Chapter 7: Employer-Employee Relationship
Chapter 7: Employer-Employee Relationship
Chapter 7: Employer-Employee Relationship
• Collective bargaining is a means to reach negotiable agreements, and has two outcomes.
1. Substantive agreements: these are agreements on pay, working hours, holidays, overtime regulations,
flexibility arrangements, and allowance.
2. Procedural agreements: agreed on equal opportunities, recruitment, redundancy, & discipline.
• Bargaining is carried out via negotiation, distributive and integrative approaches are available.
Distributive bargaining: parties negotiate to take limited resource at the expense of the other.
Integrative bargaining: seeks mutual gains,
Stage of Negotiation
A. Preparation:
Set objectives
The basic minimum requirement that must be achieved, -
The desirable requirements that the negotiator would like to achieve,
The optimum requirement or best level of achievement;
B. Negotiation
Exchange information; - Listen to the other party's position; - Signal likely compromise points - Propose
ways forward.
C. Closing
Summarize positions; - Propose a final offer, which meets the needs of both parties; - Reach agreement.
Employer-Employee..Con'd
Forms of Grievances
• Factual: legitimate needs of employees remain unfulfilled
• Imaginary: dissatisfaction is not because of any valid reason
• Disguised: dissatisfaction for reasons that are unknown to him/her
Causes of Grievances
Economic: wage fixation, overtime, bonus, wage revision
Work environment: poor physical conditions of work place, tight production
norms
Supervision: bias, favoritism, nepotism, caste affiliations, regional feelings,
Work group: unable to adjust with his/her colleagues, suffers from feelings
of neglect, victimization
Miscellaneous: promotions, safety methods, transfer, disciplinary rules,
granting leave, medical facilities, etc
The Discovery of Grievances
• Gossip and grapevine offer vital clues about employee grievances. Various ways to discover:
• Observation
• Grievance procedure
• Gripe box
• Open-door policy
• Exit interview
• Opinion survey
Grievance Handling Procedure
• objectives
To enable the employee to air his/her grievance.
To clarify the nature of the grievance.
To investigate the reasons for dissatisfaction.
To obtain, where possible, a speedy resolution to the problem.
To take appropriate actions and ensure that promises are kept.
Benefits of grievance handling procedure