NAME : SALAWUDEEN MUYIDEEN

Matric no. : 121008299

Course Code : ECN 431

COURSE TITLE : ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

I strongly agree. Industrial relations got its roots in the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th
centuries in Britain and the spread of capitalism which created the modern employment
relationship by spawning free labour markets and large-scale industrial organizations with
thousands of wage workers. Intellectually, industrial relations was formed at the end of the
19th century as a middle ground between classical economics and Marxism, with Sidney Webb
and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy (1897) being the key intellectual work. Industrial
relations thus rejected the classical economics. The term deals with basic issues of power
relations and sharing between those in authority in the workplace and those over whom
authority is exercised. The genesis of industrial relations is not from how to organize production
but how to share the returns (cake) of the joint effort equitably by the parties (employees and
employers). The employers are bent on maximizing the returns from their investments while the
workers are interested on how to maximize own returns in terms of fair wage demand,
reduction of inherent physical and other disabilities or hazards at workplace, reduction in hours
of work, eradication of unfair treatment . The crux of the relationship is that each party seeks to
maximize its own share of the cake with least consideration for the plight of the other hence
industrial relations. Industrial relations is connected with the making of rules to regulate the
actions of the parties in the industry. As both societies wrestled, low wages, long working hours,
monotonous and dangerous work, and abusive supervisory practices led to high employee
turnover, violent strikes, and the threat of social instability and due to confluence of these event
and ideas associated with rise of democratic governments in the western world of the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It emerged from both negative and positive impulses.

So we come to the conclusion that industrial relation was part of the reform wing. Industrial
relations arose from the conviction that cordial relationship between workers and employer
could be improvised through a combination of scientific discovery, education, legal reform, etc.
Therefore, the maintenance of a good human relationship is a must in today’s business
environment, because in case of its absence the organizational structure may crumble.
Employees constitute the most valuable assets of any organization. Any neglect of the
important factor is likely to result in increased cost of production in term of wage and salaries,
benefits and services; working conditions, increased labour turn-over, absenteeism, indiscipline
and cleavages, strikes and transfer on the ground of discontent and the like, besides
deterioration in the quality of the goods produced and strained relations between labour and
management