Industrial relations involves dealings between employees and their employers. Effective relations between labor and management are important in an industrial society. Relations between labor unions and management are the chief factors in industrial relations. But the term also refers to other human relations, including relations between individual workers and relations between workers and their immediate supervisors.
The industrial relations system establishes the rules that govern the employer-employee relationship. It helps to determine wages and salaries, hours of work, working conditions, hiring and training procedures, recreation facilities, and insurance programs.
Collective bargaining.
Employees in many industries have chosen labor unions to represent them in negotiations with their employers. Nearly a fifth of U.S. workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements between unions and management. The proportion of workers covered is highest among government employees. It is also high in the manufacturing, transportation, mining, and construction industries.
A collective bargaining agreement establishes many of a company’s industrial relations procedures. Collective bargaining agreements also affect workers in non-union facilities, because they often set a pattern followed by other companies.
In their early years, American unions often had difficulty in getting management to recognize them as bargaining representatives for workers. After passage of the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act) in 1935, unions were more widely accepted. The act established the National Labor Relations Board and required employers to accept a union as a bargaining representative if chosen by employees. The Labor-Management Relations Act (Taft-Hartley Act) of 1947 changed this process slightly. But most legal procedures established in the 1935 act are still essentially the same today. The Taft-Hartley Act outlawed the practice of hiring only union members. However, many states permit the practice of requiring workers to join the union after being hired. See Taft-Hartley Act .
The settlement of disputes.
A grievance procedure is now part of most collective bargaining agreements. This procedure provides an orderly series of steps which can be used to settle disputes concerning agreements. If the disputes cannot be settled through talks between labor and management, the matter is sent to an arbitrator (an expert with power to decide). Both sides must accept the arbitrator’s decision.
When bargaining fails, workers sometimes strike to try to force management to meet their demands. But they have used strikes less in recent years because of the orderly procedures set up through collective bargaining agreements and legislation.
