Industrial relations free essay sample

This paper identifies the key theories in industrial relations and draws out their implications on the concern for achieving ‘basic needs for all’. The following theories are examined: the political theories of Unitarism and Pluralism; the economistic theory; the democratic and political theory; the moral and ethical theory, and the Marxist theory. A conclusion is drawn on the note of identifying the weakness and strength of labour struggles in the striving to improve the wellbeing of the working class. THEORIES IN INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Political Theory of Unitarism The essence of the unitary theory is that the larger social system or the work enterprise as a sub-system of the larger social system is a unitary organisation. The larger social system or the work enterprise is likened to a football team or a family which shares a common goal. Just like the head of the family supposedly knows what is best for all members of the family and acts at all times in the interest of the family as a whole, so also the government (in the case of the larger society) or the management (in the case of an enterprise) symbolizes the common good of all parties in the enterprise. On this basis, as members of a football team should unquestionably listen to the coach or as the troops must obey the command structure in the army without complaining, and as the children (and possibly the wife, in many cases) should not query the authority of their parents (and husband), so also the workers should be absolutely loyal to the government or management as the case may be. From the unitarist perspective, all the ideas, perceptions and actions of management or government are legitimate and rational and all the ideas, perceptions and actions of the workers that conflict with the command of the management or government are illegitimate and irrational. Trade unions are seen as a product of sectional greed or an imperfect understanding of the common (or national) interest, which the management/government represents. In some political context, unions may be viewed as a vehicle for those who want to overthrow the existing order. To a unitarist advocate, trade unions and their political organisations are an aberration and should be suppressed. Where they cannot be suppressed successfully, they should be used to serve as a means of effective communication, regulation and compliance. The use of legal regulations backed by coercive sanctions by the management is therefore desirable, legitimate and rational to force the workers in line with governmental/managerial prerogatives. From the standpoint of meeting basic welfare needs, the unitarist theory supports unilateral determination of terms and conditions of work by the employer. The will, ideas and perceptions of the employer/government in this regard are to be accepted unconditionally by the workers. It can therefore be seen that the unitarist ideology is the ideology of conservative ruling classes. It is based on the asserted and enforced legal right of the employer (the master) over the worker (the servant) which has found its way into the employment contract. It is the conception that views the King/Sovereign as supreme over the subjects. The pronouncement or will of the Sovereign is law, regulating the behaviour of others. The ideas, perceptions and interest of management or government are superior and must be imposed and obeyed without questioning because they represent the interest of the people as a whole. The goal of the unitarist is to domesticate the whole of the social unit (society, industrial enterprise, family, school, etc) under his control. The unitarist ruler alone (as the guardian of the society) can determine how society is to be organized, what the goals should be and what changes are desirable. Sectarian agitations/activity by workers, students, peasants, professionals, market women, etc, can only dissipate the national will and energy. Political Theory of Pluralism The political theory of pluralism is a by-product of the concern of bourgeois oriented social scientists for ‘democratic’ and ‘stable’ political institutions in the face of the threats posed to the continued survival of capitalist democracies (parliamentary or military dictatorship) by the pressures of the struggles of the deprived working masses. The Pluralist doctrine is therefore a political theory which seeks to redress the shortcomings of a capitalist political order in order to prevent its overthrow and safeguard the status-quo. Pluralism’s major concern is a safeguard of existing production relations and power structure. It is the ideology of those who preach ‘end of ideology’, that is end of class based politics and the possibility of harmonious relations between the oppressed and the oppressor. That instead of class domination and class antagonism, it is possible to have a neutral, central sovereign authority, the State, which can be lobbied by competing pressure groups to satisfy the interests of all classes equally. Just as the name, pluralist, connotes multiple, so also there are many variants of what is called the pluralist theory. The pluralist theory is the direct opposite of unitarism. The pluralist theory maintains that the social system (or an industrial enterprise as a sub-system of the social system) is not a unitary organisation but a coalition of individuals and groups with sectional interests and distinct perception of the social structure. However, the coalition of groups that make up the enterprise shares the commitment to maintain a structure which allows each group to pursue its aspirations through bargaining. The pluralist ideology does not claim perfection of the social structure. A certain amount of conflict is expected as an assurance that no group is being suppressed. Hence, there is recognition that it may be necessary to reform the system in terms of making marginal adjustments in rewards or in work rules. However, where one party, particularly the working class, coerces the other to accept claims outside the bargained normative consensus, it will be justifiable to apply legal sanctions. On this premise, pluralist advocates see unions not as a regrettable historical carry over but a manifestation of one of the values of competitive and democratic societies in which freedom of association, assembly and action is guaranteed within legal limits. Thus, trade unions are welcome to play a role in job regulation, collective bargaining, and so on. Advocates of pluralism seem confident that given patience and skill, mutually agreed and fully legitimized procedure, agreements can always be reached to resolve grievances when they arise. The Pluralist perspective asks managers or state functionaries to be tolerant of unions or labour based political organisations, and to realise that from the point of view of the trade unions, legitimacy of their rule is not automatic but rather the management control function should be shared with labour. Pluralists do not see transgressors of the general existing societal norms as aberrants but as non-conformers whose punishment would be counter-productive. Therefore what should be done is a re-negotiated reconstruction of those norms provided they are within the pluralist frame-work rather than a separate ideology altogether. Thus, the need for procedural agreements to resolve conflicts before they degenerate is rooted in pluralism. From the foregoing, the central idea that runs through pluralism is the notion that: traditional rights and liberties are under threat from increasing state authoritarianism produced by unitarist ideology and that a reinforcement of the status of intermediate associations is a pre-condition for the protection of individual freedom as well as a guarantee for political democracy and stability. The pluralist doctrine regards each of the intermediate sectional interest groups (e. g. political parties, trade unions, employers organisations, consumers associations, students unions, peasant organisations, cooperative societies, community organisations, professional bodies, human rights groups, etc) as centres of power whose existence cannot allow state despotism to hold sway and in that situation, there will be adequate diffusion or distribution of power in society at any point in time. Within the context of the goal of poverty reduction and providing basic needs to all, the pluralist ideology advocates determination of terms and conditions of work through the framework of collective bargaining in contradistinction to the unitarist’s unilateral fixation by the employer. Implicit in the pluralist ideology are the following weaknesses: The assumption of ‘equal bargaining parties’. But the parties in the industry are not equal. As Lenin puts it, whereas the employer may do away with one worker and employ another, the worker can only leave one capitalist employer for another; he cannot escape the capitalist  class as a whole without renouncing his own existence. The illusion that there is ‘power balance’ between the employer and the trade unions. While it cannot be disputed that unions check the exploitation of the workers by the employers, there is no such thing as equality of power. The employer has behind it the support of the state apparatus of coercion – the regular police, the secret police, the judiciary, the army, the civil service bureaucracy – which can be used at various times, overtly or covertly, to bend the workers towards the position required by the employer. As Fox (1973:211) aptly puts it: ‘capital can, as it were, fight with one hand behind its back and still achieve in most situations a verdict that it finds tolerable. Only if labour were to challenge an essential prop of the structure would capital need to bring into play anything approaching its full strength, thus destroying at once the illusion of a power balance ’ Workers are expected to accept the status-quo. The concept of collective bargaining demands of the workers to accept the system of wage slavery and not to oppose it. Thus, bargaining may be about marginal adjustments in hierarchical rewards but not about the existence of the principle of hierarchical rewards. (Fox, 1973: 219). The false assumption of parties sharing common ideas. Thus, Dunlop (1958: 380) opines that an industrial relations system at any one time in its development comprises, among others, an ideology, which binds the industrial relations system together. He defines ‘ideology’ as ‘a body of ideas and beliefs commonly held by the actors that helps to bind or integrate the system together as an entity’. The Dunlopian conception merely reflects the weight and influence of the ideas of the ruling class on the working class. This shows that the ideas of the ruling class are the ruling or dominant ideas in the society. Thus, the ruling ideas tend to condition the working class to feel it is futile attempting to change the traditional ways in which things are done. For example, it may be inconceivable for some workers to challenge so called managerial prerogatives. Based on the above weaknesses in the pluralist ideology, it should be clear that though pluralism represents some advance over unitarism, it is equally deficient in certain respects. Economistic Theory of Trade Unions The economistic theory looks at trade unions as purely organisations concerned with the employment relations. It therefore denies workers or trade unions of political consciousness. The perspective restricts the responsibility of the union to the purely sectional (trade) interests of the workers. To this theory, workers are and should just be concerned with ‘negotiable’ employment issues – wage increase, improvement of working conditions, etc. To this spurious theory, trade unions should just be concerned with collective bargaining, lobbying legislators and government to pass favourable legislation, embarking on ‘responsible’ strikes aimed at settling terms and conditions related to problems arising out of the employment relationship. This kind of reasoning informed Abacha’s dictatorship berating the oil workers’ unions that led the strikes over the annulment of June 12 elections and the incarceration of the acclaimed winner – Chief M. K. O. Abiola, because according to the regime, the issue of June 12 was outside the scope of ‘trade unionism’. The Obasanjo regime, like all regimes in Nigeria that increased fuel prices, maintained the same position on strikes called in protest against perennial price increases on petroleum products. A court judgment also backed up this economistic perspective. This was the case in the June 2007 nationwide strike action. As recorded in the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Adams Oshiomhole and Nigeria Labour Congress V. Federal Government of Nigeria and Attorney-General of the Federation (2007) 8 NWLR (Pt. 1035) at page 58, the court declared the strike illegal. The major issue in the case was the imposition of a N1. 50 fuel tax with effect from 1st January 2004 by the Obasanjo regime. Labour and other civil society organizations declared a strike against it. The court held that the Nigeria Labour Congress had no right to call out workers on strike against general economic and political decisions of the Federal Government because such have nothing to do with breach of individual contracts of employment with various employers as envisaged in the Trade Disputes Act. The above decision of the court runs counter to the principle established by the ILO Committee on Freedom of Association, which stated that the occupational and economic interests which workers defend through the exercise of the right to strike do not only concern better working conditions or collective claims of an occupational nature, but also the seeking of solutions to economic and social policy questions. In the same spirit, the Committee stated that workers and their organizations should be able to express their dissatisfaction regarding economic and social matters affecting workers’ interests in circumstances that extend beyond the industrial disputes that are likely to be resolved through the signing of a collective agreement (ILO, 1996a, para. 484). Thus, in its examination of a particular case, the Committee concluded that ‘[a] general protest strike demanding that an end be put to the hundreds of murders of trade union leaders and unionists during the past few years is a legitimate trade union activity and its prohibition therefore constitutes a serious violation of freedom of association’ (ILO, 1996a, para. 495). Enomistic unionists or advocates of pure trade unionism or trade union economism are interested in maintaining collective bargaining that ensures ‘routinisation of conflict’. Theoretically, with collective bargaining, none of the parties to collective bargaining can take the other by surprise. Forms of action and reaction can be generally predicted. As a result, the process of resolving conflicts that cannot be prevented undermines actions that may pose a threat to the capitalist order. It is within the economistic ideological framework that Professor J. T. Dunlop (1958) defined an industrial relations system in terms of three actors and their representatives, namely, (a) hierarchy of management; (b) hierarchy of workers’ organisations; and (c) public or private agencies concerned with the regulation of the affairs of the former two. Dunlop recognizes that each of the actors may have independent ideologies but that these ideologies should be sufficiently compatible and consistent to permit a common set of ideas which recognizes an acceptable role for each actor within the existing social order. In other words, this means that trade unions should never aspire to acquire political power, either within individual enterprises or in the larger society. Each of the actors (in their various groups) should continue to perform their known constant role on a permanent basis. It is on that basis that a stable society can be maintained and to that extent each of the sectional groups need each other and they are therefore unavoidably interdependent. Here lies the basis of the popular deception that workers and employers are partners in progress. To Hugh Clegg (1960: 21) an assured place for trade unions in society is dependent on the condition that unions do not concern themselves with the question of ownership of industry for this has no bearing on ‘good’ industrial relations. To him, ‘trade unions are an opposition that can never become government’ (1951: 19 – 36). The classical definition of trade unions offered by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, almost a century ago also subscribes to this view of trade unions as economistic organisations: ‘a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives’. But the issue is that life outside work place is determined by the life (the living standard offered) inside the work place. The Nigerian legal definition of trade unions in The Trade Unions Act also restricts the role of trade unions to the economic disputes/issues at the workplace. The Act defines a trade union as ‘any combination of workers or employers †¦ the purpose of which is to regulate the terms and conditions of employment of workers’. From the foregoing, those who restrict unions to economistic roles do so for either of two reasons as Lenin (1970) pointed out: hypocritical screen for counter revolution or a complete lack of class consciousness. This means either a conscious attempt to ideologically enslave the working class to the bourgeoisie, or (ii) unconscious enslavement of the working class to the bourgeoisie. The latter reflects a low level of class consciousness. However, the weakness and bankruptcy of the economistic theory is that economic decisions are products of political decisions. The wage structure and pricing of petroleum products, prospects for job security, pension and gratuity matters, and so on, are politically determined. Why then should the workers and their unions not be involved in conscious political activity to reshape their future? In situations where the oppressed classes are not significantly involved in political decision making processes, meeting basic needs and solving poverty issues will remain a mirage. Democratic and Political Theories of Trade Unions This perspective recognizes the role of power in human relationship. It recognizes that the balance of forces within individual enterprises could largely be determined by the political decision at the level of the larger society. The perspective therefore maintains that the union has a role to play in extending workers’ rights to have a say in decisions which affect them both in the micro and macro environments. Some scholars have in fact noted that from the workers’ point of view, this political role which accords ‘dignity’ to the worker is more important than the economic gains of pure trade unionism. Chamberlain (1951) for example identifies two main ‘political activities of trade unions – industrial government and industrial management. ‘Industrial Government’ refers to viewing collective bargaining as a constitution-making institution which makes rules governing the workers–employers/government relationship in order to prevent one party being taken by surprise. ‘Industrial management’ refers to seeing union representatives participating in the management function of the enterprise in the areas of mutual, rather than competing interests. Allan Flanders equally argues that the basic social purpose of trade unions is ‘job regulation’ not only within the confines of the industry but also at the national level in order to influence overall levels of employment, economic planning, etc. The role of ‘job regulation’ was not to be an end itself but ‘as a means for the free development of the individual worker during the course of working life per se’ (cited in Poole, 1981: 18). However, the political role assigned to labour by the ‘Democratic’ perspective does not give room for the aspirations of the workers to seize political power and re-organise the whole society on a new basis. The political role expected of labour by this perspective is to be within the framework of existing production relations and power structure. In Nigeria, the predominant mode of involvement of labour in politics by the mainstream of the movement has been restricted to this perspective. Thus, labour has opposed authoritarian tendencies and violation of rights; defended national sovereignty, and democratic rights. We can establish examples of concern for wider national issues (which have nothing to do with employment relations) at every stage of labour’s history in Nigeria. The point is that while it has a lot of value, the ‘democratic’ perspective concedes the right to govern to some so called professional politicians while labour’s role is restricted to pressure group activity asking the government to rule with some humaneness. The point is that the class that wields political power uses it to advance its own interests. Therefore, unless the working class and the poor are politically empowered, sustaining the welfare of ordinary people, in terms of basic needs cannot be guaranteed. Moral and Ethical Theories of Trade Unions This theory essentially assigns a role to trade unions from a religious moral point of view. It is based on the Christian’s (and Muslim’s) belief in the ‘brotherhood of man’ and the consequent mutual obligations’ based on compassion for the unfortunate and from the belief that evil in society emanates from incessant accumulation of riches and interpersonal competition. From the point of view of this perspective, the emergence of trade unions, the idea that binds unionists together, the tonic that keeps the union going and sustains it, the rationale and justification for the existence of the union is the extent to which it is committed to upholding and defending certain societal ethics and morals, which make the welfare of the disadvantaged the focus of its activity. What sustains the loyalty of some members to the union could be its commitment in defence of the poor. A well known human rights crusader, Chief Gani Fawehinmi, in an interview with the Tell magazine expressed this religious factor to explain his commitment to the people’s cause: By all standards I am not a poor man. I am convenient and comfortable and I believe that if I don’t do what I am doing for those who are not as opportune as myself, God will punish me. Apart from that, I am always at home fighting for the deprived, the neglected, the repressed and the oppressed. If I have no cause to fight for, I am like a fish out of water. What sustains me is the struggle. What gives me blood is my conviction and what propels me is my dedication to that conviction And so, if I have no genuine cause to fight for, I die. (cited in Dateline, No. 13, March 30, 1995). Although the influence of religious beliefs has waned in explaining the character of trade unions in our time, it has transformed into concern for ‘justice’. Flanders points out that the capacity of the trade unions to survive the hostility of the State and sustain the loyalty of union membership is hinged on commitment to justice: The trade union movement deepened its grip on public life in its aspect as a sword of justice. When it is no longer seen to be this, when it can no longer count on anything but its own power to withstand assault, it becomes extremely vulnerable. The more so since it is as a sword of justice rather than a vested interest that it generates loyalties and induces sacrifices among its own members and these are important foundations of its strength and vitality (Cited in Aborisade, 1994). The ethical and moral theory means that the strength of the trade union movement in its activities and struggles lies in its capacity to win popular support. Winning popular support is also predicated on the types of issues taken up by the trade unions. A trade union struggle that is concerned with actualizing specific basic needs for the vulnerable groups cannot but win over, not just the support but also the practical involvement of the poor classes in practical action. Sam Omatseye, writing in The Nation (10 November 2008: back page) gave us the practical lesson in the electoral victory of Obama as President of the United States ‘I think Obama is also being rewarded for being good to his fellow people. After a Harvard law degree, he could have earned millions of dollars on Wall Street. But he abandoned all of that and went into community organizing, helping people who could not find meals or homes or get education. It was the benefit of that experience that helped him to craft the spectacular victory for the ages. Nigerians should learn that money is not everything. Only love for your fellow human can even give us the success we want. That is the lesson of Obaman’s triumph. We must ponder this while we celebrate’. If fighting for the vulnerable classes can earn an individual such victory, how much more would the trade union movement advance the cause of fighting to win basic needs for all? THE MARXIST THEORY The import of the Marxian theory as far as achieving basic needs for all is concerned is that only if organized labour leads the other poor strata in actions can meaningful changes occur in living standards. Hyman (1975) explains that capitalism constitutes a complex of work and social relations of production. The main features of the capitalist structure of work relations consist of the following: private ownership of productive forces; Concentration of ownership in the hands of a small minority, the obligation of the majority of society to sell their labour power as a commodity; the domination of profit as the fundamental motive of economic activity; and top-down hierarchical control over production processes by the few owners or their managerial representatives. The structure of the capitalist work relations thus presents an exploitative relationship – the wages and salaries paid to the employees represent only a portion of the value they collectively produce. The remainder is appropriated by the employer as profit. The capitalist context of production is therefore an inherently conflictual class relation. Given the employee status (as opposed to a producer status) of the worker in the capitalist context of production, the workers, individually and collectively, are alienated from having a say in what is produced (product or service), how what is produced is produced (that is, the process) and deciding on the allocation of resources or profit, the surplus value. Based on the capitalist structure of work relations, Marxists consider that capitalist societies are increasingly characterized by two major antagonistic classes, defined by their economic status. These are the ruling class (capitalists) and the subject-class (workers). Capitalists own and/or control the means of production, distribution, consumption and exchange, as well as the means of political domination. The workers on the other hand are the subordinate class who neither own nor control significant property, but are subjected to the servitude of the interest of the ruling class, and is thereby politically, economically, and socially exploited and dominated. Bukharin explains that based on the exploitative and conflictual class relationship, the capitalist system is by nature a violent system. Any system based on the exploitation of the overwhelming majority by a tiny minority can only survive by repressing the other class violently. A system that thrives by the imposition of the interests of the minority on the entire society can only engender social chaos, turbulence and war. To Bukharin, the capitalist society is unthinkable without armaments, as it is unthinkable without wars. He posits that war is nothing but another method of competition at a specific level of development and that conflictual economic interests give rise to the inevitability of the existence of arms and wars (See IST in Africa, 2007). The Marxian theory of the state maintains that the state is an  instrument of class domination. Whichever class wields political power uses it to advance the interests of its members by oppressing the other class. In a capitalist society, the state is ‘the executive committee of the bourgeoisie’; it protects the property of the capitalist classes and adopts whatever policies, including violence, to sustain the status-quo. Within the capitalist context, the property-less class is taught to understand that it is in its interest, and within the limits of its capability, to revolt, in the striving to defend its interests by fighting against political and/or economic exclusion. Hence, to Marx and Engels, classes seek to protect the self interests of their members: The bourgeoisie †¦has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chilvarous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation (Marx and Engels, 1933:62). Friedrich Engels expresses similar idea in explaining that social classes pursue the self-interest of their members: Bare-faced covetousness was the moving spirit of civilization from its dawn to the present day; wealth, and again wealth, and for the third time wealth; wealth, not of society, but of the puny individual was its only and final aim (cited in Bober, 1948:72). The foregoing underscores the reality of life that in class societies, the ruling class struggles to retain political power and protect the economic wealth of its members while the expropriated, the disadvantaged are compelled to struggle to end their exploitation and repression. Therefore, the source of development and general wellbeing of the ordinary people in a capitalist society like Nigeria is not the ruling class but organized labour – both the waged and unwaged when they form joint platforms for struggles. That is why Ake (1989:43) argues that development is agency-determined: ‘somebody has to determine that development is desirable, that a particular kind of development should be pursued and in a particular kind of manner’. This shows that desirability of development, the kind of development and the manner of attainment are neither accidental nor objectively determined. According to Ake (1989), since the capitalist state is a specific modality of capitalist domination, the ability to maintain the capitalist hegemony on  society and the capacity of the dominated and oppressed classes to deploy effective counter force in reaction to their domination goes a long way to condition the possibility of development. The degree of resistance put up by the dominated tends to determine the extent to which the state uses scarce resources, which should have been invested in developmental programs into maintaining opulence for the bourgeoisie and building the arsenal of terror and a militarized state. From the Marxian perspective, the State, contrary to the claim of pluralist advocates, is not an organisation for the interest of the whole society but an instrument to coerce and repress in the sectional interest of the economically dominant class. According to Lenin, the state is ‘an organ of class rule, an organ for the repression of one class by another’ (Lenin, 1970). Any ruling class uses the State apparatus of repression to defend, in the final analysis, the system of the property relations from which it derives its wealth, influence and power and indeed its very existence as a class. Therefore, all classes whose interests are not served by the existing system of production relations, in other words, all classes which stand in antagonism to the ruling class are inevitably driven into (political) class struggle, if not to take over political power, then at least to modify and influence those who wield State power in their own interest. This is why as Marx and Engels (1971) wrote in the Communist Manifesto, every class struggle is a political struggle. Therefore, the question for any trade union or unionist is not whether or not to be involved in politics, the question is which type of politics: politics to influence those in government or politics to seize political power? Marxism explains that at every acute stage of capitalist crisis when the capitalist system cannot guarantee bare existe