Industrial relations

Industrial relations is a multidisciplinary field that studies the employment relationship. Industrial relations is increasingly being called employment relations because of the importance of non-industrial employment relationships. Many outsiders also equate industrial relations to labour relations and believe that industrial relations only studies unionized employment situations, but this is an oversimplification.

Overview
Industrial relations has three faces: science building, problem solving, and ethical. In the science building face, industrial relations is part of the social sciences, and it seeks to understand the employment relationship and its institutions through high-quality, rigorous research. In this vein, industrial relations scholarship intersects with scholarship in labor economics, industrial sociology, labor and social history, human resource management, political science, law, and other areas. In the problem solving face, industrial relations seeks to design policies and institutions to help the employment relationship work better. "The term human relations refers to the whole field of relationship that exists because of the necessary collaboration of men and women in the employment process of modern industry."It is that part of management which is concerned with the management of enterprise -whether machine operator,skilled worker or manager.It deals with either the relationship between the state and employers and workers organisation or the relation between the occupational organisation themselves.

History
Industrial relations has its roots in the industrial revolution which created the modern employment relationship by spawning free labor markets and large-scale industrial organizations with thousands of wage workers.As society wrestled with these massive economic and social changes, labor problems arose. 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. 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 Webbs Industrial Democracy (1897) being the key intellectual work. Industrial relations thus rejected the classical econ. Institutionally, industrial relations was founded by John R. Commons when he created the first academic industrial relations program at the University of Wisconsin in 1920. Early financial support for the field came from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who supported progressive labor-management relations in the aftermath of the bloody strike at a Rockefeller-owned coal mine in Colorado.

Industrial Relations Today

By many accounts, industrial relations today is in crisis. In academia, its traditional positions are threatened on one side by the dominance of mainstream economics and organizational behavior, and on the other by postmodernism. In policy-making circles, the industrial relations emphasis on institutional intervention is trumped by a neoliberal emphasis on the laissez faire promotion of free markets. In practice, labor unions are declining and fewer companies have industrial relations functions. The number of academic programs in industrial relations is therefore shrinking, and scholars are leaving the field for other areas, especially human resource management and organizational behavior. The importance of work, however, is stronger than ever, and the lessons of industrial relations remain vital. The challenge for industrial relations is to re-establish these connections with the broader academic, policy, and business worlds.

Industrial Relation System

An industrial relations system consists of the whole gamut of relationships between employees and employees and employers which are managed by the means of conflict and cooperation.

A sound industrial relations system is one in which relationships between management and employees (and their representatives) on the one hand, and between them and the State on the other, are more harmonious and cooperative than conflictual and creates an environment conducive to economic efficiency and the motivation, productivity and development of the employee and generates employee loyalty and mutual trust. Actors in the IR system:

Three main parties are directly involved in industrial relations:

Employers: Employers possess certain rights vis--vis labors. They have the right to hire and fire them. Management can also affect workers interests by exercising their right to relocate, close or merge the factory or to introduce technological changes.

Employees: Workers seek to improve the terms and conditions of their employment. They exchange views with management and voice their grievances. They also want to share decision making powers of management. Workers generally unite to form unions against the management and get support from these unions.

Government: The central and state government influences and regulates industrial relations through laws, rules, agreements, awards of court ad the like. It also includes third parties and labor and tribunal courts.

SCOPE: The concept of industrial relations has a very wide meaning and connotation. In the narrow sense, it means that the employer, employee relationship confines itself to the relationship that emerges out of the day to day association of the management and the labor. In its wider sense, industrial relations include the relationship between an employee and an employer in the course of the running of an industry and may project it to spheres, which may transgress to the areas of quality control, marketing, price fixation and disposition of profits among others. The scope or industrial relations is quite vast. The main issues involved here include the following:

1.

Collective bargaining

2. Machinery for settlement of industrial disputes

3. Standing orders

4. Workers participation in management

5. Unfair labor practices