So what is Employment Relations?

Originally, we might have had indentures. But with the coming of the industrial revolution, and its subsequent incarnations, we evolved and created an area of study - a quasi law/business mix - known as industrial relations (IR). IR is a company view, focusing on employment rules and procedures, and tends to have an adversarial relationship with Trade Unions. 

Historically Trade Unions were seen as protecting the rights and interests of members, achieved through collective bargaining. The manufacturing employment sector was a large and powerful sector. Unions understood the rights, their power positions, rights and wrongs of cases being put forward and their obligations. The IR focus was on negotiations between employers and organised labour for workable outcomes. IR was the view was that if there was no union, the outcome would be in favour of management. Worker would not have rights entitlements or be respected, it was in the interest of workers to be in trade unions to balance the power between the two, focused on collective bargaining to get better pay and conditions. 

So why the change to employment relations (ER)? Global falling union membership made us realise that relationships between employers and employees are more important than the focus given to opposition. It is people who form the backbone of an organisation and the study of relations between employers and employees. It is more important that the laws and institution that govern the workplace. So where IR focuses upon employees as a collective body, ER emphasises the concept of the individual. ER is based on greater co-operation between management and employee, through greater trust, fairness and openness and attention given to the employee voice. Today, much of the labour force is not composed of unionised members, there is less conflict, and – hopefully – more negotiation.

Bennett et al. (2020) suggest that ER's "fundamental objective is to understand and, therefore, more effectively manage the employment relationship between employer and employee", and that, "despite the increasingly individualised nature of employment relations, collective relationships still exist in all organisations which require appropriate channels of voice, through, for example, collective bargaining, employee councils or joint consultative committees. Similarly, in both unionised and non-unionised environments, employee grievances have to be resolved, disciplinary matters processed, procedures devised, implemented, operated, reviewed and monitored" (p. 2).

There are four main areas used to collectively define employment relations (ER) in Aotearoa New Zealand (Rasmussen, 2009, p. 6), which are:

1. "the relative powers and interests of the key parties - employees, employers and government-in the regulation of employment conditions and the establishment of workplace rights;
2. "the strategies adopted by employees, employers and government, and their agents, to influence, regulate or control the employment relationship;
3. "the formal and informal rules and processes that are established to regulate the employment relationship;
4. "the cultural, social, economic, political, legal and institutional contexts within which the powers and interests of the key parties are established and exercised, and within which the rules and processes that regulate employment relationships are formulated and implemented".

Sam

References:

Bennett, T., Saundry, R., & Fisher, V. (2020). Managing Employment Relations (7th ed.). Kogan Page Publishers.

Rasmussen, E. (2009). Chapter 1: The Study of Employment Relations. In Employment Relations in New Zealand (2nd ed., pp. 2-40). Pearson Education.