Trade Unions and Furniture-CO
12/13/2010
By: Raminder Pall: K0904895
Freddie Darlison: K0815445
Executive Summary
Research conducted shows that Trade unions in the past provided help and advice on issues and problems at work on behalf of employees affected. However since the 21st century unionship has declined mainly due to evolution of technology and the introduction to the service sector. Women today join more trade unions than men this is mainly due to the fact women feel they might be discriminated and therefore need more protection, this also links in with the fact there are more part time women working in industries today. The public sectors unionship as grown compared to the private sector this is mainly due to the introduction of service sector creating new jobs for people and the evolution of technology taking manual labour away in the private sector. The reason for a decline in unionship is due to the fact that some organisations treat employees as assets and how organisation have referred to the single employee level process restricting the need of trade unions. Furniture-co use employee participation to the full and will reap the reward for doing so. With the EWC’s they are setting up, employees from all branches will be able to voice their opinion suggest ideas and improvements, and also communicate with the management about any issues they have regarding their contracts or policies. The employees will be able to bargain collectively without the use of trade unions. The employee involvement can be updated in terms of the upward involvement, but Furniture-co already uses weekly meetings for the downward involvement. Therefore the employees look after themselves without the need for a trade union. If furniture-co introduce a few more upward involvement techniques like the attitude survey then the employees can feel satisfied that they are being well looked after and can voice their opinion at any
References: Farnham (2000)’Collective bargaining and negotiation: The structure of collective bargaining’, (2006 edition) Daniels, K. Employee relations in an organisational context. London: CIPD, pp.188. Gennard and Judge (2005)’Trade unionism: Trade unions’, (2006 edition) Daniels, K. Employee relations in an organisational context. London: CIPD, pp.131. Salamon. (2000)’Trade unionism: Trade unions’, (2006 edition) Daniels, K. Employee relations in an organisational context. London: CIPD, pp.131. Daniels, K. (2006) Employee relations in an organisational context. 2006 1st edition. London: CIPD. Hyman, J, Mason, B (1995). Managing Employee Involvement and Participation . London: Sage Publication. Lines, D, Marcouse, I, Martin, B (1996). The complete A-Z Business Studies handbook. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Economics Help. (2007). Advantages and Disadvantages of Trade Unions. Available: http://econ.economicshelp.org/2007/04/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-trades.html. Last accessed 4th December 2010. Revisionguru (2010) Trade unions. Available at: http://www.revisionguru.co.uk/business/unions.htm (Accessed: 26 October 2010) Stats.bis (2009) Trade union membership 2009, Available at: http://stats.bis.gov.uk/UKSA/tu/TUM2009.pdf (Accessed: 26 October 2010)