• Use of social media to mobilise pressure on employers or government; human rights agenda, coalitions with NGOs
• Research-based policy development for lobbying media and government
• Representation of employees before courts and specialised tribunals
• Representation for employees to government agencies
• Representative involvement in tripartite/corporatist bodies, pension schemes, training and skills bodies
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 15
What types of successes have unions had? (These include, and students to read in your own time,
to be discussed in Week 2:
• Providing formal channels for ‘employee voice’ (democracy at work):
• collective agreements
• appeals processes
• grievance mechanisms
• employee/union consultation – including through works councils
• Saving people’s lives and health:
• workplace health and safety regulation and enforcement: legislation, regulation and inspectorates
• Improving living standards:
• Raising wages for unionised workplaces (‘union pay gap’, USA) and more broadly across workforce (see collective
bargaining)
• Encouraging greater socio-economic equality across societies (Germany, Sweden): gains beyond wages
• Codifying labour rights as a platform for social improvement at work
• Protecting job security for individuals (unfair dismissal provisions eg Australia)
• Developing, promoting and defending democracy: e.g. South Korea, Sweden
• Developing, promoting and defending social welfare, more generally (pensions – e.g. France)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 16
Employer associations: definition and brief historical explanation
a. Combinations (or collectivities) of employers formed to pursue shared, collective interests
related to labour market issues. Sometimes seen as ‘cartels’ of employers
b. The ‘employers’ organised may also include self-employed or independent contractors
c. Like unions, employer associations may be formal or informal organisations. They mostly start as
informal organisations and, at a certain point, achieve or choose a formal status
d. Employer associations structures (recruiting domains) are similar to those of unions. Origins in
many countries pre-date industrialisation and unions.
e. Many began with a focus on ‘trade’ issues e.g. access to inputs, tariffs, taxes etc.
f. Associations may then take up labour market issues: typically in response to perceived threats
from unions (push for higher wages or limits on working hours) or government intervention (e.g.
minimum wage legislation, limitations on working hours, WHS regulation)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 17
What has been the main purposes of employer associations? (opposite to
those of unions?)
• Generally/originally: protecting employers’ maximum (unilateral) control over their investments, workplaces, and profits as they affect
employment relations.
• Historically, this meant advocating for and pursuing (the opposite of unions):
• lower wages,
• longer working hours,
• less regulation of WHS,
• lesser job security protections,
• less other forms of ‘external’ or ‘third-party’ regulation of workplaces
• less or no role for unions
• Minimising or managing industrial conflict with unions
• Seeking government regulation or banning of all or certain types of industrial conflict
• Seeking union agreements to formally regulate forms and timing of industrial action as part of collective bargaining processes
• Taking wages out of competition:
• Enforcing minimum wage ‘floors’ (to stop cost undercutting by competitors)
• Enforcing maximum wage ‘ceilings’ (to stop ‘poaching’ of employees by competitors) eg in China
Providing employer members with free services – information on employment law, economic conditions, HR advice, training, networking
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 18
What strategies and tactics do employer associations use? These include – and students
to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Solidarity and coordination for employers when facing shared threats from union organising and bargaining
• Leading and coordinating collective bargaining for members
• Organising against strikes by workers
• Organising lockouts of workers
• Organising ‘strike breakers’ in times of disputes
• Lobbying and presentation of pro-employer arguments before government inquiries when confronting perceived
threats of government intervention
• Lobbying and presentation of pro-employer arguments before government inquiries when seeking special
protections or advantages from government
• Removing union interventions from single workplaces by ‘elevating’ them through bargaining to e.g industry level
• Representing the ‘employer interest’ in government policy making on economic and labour market issues eg
tripartism/corporatism
• Representing the ‘employer interest’ before courts and specialist tribunals
• Providing research-based advocacy to shape media, public and government perceptions and attitudes
• In more pluralist settings, collaborative working with government and unions on shared interests and problems
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 19
What types of successes have employer associations had?
These include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 20
• Associations have:
• slowed or blunted challenges to the ‘employer interest’ during periods of strong union mobilisation and/or
strong pro-employee governments (eg 1950s to 1980s/90s in much of the West; since late 1990s South
Korea), often through accepting pluralist arrangements that brought unions and associations together
• forced through or provoked changes to law and policy in the ‘employer interest’ during periods of weak
union mobilisation and/or strong pro-employer governments (eg 1980s/90s to now in the West)
• re-shaped media, public and policy-maker attitudes to prioritise the ‘employer viewpoint’ towards unitarism
• the primacy of markets and against government interventions
• efficiency ahead of equality as core direction
• profit-making and –taking ahead of re-distribution
• Labour markets should be treated more like other markets
• Practical outcomes:
• Loosening of pro-employee regulations in many countries
• Weakening of union organisation and influence in many countries
• Weakening of collective bargaining in many countries
• Greater inequalities across the workforce in many countries: greater wage disparities between rich and
poor, men and women etc
Avenues of regulation and democracy:
* Collective bargaining (leaving works councils to the class on Germany)
What is collective bargaining? Who are the parties to collective bargaining?
For the International Labour Organization (ILO), collective bargaining extends to all negotiations which take
place between an employer (or a group of employers), on the one hand, and one or more workers’
organizations, on the other, for the purpose of:
(a) determining working conditions and terms of employment; and/or
(b) regulating relations between employers and workers; and/or
(c) regulating relations between employers or their organisations and a workers’ organisation or workers’
organisations.
NB Collective Bargaining Convention, 1981 (Convention 154).
What authority does a collective agreement have? Depends on the legal framework and/or
shared commitment and/or relative strength of the parties
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 21
Dimensions of collective bargaining (Hugh Clegg, 1976)
include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Level:
• Company (single employer)
• Multi-employer (by territory): local, regional, national, international.
• Multi-employer (by activity): Craft, occupation, industry
• Extent: who gets covered by agreement, proportion of workforce
• Only those who are members of union? Or whole workforce?
• Only those companies that are members of an employer association that signs the
agreement? Or all companies in that domain (territory, industry etc)
• Scope: range of issues covered.
• Is this unlimited or constrained?
• Which issues mostly appear? (see below)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 22
What issues appear in collective agreements?
Individual rights:
• Minimum wages
• Payment processes and timing
• Maximum hours, per day or week, overtime regulation
• Annual leave (vacations), sick leave, parental leave, other leave
• Job security (unfair dismissal)
• Child labour
• Workplace health and safety
• Anti-discrimination in employment
• Diversity and positive discrimination: disabilities, disadvantaged groups
• Pensions and superannuation
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 23
Collective agreements and collective employee – union – rights,
include and students to read in your own time to be discussed in Week 2:
• Rights to information, consultation and to negotiate over issues e.g. related to collective
agreement
• Rights to bargain collectively, and perhaps conditions attached
• Rights to hold union meetings on employer premises, and perhaps in work time
• Dispute-resolution processes
• Recognition of workplace union representatives and their roles and powers
• Provision of facilities and paid time off for union representatives to carry out their duties
• Rights of access to employer information on eg financial position or strategy
• Provision of paid time off for union bargaining team
• Provision of paid time off for union education and training
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 24
Avenues of state regulation:
legislature
executive
courts
tribunals
specialized agencies – including inspectorates
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 25
Content of state regulation: Individual rights (and responsibilities)
include,
and students to read in your own time, and to be discussed in Week 2:
• Minimum wages
• Payment processes and timing
• Maximum hours, per day or week, overtime regulation
• Job security (unfair dismissal)
• Child labour
• Workplace health and safety
• Anti-discrimination in employment
• Diversity and positive discrimination: disabilities, disadvantaged groups
• Workers’ compensation
• Pensions and superannuation
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 26
Content of state regulation: Collective rights (and
responsibilities)
include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Rights for employees to form and join unions
• Rights for employees to collectively bargain through their unions;perhaps conditions attached
• Rights to information, consultation and to negotiate over issues e.g. related to collective
agreement
• Recognition of workplace union representatives and their roles and powers
• Provision of facilities and paid time off for union representatives to carry out their duties
• Rights of access to employer information on eg financial position or strategy
• Provision of paid time off for union bargaining team
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 27
The end!
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 28
Employment Relations
Lecture 1
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 1
Course introduction: course organisation and assessment.
• Course brings together practice, policy and theory in an area crucial to both international
management/business and HRM
• I welcome class participation in lectures, but not electronic messaging to me during lectures.
• There is so much to read, discuss and learn about this topic, we need to make choices
• My choice for lectures: some broad-brush cross-national comparisons on core concepts (weeks 1-2, 10), plus
• In-country focus on a few ‘types’ of countries/employment relations (ER) systems: Europe, North America,
Australia and East Asia (weeks 3-9).
• You will need to submit your Learning Journal summaries for each week before your tutorial. E.g. Learning
Journal summary for reading in Week 3 before Week 3 tutorial.
• NB Tutorial Presentations and general discussion topics follow one week after we discuss them in lectures. E.g.
Week 4 Tutorial Presentation questions relate to Week 3 lecture, reading and Learning Journal summaries. (see
Weekly Activity Guide for details.)
• Course assessment is designed to encourage you to:
• read, understand, summarise and communicate in writing (Learning Journal summaries)
• read, understand, summarise and communicate in oral presentations (Tutorial Presentations)
• practise research skills, critical, contextual and comparative thinking and report writing (Research Briefing)
• practise higher-order critical thinking, skills in synthesis and comparative analysis (Take-home Exam)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 2
Employment Relations and ER systems. Road map for lecture: some core concepts
a. the world of work
b. the employment relationship;
c. employment relations (ER) and ER systems
d. The main actors in ER systems (with more discussion next week:
a. employers
b. employees
c. (trade or labour) unions
d. employer associations, and
e. the state
e. Avenues of regulation and democracy: collective bargaining, works councils
f. State regulation of individual and collective rights
g. Models of ER systems: unitarism; pluralism; corporatism/tripartism; statism, radicalism (moved back to
Week 2)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 3
The world of work – a little bit of history: some things change, others don’t and yet others return
The world of work in pre-modern societies e.g., hunter-gatherer or fisher-gatherer; subsistence
agriculture. Most ‘production’ occurs within a family group, tribe or small clan or village.
• the world of work in those very small societies is marked by production:
for self-sufficiency and survival: food, clothing, shelter, medicines
work and personal meaning, engagement with own skills and knowledge and the natural world
work and group culture, engagement with human and rest of the natural world: production of religious artifacts
contributing to advancing family, tribal, clan fortunes
very little and rare payment for the work itself; only for products, perhaps in exchange for other
products (by barter).
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 4
Modernization processes:
settled populations, rising populations, urbanisation,
more specialized agricultural and then industrial development
‘outsourcing’ of some work beyond family groups
payment in non-money terms; payment might be ‘in kind’ (at least partly): some of the product, provision
of housing and food and clothing mixed with ability to sell surplus output
emergence and spread of payment for work done, not just the product.
with development of money-based exchange societies , increasing use of money to represent the perceived
value of the work , as well as value of a product.
The world of work increasingly dominated by larger and more sophisticated labour markets, based on
supply and demand, price and output/work provided.
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 5
Labour markets and employment relationships
• Modern societies are increasingly marked by economies dominated by labour markets and employment
relationships: the relationship between:
• employer (provides work and payment) and employee (provides working time/output)
• These developments reflected the gradual development of:
• large-scale commercial agriculture and factory systems
• development of large, stable public and private sector employers with (mostly) permanent workforces
• much more recently, development of vast and growing private services sectors, multinational enterprises
(MNEs) and global supply chains
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 6
Characteristics of employment relationships
NB processes of development are neither smooth or uniform when viewed cross-nationally
Legal/contractual (including informal understandings) specifying parties, length and nature of contract
For both employer and employee, the practice of employment relations starts with a contract of employment (written or verbal
– and then inferred).
This establishes an individual employment relationship between them.
Contract as statement of agreed expectations regarding economic exchange: workdays, hours of work, place of work, allocation of
tasks and responsibilities, pay and any employee benefits (paid annual leave, sick leave, carer’s leave, festival leave, pensions)
Economic exchange: payment in exchange for production/time worked
o Question (for later?): Are labour markets the same as other sorts of markets? Eg a market for cabbages? If so, why? If not, why not?
o What might be the implications of either answer?
Psychological contract:
What is tacitly considered fair for each side of the employment relationship to give and get. Why is this important? What builds it,
what undermines it? Normally strongest (deepest, widest for employee on being hired or promoted). Can shrink with time and
experience.
Cultural understanding – what does employment and employment relations mean in different societies and at different times?
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 7
An example from a study of the history or ER in China
Chen, Su and Zeng (2016)
‘Path Dependence and the Evolution of HRM in China’, International Journal of Human Resource Management.
• Figure 2 Resemblance between social and workplace networking structures in pre-industrial China
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 8
Figure 3 Concentric circle-shaped employment regulation system in pre-
industrial China
(Chen, Su and Zheng, 2016)
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 9
Employment and management
Organising employment and work is a central task of ‘management’, an organisational function and process directing
the organisation for the employer.
‘Management’ are also the people carrying out those tasks or in those roles on the employers’ behalf.
Their organisationally-legitimated power through their formally-delegated positions provides them with substantial
influence for achieving the managerial purpose of getting work done through other people on behalf of the employer .
Larger and more complex organisations usually require more managers and managerial levels as well as more managerial
employment relations specialists due to the added ER complexities.
Furthermore, every new employee hired encounters an existing ER context for their employment relationship.
All this occurs within a broader environment of labour, product and financial markets and institutions, including those of
the state.
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 10
Employment relations (ER) – and ER systems
ER captures the various aspects of individual employment relationships:
o legal
o economic
o social/welfare
o psychological
o cultural
ER systems bring together the interacting individual and collective dimensions of employment and work, and the formal
and informal forces shaping them, from the workplace and outside.
Wilkinson, Dundon, Donaghey and Colvin (2018: 3) provide a very industrial relations (IR)-flavoured definition
employment relations comprises:
o ‘the regulation and governance of rules, rule-making processes, institutions, attendant behaviours of actors, and relevant outcomes
such as co-operation, equity, performance and conflict in employment .’
However, ER includes the overlapping fields of industrial relations (IR) and human resource management (HRM). Storey
(2016: 195), defines HRM broadly as: ‘theories and practices relating to the way people are managed at work’.
Yet, the world of ER is greater than the sum of its IR and HRM parts. This is because interactions among distinctively IR
and HRM elements dynamically re-shape experiences within organisations, particularly where there is a patchwork of
regulation by employers’ own rules, law, collective bargaining and union activity. See e.g. Kim and Chung, (2016)
Explaining organizational responsiveness to emerging regulatory pressure: the case of illegal overtime in China. IJHRM
Peter Sheldon Lect 1 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 11
Examining employment systems in international comparison
Institutions of representation, voice and regulation: Trade unions and employer associations
Trade Unions (unions): definition and brief historical explanation
a. Combinations (or collectivities) of workers formed to pursue shared, collective interests
b. Mostly these workers are employees but they could also be self-employed or contractors and their
employees
c. Unions may be formal or informal organisations, although historically they mostly start as informal
organisations and, at a certain point, achieve or choose a formal status
d. Originally, in most countries, unions begin in single workplaces to deal with one or more specific
problem or grievance (dangerous working conditions, wage cuts – or demands for wage rises, working
hours, managerial bullying etc)
e. Over time, workplace-based unions join others with whom they share some common interest or
characteristics – in the local labour market, in the same trade or occupation (or both: local and craft)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 12
What is/has been the purpose of unions?
• Main union concerns (include):
• Workplace health and safety
• Hours of work – including regulating meal breaks, overtime, which days worked,
• Wages – against wage cuts; pushing for wage rises, payment schedules, penalty rates for
shiftwork, overtime, difficult working conditions etc
• Staffing levels: quantity and quality (minimum requirements for roles)
• Unfair dismissals; job security more generally
• Fairness and democracy at work: against favouritism or bullying by management
• Pensions and other welfare issues that flow from contracts of employment
• Broader socio-economic policy: un/employment, training and skills, regional development,
welfare states
• Central contributing role in socio-economic policy making (tripartism/corporatism)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 13
Union structures (recruiting domains)
• workplace and company/organisation
• craft/profession:
• printing; hairdressing, pharmacists, hospital doctors.
• local:
• Manchester, Chicago, Munich, Wuxi, Sydney
• regional:
• North-west England, Illinois, Bavaria, Jiangsu, NSW
• national: UK, USA, Germany, China, Australia
• industry/sector:
• coal mining, car-making, agriculture, public service, childcare, hospitality, retail work.
• political or religious allegiance:
• eg in Italy, historically, CGIL (PCI – Communist Party); CSIL (Christian Democratic Party/Catholic Church);
UIL (Socialist Party). Similar stories in eg France, Spain
• general unions
• employer or state-dominated unions
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What strategies and tactics do unions use? These include – and students to read in your own time
to be discussed in Week 2:
• Strategies – often combine multiple elements – along different continua, depending on issue, place and time
• strategic focus: workplace/labour market based (mobilisation and action) vs focus on court intervention/government (lobbying etc);
• top-down or bottom-up (organised by senior union professionals vs rank-and-file representatives);
• focused on more narrow membership interests vs broader interests – working class, least advantaged
• continuum: cooperation with management <-> militancy
More particularly:
• Fostering solidarity among groups of workers, at all levels, or broader working class
• Collective and individual ‘voice’ for employees to management, formal and informal mechanisms (use of job representatives, as well as
professional union officers);
• Representation for employees to management using more formal mechanisms: grievance processes, appeals processes etc
• Collective bargaining with employers (see below)
• Collective industrial conflict: strikes, bans, picketing etc
• Use of social media to mobilise pressure on employers or government; human rights agenda, coalitions with NGOs
• Research-based policy development for lobbying media and government
• Representation of employees before courts and specialised tribunals
• Representation for employees to government agencies
• Representative involvement in tripartite/corporatist bodies, pension schemes, training and skills bodies
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 15
What types of successes have unions had? (These include, and students to read in your own time,
to be discussed in Week 2:
• Providing formal channels for ‘employee voice’ (democracy at work):
• collective agreements
• appeals processes
• grievance mechanisms
• employee/union consultation – including through works councils
• Saving people’s lives and health:
• workplace health and safety regulation and enforcement: legislation, regulation and inspectorates
• Improving living standards:
• Raising wages for unionised workplaces (‘union pay gap’, USA) and more broadly across workforce (see collective
bargaining)
• Encouraging greater socio-economic equality across societies (Germany, Sweden): gains beyond wages
• Codifying labour rights as a platform for social improvement at work
• Protecting job security for individuals (unfair dismissal provisions eg Australia)
• Developing, promoting and defending democracy: e.g. South Korea, Sweden
• Developing, promoting and defending social welfare, more generally (pensions – e.g. France)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 16
Employer associations: definition and brief historical explanation
a. Combinations (or collectivities) of employers formed to pursue shared, collective interests
related to labour market issues. Sometimes seen as ‘cartels’ of employers
b. The ‘employers’ organised may also include self-employed or independent contractors
c. Like unions, employer associations may be formal or informal organisations. They mostly start as
informal organisations and, at a certain point, achieve or choose a formal status
d. Employer associations structures (recruiting domains) are similar to those of unions. Origins in
many countries pre-date industrialisation and unions.
e. Many began with a focus on ‘trade’ issues e.g. access to inputs, tariffs, taxes etc.
f. Associations may then take up labour market issues: typically in response to perceived threats
from unions (push for higher wages or limits on working hours) or government intervention (e.g.
minimum wage legislation, limitations on working hours, WHS regulation)
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 17
What has been the main purposes of employer associations? (opposite to
those of unions?)
• Generally/originally: protecting employers’ maximum (unilateral) control over their investments, workplaces, and profits as they affect
employment relations.
• Historically, this meant advocating for and pursuing (the opposite of unions):
• lower wages,
• longer working hours,
• less regulation of WHS,
• lesser job security protections,
• less other forms of ‘external’ or ‘third-party’ regulation of workplaces
• less or no role for unions
• Minimising or managing industrial conflict with unions
• Seeking government regulation or banning of all or certain types of industrial conflict
• Seeking union agreements to formally regulate forms and timing of industrial action as part of collective bargaining processes
• Taking wages out of competition:
• Enforcing minimum wage ‘floors’ (to stop cost undercutting by competitors)
• Enforcing maximum wage ‘ceilings’ (to stop ‘poaching’ of employees by competitors) eg in China
Providing employer members with free services – information on employment law, economic conditions, HR advice, training, networking
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 18
What strategies and tactics do employer associations use? These include – and students
to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Solidarity and coordination for employers when facing shared threats from union organising and bargaining
• Leading and coordinating collective bargaining for members
• Organising against strikes by workers
• Organising lockouts of workers
• Organising ‘strike breakers’ in times of disputes
• Lobbying and presentation of pro-employer arguments before government inquiries when confronting perceived
threats of government intervention
• Lobbying and presentation of pro-employer arguments before government inquiries when seeking special
protections or advantages from government
• Removing union interventions from single workplaces by ‘elevating’ them through bargaining to e.g industry level
• Representing the ‘employer interest’ in government policy making on economic and labour market issues eg
tripartism/corporatism
• Representing the ‘employer interest’ before courts and specialist tribunals
• Providing research-based advocacy to shape media, public and government perceptions and attitudes
• In more pluralist settings, collaborative working with government and unions on shared interests and problems
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What types of successes have employer associations had?
These include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 20
• Associations have:
• slowed or blunted challenges to the ‘employer interest’ during periods of strong union mobilisation and/or
strong pro-employee governments (eg 1950s to 1980s/90s in much of the West; since late 1990s South
Korea), often through accepting pluralist arrangements that brought unions and associations together
• forced through or provoked changes to law and policy in the ‘employer interest’ during periods of weak
union mobilisation and/or strong pro-employer governments (eg 1980s/90s to now in the West)
• re-shaped media, public and policy-maker attitudes to prioritise the ‘employer viewpoint’ towards unitarism
• the primacy of markets and against government interventions
• efficiency ahead of equality as core direction
• profit-making and –taking ahead of re-distribution
• Labour markets should be treated more like other markets
• Practical outcomes:
• Loosening of pro-employee regulations in many countries
• Weakening of union organisation and influence in many countries
• Weakening of collective bargaining in many countries
• Greater inequalities across the workforce in many countries: greater wage disparities between rich and
poor, men and women etc
Avenues of regulation and democracy:
* Collective bargaining (leaving works councils to the class on Germany)
What is collective bargaining? Who are the parties to collective bargaining?
For the International Labour Organization (ILO), collective bargaining extends to all negotiations which take
place between an employer (or a group of employers), on the one hand, and one or more workers’
organizations, on the other, for the purpose of:
(a) determining working conditions and terms of employment; and/or
(b) regulating relations between employers and workers; and/or
(c) regulating relations between employers or their organisations and a workers’ organisation or workers’
organisations.
NB Collective Bargaining Convention, 1981 (Convention 154).
What authority does a collective agreement have? Depends on the legal framework and/or
shared commitment and/or relative strength of the parties
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 21
Dimensions of collective bargaining (Hugh Clegg, 1976)
include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Level:
• Company (single employer)
• Multi-employer (by territory): local, regional, national, international.
• Multi-employer (by activity): Craft, occupation, industry
• Extent: who gets covered by agreement, proportion of workforce
• Only those who are members of union? Or whole workforce?
• Only those companies that are members of an employer association that signs the
agreement? Or all companies in that domain (territory, industry etc)
• Scope: range of issues covered.
• Is this unlimited or constrained?
• Which issues mostly appear? (see below)
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What issues appear in collective agreements?
Individual rights:
• Minimum wages
• Payment processes and timing
• Maximum hours, per day or week, overtime regulation
• Annual leave (vacations), sick leave, parental leave, other leave
• Job security (unfair dismissal)
• Child labour
• Workplace health and safety
• Anti-discrimination in employment
• Diversity and positive discrimination: disabilities, disadvantaged groups
• Pensions and superannuation
Peter Sheldon Lect 2 MGMT 5701 T1 2024 UNSW 23
Collective agreements and collective employee – union – rights,
include and students to read in your own time to be discussed in Week 2:
• Rights to information, consultation and to negotiate over issues e.g. related to collective
agreement
• Rights to bargain collectively, and perhaps conditions attached
• Rights to hold union meetings on employer premises, and perhaps in work time
• Dispute-resolution processes
• Recognition of workplace union representatives and their roles and powers
• Provision of facilities and paid time off for union representatives to carry out their duties
• Rights of access to employer information on eg financial position or strategy
• Provision of paid time off for union bargaining team
• Provision of paid time off for union education and training
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Avenues of state regulation:
legislature
executive
courts
tribunals
specialized agencies – including inspectorates
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Content of state regulation: Individual rights (and responsibilities)
include,
and students to read in your own time, and to be discussed in Week 2:
• Minimum wages
• Payment processes and timing
• Maximum hours, per day or week, overtime regulation
• Job security (unfair dismissal)
• Child labour
• Workplace health and safety
• Anti-discrimination in employment
• Diversity and positive discrimination: disabilities, disadvantaged groups
• Workers’ compensation
• Pensions and superannuation
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Content of state regulation: Collective rights (and
responsibilities)
include, and students to read in your own time, to be discussed in Week 2:
• Rights for employees to form and join unions
• Rights for employees to collectively bargain through their unions;perhaps conditions attached
• Rights to information, consultation and to negotiate over issues e.g. related to collective
agreement
• Recognition of workplace union representatives and their roles and powers
• Provision of facilities and paid time off for union representatives to carry out their duties
• Rights of access to employer information on eg financial position or strategy
• Provision of paid time off for union bargaining team
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The end!
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