INFLUENCE OF TRADE UNION IN EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIP TODAY

A trade union is an organization consist of workers who have joined together to achieve their goals in different areas such as wages and working conditions as well as negotiates contracts and conditions with employers while keeping employee satisfaction highly and protecting the workers from unsafe or unfair working conditions. Also these organization are formed together by labor, workers or employees with the aim of achieving their demands for better conditions at a working atmosphere while the Fundamental purpose of a Trade unions is to protect the interests of their employees.­­­

Deakin & Morris (2012) defined Trade Unions as the groups of people who collate the interests of their employees against the organization that may seek opportunities to achieve the interests of the employees. CIPD (2017) described trade unions as independent collective bodies which are representing the interests of workers. Further they identified that the literature on trade unions as so extensive. Freeman & Medoff (1984) says that independent trade unions are the most effective vehicle for employee voice, as a source of guidance to challenge the unilateral power of management control.

Kaine (2014) says that Unions often mobilize members to take collective actions over individual grievances. He has taken transport industry of London Underground as an example where such mobilizing occurs, which extend individual grievance into more expansive collective action of the sector or whole workforce.

According to the CIPD view point, Actions taken by union stewards to influence work and employment relationships is very important in the current context. According their analysis, 43% of union stewards spend the majority of their time on collective issues, rather than individual issues, with 21% spending equal time on both. But this varies between and within countries. According to Marsden (2013), when comparing the UK and France, he confirmed that strong links between workplace representatives and unions are tend to aggregate individual voice in the UK (CIPD, 2017).

According to Armstrong.M (2009),Trade unions have two unique roles which can be identified as to secure through collective bargaining, improved terms and conditions for their members, as well as to provide protection, support and advice to their members as individual employees. Also as many researches shows an additional role which means  providing legal, financial and other services to their members, has come to the industry more recently.

As stated by Julia.H (2017), Trade Unions can be identified in two basic ways. 

1.      Craft unions- Which represent workers who have the same skill under same profession.

(Ex. The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America and the National Football League Players’ Association

2.      Industrial unions – Which represent workers who are employed in the same industry with specific skills or profession.

(Ex. The Transport Workers Union and the United Steelworkers of America)

References

Armstrong. M (2009), 11^th ed , A hand Book of Human Resource Management Practice 
Kogan Page, UK.

Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, 2017 November. Power dynamics in work and employment relationships: the capacity for employee influence, United Kingdom: The Broadway London.

Deakin, S. F. & Gillian S. Morris, 2012. Labour Law. In: r. 6, ed. s.l.:Hart Publishing.

FREEMAN, R.B. and MEDOFF, J. (1984) What do unions do? New York: Basic Books.

Hofmann, J., 2017. Trade union research: for what purpose?, s.l. Österreich Z Soziol.

KAINE, S. (2014) Union voice -Handbook of research on employee voice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp170–187.