Unionisation and human resource management in Irish companies

Irish trade unions, at establishment level, are experiencing the same problems as in other countries. This article, from a survey of 1500 companies, firstly assesses the impact of structural variables on trade union density; and, secondly, the influence of human resource management on labour management strategies.     

Human resource practices and discrimination in South Africa: overcoming the apartheid legacy

While there is some level of isomorphism and convergence in HRM practices, country-specific differences remain, notwithstanding globalization and the influence of increasingly powerful multinationals. Much work has occurred on diversity management and cultural aspects of management in South Africa (SA). This analysis finds that local institutional context in labour relations and particularism in practices remain important, although the influence of convergent forces such as globalization, information technology and increased competition has become much more prominent in post-apartheid SA. Human resource practitioners in SA see the most important workplace challenges as performance improvement, employment equity, training and development and managing trade union expectations. This article critically evaluates the effects of recent legislative measures, particularly labour court and arbitration awards aimed at addressing the adverse impact of past unfair discrimination on pay practices and skills development. The latter are found to be interrelated, sensitive and difficult areas of discrimination in respect of legal proof.     

Taxes on labour and unemployment in a shirking model with union bargaining

This paper studies the impact of a cut in labour taxes in a model that combines two explanations for equilibrium unemployment: employee shirking and union bargaining. It is shown that if the ratio of unemployment compensation to the net-of-tax wages is kept fixed, a tax cut leads to higher unemployment. When the unemployment benefits are fixed in real terms, the effect of a tax cut on unemployment is ambiguous. Adverse employment effects are ruled out if unions are powerless or the labour share is constant.     

Representation at Suncorp – what do the employees want?

It is apparent from existing research that little is known about the effectiveness of non‐union employee representation (NER) voice arrangements in Australian firms. This article examines both the non‐union Suncorp‐Metway Employee Council (SMEC) and union voice arrangements at an Australian financial services firm, Suncorp, and assesses their effectiveness in representing the needs of employees. This study is unique because it is one of the few examples of dual representation channels at a single firm. Overall the findings suggest that the effectiveness of union and NER arrangements is dependent on the union and NER voice channels being perceived by the workforce as both representative and able to act effectively or independently. However, while trade unions may provide greater voice than non‐union arrangements, the strength of voice is dependent on the legitimacy and effectiveness of trade unions in representing employees' interests at the workplace. The findings also suggest that the marginalisation strategy used by the union in excluding SMEC from its industrial campaigns, coupled with employees' perception of a lack of effective union voice, could impact negatively on the influence that unions may have on management decision‐making. This could also be perceived by employees as an inappropriate response by the union to management substitution strategies. As a consequence, any changes to industrial relations policy or trade union strategies regarding NER should be considered in the light of these findings.     

Personnel Policies and Practices in British Trade Unions: An Exploratory Study

Full-time trade union professional employees play a significant role in the formulation and implementation of union policy and are, therefore, an important asset of any labour organisation. In recent years, researchers have begun to focus on this important union resource. This study reports the results of a survey of the internal personnel policies and practices of British trade unions in an effort to gain insights into trade unions as organisations.     

Commitment to company and labour union: empirical evidence from South Korea

Commitment is an important part of business and a vocal part of the lexicon of many commentators and actors in the employment relations arena, including management, trade unions and policy makers. This is partly in the context of the interest in many countries in human resource management, in which commitment is seen as a key part, and the more recent ideas of ‘employee engagement’. Commitment, and the related topic of dual commitment, has also generated academic interest. However, much of the work has come from the US. This paper applies such ideas via a set of hypotheses in a different context – South Korea – with commonly viewed widespread high commitment, both to (and from) companies (e.g., strong internal labour markets) and unions (e.g., militancy). Is there a paradox in this duality, or can workers be committed to both companies and unions? What are the antecedents of this? This paper finds that workers can have dual commitment and that different factors affect the commitment to company and labour union, although labour–management relations climate, job satisfaction, as well as company tenure, are common predictors     

Neo-pluralism as a theoretical framework for understanding HRM in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper discusses the 'social' nature of employment management problems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). 'Applied' Western HRM is largely based on unitarist conceptions of organizational reality. Where conceptions suggest a 'stakeholder' perspective, they tend to follow orthodox formulations of pluralism. In that regard, notions of 'stakeholding' refer to the divergent internal organizational interests (mainly economic) of labour and management. In the SSA context, however, the broader social and moral issues of the wider community have a decisive influence on the employment relationship. And internal employment relations structures, such as trade unions, do not constitute the main representative channels for employee grievances. Consequently, established Western employment frames of reference do not represent suitable theoretical frameworks for analysing all the relevant social factors that influence the SSA employment relationship. This paper proposes a modified version of Ackers' (2002) 'neo-pluralist' theoretical framework as the basis for understanding and resolving some of issues involved in HRM in SSA. From this analysis, it proposes a model of HRM that attempts to institutionalize some elements of the 'African social system' into formal HRM policies and strategies.     

The impact of foreign trade issues on economic growth in some developing countries including Iran and Turkey

The issue of foreign trade and economic growth have been on the economic agenda for centuries. Foreign trade is a facilitator of goods and services exchange in the global marketplace and is an engine of economic growth in a country. Moreover, economic growth is a means to improve the output, employment opportunities, and welfare, which in turn could make a favorable impact on the positive foreign trade balance. Economic growth is also an essential component of country competitiveness in international markets. Yet, the objective of this study is to analyze the correlation between foreign trade and economic growth in some developing countries, including Iran and Turkey, by using econometrics applications (panel co-integration method and E-views software), also resting on credible national and international publications. Thus, it is estimated in the study that foreign trade has a positive impact on economic growth, resource allocation, energy and green energy consumption, human capital development, and physical capital consumption.     

Human resource strategy and unionization: evidence from Taiwan

Over the past two decades, industrial relations (IR) have seen the continuous decline of trade unions and a growing interest in high performance work practices (HPWPs). Human resource researchers, examining the traditional adversarial IR strategies, are increasingly calling for more co-operative and innovative HPWPs in employment relations. Can traditional union adversarial strategies exist along with HPWPs or does one necessarily exclude the other? To answer this question, this study, using questionnaires collected from locally owned and multinational corporations in Taiwan, investigates the association between unionization rate and HPWPs. Contrary to most findings from the Western context, HPWPs were found to have a positive and statistically significant impact on unionization at the firm level in Taiwan. The positive impact may be result of close and friendly relationship between employers and unions and the practices of ‘employer-sponsored’ unions in Taiwan. Furthermore, traditional Confucian culture and institutional factors have strengthened the influence of HPWPs on unionization.     

Ver.di and trade union revitalisation in Germany

Recent research on the fate of organised labour in western Europe has emphasised the capacity trade unions have to develop and implement revitalisation strategies as well as the fact that different trade union movements implement different strategies. In the case of Germany, trade unions have tended to defend existing mechanisms of social partnership and restructure the movement through mergers. This article argues that this approach has severe limitations given the diverse transformation of the German political economy. It presents research on the revitalisation strategies of Germany's new service sector trade union Ver.di established in 2001. The article argues that Ver.di has an awareness of the necessity of adopting new and comprehensive strategies for revitalisation, but that it is tending towards traditional strategies. This disadvantages those regions and sectors where institutions of industrial relations are not embedded.     

Negotiating ‘solidarity’ and internationalism: the response of Polish trade unions to migration

In the context of massive outward migration after Poland's accession to the EU in 2004, this article explores the possibilities for cross‐border collaboration by Polish trade unions. The findings are based on interviews with the two main trade union/trade union federations, Solidarity and Ogolnopolskie Porozumnie Zwi?zków Zawodowych: All‐Poland Alliance of Trade Unions, at national, regional and sectoral levels. Examining the issues and challenges faced by Polish trade unions in terms of loss of membership and social capital, the article also evaluates the significance of Poland's status as a country of some inward migration. It is argued that cross‐border trade union collaboration has become an even more urgent project as the economic crisis intensifies competition in the labour market and increases the potential for xenophobia.     

When trade unions turn to litigation: ‘getting all the ducks in a row’

Driven by their members' demands and the need to adopt more combative legal strategies in order to oppose the deterioration of working and employment conditions, British trade unions have developed in‐house legal expertise and supported many individual and multiple claims. This article investigates the variation in unions' legal practices and examines their organisational responses to law and the role of compliance professionals in the regulation of employment litigation. It provides a nuanced account of the influence of legal rationality on the framing of union strategies and shows that, under certain conditions, trade unions are able to build multi‐pronged tactics by using litigation as a complement to other forms of action.     

Impact of trade liberalization on firm's labour demand by skill: The case of Tunisian manufacturing

This paper investigates the impact of the trade liberalization process in Tunisia on employment by distinguishing different skills and different types of firms using micro level data covering the period of 1983–1994. There is considerable disagreement among analysts on the impact of recent trade reforms upon labour. Our contribution to these debates in this paper is essentially an empirical issue. The analysis of a Tunisian firm's data may be viewed as an attempt to apprehend how employment in Tunisia, a developing country, adjusted to the trade reforms. Using micro-level detail on individual firms, we are able to trace the relationship between changes in trade policies and manufacturing employment at firm level and by skill. Although trade reforms are generally implemented at the sector level, their effects may vary significantly across firm characteristics such as output orientation. We measure the effects of trade policy on employment according to different types of firms. We also associate changes in employment directly with a measure of change in trade protection, rather than linking them to changes in imports and exports which would be more common. The results suggest that the impact of trade liberalization on labour demand depends on a firm's characteristics. In particular, the estimates obtained suggest that trade liberalization has beneficial effects on employment for exporting-firms. Conversely, trade liberalization has negative and disciplinary effects on employment for domestically oriented firms. The reduction in tariff levels conducted in this first phase of liberalization in Tunisia seems to have had effects with different intensity on unskilled labour and on skilled labour; this justifies the examination of these two skills.     

Globalization,employment relations and human resources indicators in ten developed market economies: international data sets

This paper provides statistical information on internationalization, human resources and labour market outcomes in ten important developed market economies (DMEs). Such data are useful for practitioners and academics who are interested in international HRM. The article's aim is to provide easily accessible statistical tables of selected characteristics, which can be used to draw initial comparisons between countries and to test competing accounts of the impact of globalization on national patterns of employment relations. It includes standard sources so readers can elaborate and update these data.     

Labour under the law: a new law of combination,and master and servant,in 21st‐century Britain?

It is valuable to evaluate contemporary employment law on industrial action and trade unions, and employment protection, in relation to the 19th‐century law of combination, and master and servant. Such a historical comparison, despite differing language and legal sanctions, focuses attention on the goal of legal ‘reform’—the drive to control workers' collective organisations and enhance the managerial prerogative in order to consolidate employers' capacity to determine the terms of the contract of employment or for services, and the content of the pay–effort bargain, that is, the real subordination of labour. It is a form of class struggle from above.     

Digitalisation,unions and participation: the German case of ‘industry 4.0’

This article tackles the question of how labour representatives cope with the implementation of ‘Industrie 4.0’ in German manufacturing plants. Digitalisation of manufacturing is going along with challenges for employment, work organisation and working conditions. The article analyses one of the main strategies German unions have developed, the project ‘Work 2020’, which was to raise works councils' awareness of the workplace impact of digitalisation, improve their knowledge of the changes, raise their capacity to respond and, finally, lead to the negotiation of workplace agreements on this issue with employers. The results of the analysis show that a strong interplay between unions and works councils and the activation of works councils by the unions have become indispensable preconditions for coping with the new challenges both of digitalisation and of the ongoing erosion of the German system of labour relations.     

Multinational corporation management strategies and international human resources practices: bringing IHRM to the bottom line

This paper examined the relationship between multinational corporations' global management strategies and the resulting international human resource practices. Four global strategies, which vary in their extent of global integration and local responsiveness, were examined (ethnocentric, regiocentric, polycentric and geocentric). Data from international human resource professionals in forty-six companies generally supported the hypothesis that HR practices (recruitment, selection, socialization) varied by global strategy. In particular, strategies varied especially between the ethnocentric and geocentric companies. These strategies were further found to be related to a composite Multinational Corporation Success Index of economic variables (return on capital, sales growth, return on equity, profit margin). Companies which had ethnocentric strategies were found to be less successful than companies operating under any of the other three strategies. Findings suggested that local responsiveness should be incorporated into the global strategy of multinational companies. Recommendations for international human resource practices based on these results have been given.     

The trade union response to agency labour in Britain

The growth of agency work in recent years has posed a challenge to trade unions, which must decide if they will accept agency workers as part of their constituency and accept employment agencies as legitimate labour‐market actors. This article analyses the reaction of British unions to agency work and identifies four main responses: exclusion, replacement, regulation and engagement. It concludes with an evaluation of union policies, which stresses the need for unions to secure broad regulation of the agency labour market either through multi‐employer bargaining or employment law.     

Algorithmic management and app‐work in the gig economy: A research agenda for employment relations and HRM

Current understanding of what constitutes work in the growing gig economy is heavily conflated, ranging from conceptualisations of independent contracting to other forms of contingent labour. This article calls for a move away from problematic aggregations by proposing a classification of gig work into three variants, all based strongly upon key technological features: app‐work, crowdwork, and capital platform work. Focusing specifically on the app‐work variant, this article's more delineated focus on the textured dimensions of this work proposes new lines of enquiry into employment relationships and human resource management. Examining the crucial role of algorithmic management, we critically discuss the impact of this novel mediation tool used by gig organisations for the nature of employment relations within app‐work, work assignment processes, and performance management. In so doing, we propose a series of research questions that can serve as a guide for future research in this increasingly important field.     

‘What problems you got?’: managerialisation and union organising in the voluntary sector

This article explores how government public service modernisation policies have impacted on management practices and employment conditions in voluntary sector welfare organisations and the problems unions have encountered in responding to such impacts in the context of public service modernisation. The study finds that employees encounter problems developing workplace union organisation and unions face problems developing a coherent strategy on support for the sector and for resisting public sector reform, which hinders trade union resistance. The implications of this may be important in strengthening managerial control over the public service labour process.