Union Involvement in Industrial Relations Trade or labour unions have been around since the 1930s to neutralise and resist through employers’ dominance over the employees and to regulate the workers’ rights. Throughout history, many contradicting ideas about union involvement in employment relations have been debated to thrive for a productive and mutually beneficial workplace environment. Two key perspectives that derived are unitarism (non-union) and pluralism (union). In the unitarism approach, the organisation is perceived as a harmonious system. Management and staff have same objectives and union involvement is considered as interference. Pluralism, on the other hand, is perceived as being made up of powerful and divergent sub-groups namely, management and trade unions. This approach sees conflicts of interest and disagreements between managers and workers over the distribution of profits as normal and inescapable and need collaboration with trade unions, which are deemed as legitimate representatives of employees (Dzimbiri 2008). This paper will support pluralism and argue that managers should not be free to manage without union involvement. Firstly, this paper will discuss the positive effects of pluralism on employees. Secondly, it will state the advantages of union involvement for employers.
Labour unions were created in the 1930s with one incentive, which is to represent the workers against the employers, who had exclusive control over the conditions of work and pay. Instead of being undermined as an individual voice, unions give workers a chance for collective bargaining of benefits and rights such as reasonable work schedules and fair wages. Unions have the capability to organise boycotts and strikes to get employers to consider their proposals. Moreover, labour unions monitor the unfair practices of employers. They ensure that employers comply with the law and they can lodge appeals in federal courts (Bacon and Blyton 2006). Unions…