...Do you believe that trade unions have a strong future in Australian industrial relations? If so, why? Trade unions have been described as organisations of workers set up to improve the status, pay and conditions of employment of their members and associations of workers who by means of collective bargaining endeavor to improve their working conditions, economic and social position (Salamon, 1992). Trade unions face many implications, declining union density, rapid expansion into casual labor market and decline of the manufacturing industry as a job provider.Trade unions have played a major role in the development of Australia and will continue to do so, however its critical that they adopt a form of union renewal to apply to the changing environment of Australia, as these changes can influence and affect the conditions for renewal and also can affect the way unions organize and regroup. Hymen (2002) suggest that in last three decades have seen a radical transformation of global capitalism with the liberalisation of currency markets; the acceleration of transactions through advances in information and telecommunications technologies; and the breakdown of the American-dominated post-war system of international monetary stabilisation. Deprived of much of their previous room for shaping macroeconomic policy, governments too have typically embraced policies of 'deregulation' to increase flexibility in labor markets. While the extent of such challenges varies substantially cross-...
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...Trade Union Decline: Australia Sarah Jury An essay discussing the factors contributing to the steady decline in trade unionism in Australia since the 1980’s and the relevance of unions to workers today. M G T S 2 6 0 7 : E m p l o y m e n t R e l a t i o n s W o r d C o u n t : 1 9 8 2 Sarah Jury Trade Union Decline in Australia 42395582 There has been a dramatic decline in trade union membership rates across Australia since the 1980s. In 1986, 46% (or 2.6 million) of employees were trade union members; this figure has steadily declined to 19% (or 1.7million) of employees in 2007 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). By May 2010 trade union membership had fallen to a record low of 18% (or 1.84 million) of employees and remained steady for the past 3 years (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). This essay aims to highlight the factors that have played a significant role in the steady decline of unionization in Australia. It focuses on the changing composition of the labour force, the change in governmental policies, the newly empowered role...
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... | 3 | 1.1 What is trade union | 3 | 1.2 Type of trade union | 4 | 1.3 Trade union’s function | 4 | 2.0 Structure of Trade Union in Malaysia | 5 | 3.0 How do Employers Perceive of Trade Union | 6 | 3.1 Conflict | 6 | 3.2 Controlled by purposely | 6 | 4.0 Do trade union membership decline | 6- 8 | 5.0 Why trade union decline | 9- 12 | 6.0 Why employee still join trade union | 13 | 7.1 Received Benefits | 13 | 7.2 Protection of Rights | 13 | 6.3 Collective Bargaining | 13 | 7.0 Conclusion | 13 | 8.0 References | 14 | 9.0 Appendix | | Introduction Trade union can be viewed as helpful or unhelpful by employer. For example, according to Maimunah (2007, p133), Japanese viewed union as an assisting tool, because many objectives are achieved by Japanese unions, therefore they are still using union. On the other hand, some countries believe that union is limiting the power of management and tends to discourage employee join union. Such as UK and USA, employers are strongly viewed union as an enemy. Therefore, this assignment will discuss about trade union and why is it declining and why some countries still using union. Besides that, we also will...
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...THE TRADE UNIONS IN UK INTRODUCTION Historically, trade unions in the United Kingdom have been viewed as: (1) collective employee organisations established to protect employees from arbitrary actions by employers in matters of pay and working conditions, and (2) as promoters of the legitimate interests of people at work. In practice, they have also played an important role in the political life of the nation, and, to a lesser extent, in its social affairs. The ability of trade unions to exercise power and influence over users of their service depends on the relative demand for that service. Thus, when demands for skilled labour in the economy are high trade unions are in a relatively powerful position to negotiate a high price for the use of labour. They are also able in such circumstances to employ a wide range of sanctions against employers (and even governments). When demand for labour is slack and unemployment begins to rise, trade union power to influence events becomes more limited. In Britain the boom period for trade unions was during the 1970s when membership reached a peak of 13.2 million (1979). At that time the demand for labour was high, many skills where in short supply and there were few legal controls over collective action by unions. By 1990 the situation had changed dramatically with a deep recession, record levels of unemployment, changes In working practices brought about by new technology and last but not least, a substantial framework of labour legislation...
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...cycle impact international trade? For product life cycle, it have four stages which are introduction, growth, maturity and decline. In international trade, that a new product involve in a new market will cause growth because the needs of the new market is unsatisfied. For example, the Starbucks Company in China, when the Starbucks coffee shop entered China, it becomes very famous and popular. The needs is still improve now. They get great profit in this large Asian market. It is keep growth in China. In American, as an innovation in 1971, Starbucks became the stages of maturity or decline because of the economic environment. Hard to say Starbucks is in an accurate stages because it may become a maturity in their home country or relative countries and may an innovation for another countries. I think this unbalance impact international trade. Think about it. A Starbucks coffee may sell 3 bucks for a normal ice coffee in American and may sell around 25 Yuan in China. It is around 4 dollars. Starbuck Company use profit to build more shops to appeal customer’s needs. However, the price is higher even if the row cost is low. It may use this profit to make up the decline of home country or transformation. What the Starbucks can do in the developing market is no more than a local New Coffee company, however it influence the growth of the new trades. The international trade made the cycle longer. In another way, the international trade change the style of the life...
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...Article Introduction: Causes, consequences and cures of union decline European Journal of Industrial Relations 17(2) 97–105 © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0959680111400893 ejd.sagepub.com Alex Bryson NIESR and Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK Bernhard Ebbinghaus Universität Mannheim, Germany Jelle Visser Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands 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...
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...addresses the following labor union issues, as it relates to both the United States and its Global counterparts: The changes that are needed for unions to maintain support from their membership, the community, and the employers within organizations. The Decline in labor union membership and political influence and the influence of politics in membership decline. The continued influence of generational aspects on the labor unions by Baby Boomers, as well as Generation X, and Generation Y. Also some other external dynamics that are affecting labor unions such as the impact on union strategies by the global workforce, the past, present evolution of the unions. And will conclude with considerations for the labor unions to remain active and viable organizations in the 21st century. Labor Relations Course Project Paper There are changes are needed for unions to maintain support from their membership, the community, and the employers. The recommendations I would make to union and management leadership in order to meet the demands of a constantly changing workplace, would be that in order to reach the more professional labor market, unions must remove the blue-collar mentality and appeal to more contemporary workers. Unions must determine how to organize 21st-century industries. In the market today, employees have less job security and compensation remains stagnant. Although many workers would like to unionize, the consequences of unionizing are great. Unions must make strategy changes...
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...of the diminution in union forms of representation for the efficiency of employee voice within the workplace In the first decade of the 21st century, HR has been set a large significant number of issues and many subjects such as employee relationship, strategic HR approaches, employee rewarding, people resourcing, management ethics and so forth have attracted great deal of attention, concern and study to analysis their role, effect and contributions in organizations. Even though there are wide ranges of subjects playing different roles in human resource practices, an appreciation of operating the relationship between employees and employers has become an essential position of business and management recently. Traditionally, employers in employee relationship tried to maintain the control of the workforce with the goal of enhancing business performance. Clearly, if workers are treated fairly and respectively, in addition, they have appropriate influence on managerial decision-making, it could better for them perform improvably. Managers prefer grater work outcomes, nevertheless, it could bring employees’ requirements being disregarded or undermined (Budd, 2004). Therefore, employees bond to express their voice appropriately and their interests should be respected. The main way in which workers tend to voice their interests and representations in the workplace is to participate in collective unions so that they could in a position of greater strength; trade unionism has been regarded...
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...Managing Employee Relations Assignment Research Essay Is the work of Unions still relevant? A trade union, as defined in the History of Trade Unionism is ‘ a continuous association of wageearners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives’.(Webb and Webb, 1911) Unions exist on the basis that they protect the wages and conditions for employees, making sure that they're protected from unemployment by obtaining a substantial degree of job security as well as supporting employees in disputes and claims against their employers.(Murphy, 2014) The relevance of unions may vary from place to place. Using reasoning and statistical day, we will aim to achieve some sort of clarity towards the complexity and variety of opinions that people have on the need for trade unions. Importance of Trade Unions Unions not only negotiate wages, they also have an impact on fringe benefits, labour productivity,work allocation, job security and employee participation practices.(OECD, 1991) There is also a spillover effect, through extension of agreements and employer responses to union environment where some of these benefits alter the employment terms of non union members.(OECD, 1991) A substantial amount of protective legislation supporting unemployment compensation, sickness insurance, employment protection along with occupational health and safety, is the outcome of work by trade unions. History of Union Formation Succeeding guilds of the medieval era...
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...restructuring. Restructuring can be a tool that systems use to maintain long-term capacity. Regional economic integration means agreements among countries in a geographic region to reduce and ultimately remove tariff and nontariff barriers to the free flow of goods, services and factors of production between each other. Agreements designed are believed to produce gains from trade for all member countries. Trade blocs can be stand-alone agreements between several states (such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or part of a regional organization (such as the European Union). Depending on the level of economic integration, trade blocs can fall into different categories, such as free trade areas, customs unions, common markets, economic and political unions. In a free trade area, barriers to trade between members’ countries are removed, but each country determines its own external trade policy. Centralizing production in those locations within the area where the mix of factors costs and skills is optimal being practice. In a custom union, internal barriers to trade are removed and a common external trade policy is adopted. A common market is similar to a customs union, except that a common market also allows factors of production to move freely between countries. An economic union involves even closer integration, including the establishment of common currency and the harmonization of tax rates. A political union is the logical culmination of attempts to achieve even closer...
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...collective agreements and collective bargaining are no longer the most efficient and productive form of workplace arrangements for business. With the extrinsic pressures that come with an increasingly global market, business has to look at ways to increase productivity and profitability in order to stay competitive, and this requires greater levels of flexibility in the workforce. The key components of this argument are direct and indirect employee voice, and which is better for both the employee and employer. Are Trade Unions relevant as their bargaining position has been weakened by both a more global market, changes to more atypical labour types and Government legislation that emphasised individualism over collectivism (Hayter 2010). Collective agreements are agreements between employers and employees which regulate workplace terms and conditions as a collective. This is generally instigated as a result of collective bargaining by a third party, primarily Trade Unions. Individual agreements, however, are between an employer and an individual employee, and can be instituted outside of any existing collective agreement. Collective agreements, are by nature, a more Pluralist approach to workplace management, whereas Individual agreements are aligned with a more Unitarist approach. Both of these management theories bring in to consideration managerial prerogative and employee voice in the workplace. Employee...
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...Introduction What is a trade union? The definition of a trade union varies in different countries. A commonly used definition of a trade union is by Webbs (1984), which states that a trade union is “a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment”. Trade unions were well-received by the workers during the age of the industrial revolution. During that period of time, workers are in a weaker position as they do not have the power to choose their job, as opposed to their employers choosing their workers (Williams and Adam-Smith 2006). Labours are mainly made up of unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Unskilled workers do not possess any skills thus having the weakest power in employee relations. Semi-skilled workers on the other hand possess some firm-specific skill which gives them some power like in wage settings (Grosfeld and Nivet 1999). Since the goal of the employer is to employ workers at the lowest cost and workers have weak power, they are unable to secure a good wage or benefits. There is also managerial prerogative in which managers have “the right to manage” because they are the “legitimate agent of the employer” and have the possession of certain skills (William and Adam-Smith 2006) resulting in workers having no voice in decision-making. As a result of the difference in power between workers and employers and the lack of voice in decision making, this entices workers to join a trade union. The main roles...
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...Oliver, D. 2010. Union membership among young graduate workers in Australia: using the experience good model to explain the role of student employment. Industrial Relations Journal. 41 (5): 505 – 519 The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between student employment and attitude toward trade union membership in Australia. Oliver claims that” the level of trade union membership among young Australians has been falling for some time” (P.506). For instant, in 1990, 25 percent of workers aged 15-19 and 33 percent of 20-24-year-old workers were union members. By 2007, membership had fallen to 9 percent and 11 percent respectively. Moreover, Oliver discusses the reason of union decline among young workers from previous existing research data. It shows that similar trend have been observed in Western Europe and the rest of the Anglo-American world. The major question posed by the article is whether an individual’s participation in the student labour market has an impact on their trade union membership once they graduate and enter post-university employment. To answer this question Oliver outlines four major hypotheses (P.509). a. Higher than average levels of unionization among graduates working in the education, government administration and defence industries. b. The relationship between job duration and union membership is long established. c. Student employment provides young workers with an opportunity to sample trade union membership before commencing...
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...statements of the principal actors involved. The recent TCL strike (Newsday, 2012), statements threatening strike action by PSA president (Guardian, 2010), and threats to the government for a nationwide strike (CARICOM News Network, 2011) all give credence to the concerns of the ECA “that the industrial relations climate will become increasingly adversarial”(Business Guardian, 2011). This type of conflict and balance of power issues in the long-term can have adverse economic consequences as well as a negative effect on international competitiveness. The term ‘Industrial Relations’, in a broad sense, covers the employment relationship between employers and employees either directly or through their representatives. An explanation of Industrial Relations which clearly identifies the principal actors is:- “the relationships between employees and employers within the organisational settings. The field of industrial relations looks at the relationship between management and workers, particularly groups of workers represented by a union. Industrial relations are basically the interactions between employers, employees and the government, and the institutions and associations through which such interactions are mediated” (Naukrihub.com). Actors and their roles A key actor identified in the definition is the employer. The employer according to Burchill, 2008 may be from the Public or Private Sector, and the employer can exercise his contractual rights over the employee...
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...Question 1: * Brexit meaning ? Cách 1: Brexit stands for an act of leaving by Britain from the European Union (short for "British exit") Cách 2: Brexit means the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union, short for “British exit” * British should stay in The EU Union. Here are some main reasons: 1. Jobs Around 3.5 million British jobs are directly linked to British membership of the European Union’s single market – 1 in 10 British jobs. 2. Exports & investment The EU buys over 50 percent of UK exports (54 per cent of goods, 40 per cent of services). Over 300,000 British companies and 74 per cent of British exporters operate in other EU markets. American and Asian EU firms build factories in Britain because it is in the single market. 3. Trade The EU negotiates trade agreements with the rest of the world. Outside the EU Britain would have to renegotiate trade deals alone. While the EU is the world’s largest market, a UK outside the EU would not be a high priority for other counties to negotiate a trade deal. 4. Freedom to work and study abroad – and easy travel 1.4 million British people live abroad in the EU. More than 14,500 UK students took part in the European Union’s Erasmus student exchange scheme in 2012-13. Driving licences issued in the UK are valid throughout the EU. 5. Fighting crime The European Arrest Warrant replaced long extradition procedures and enables the UK to extradite criminals wanted in other EU countries, and bring...
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