Essay on "International Employment Relations"

Essay 9 pages (2780 words) Sources: 10

[EXCERPT] . . . .

International Employment Relations

Globalization is a phenomenon that has increasingly influenced the world of business and work. This includes the relationships among employees, employers and business partners throughout the world. Several interesting phenomena have resulted from globalization, particularly when comparing the industrialized world with developing countries.

Women and minorities have for example received increasing opportunities to become prominent members of the workplace. The exploitation of children for cheap labor has diminished, and general workplace abuses have become subject to regulation and investigation.

On the other hand, some researchers have also found that, in many cases, the workplace has become an issue of greater uncertainty than was the case before globalization. Globalization meant a differentiation not only in the employer-employee relationship, but also in the relationship between the employee and his or her work. While more job opportunities now exist than ever before, these opportunities are inherently uncertain in terms of contractual obligations from the viewpoint of employers.

A trend among employers is to increasingly discard the stability of the long-term employee contract in favor of more short-term arrangements. Union relations have also significantly changed, with more complicated negotiations regarding contract terms and honoring these terms for all employees.

Furthermore, the management of multi-national companies have also become important in terms of globalization. Whereas a centralized relationship among workers and top management was the trend in the past, businesses are increasingly decentralizing by means of international expansion and franchising.

The relationship among employers and employees have changed significantly with the rise of globalization and the increasing use of the Internet and other communication technology. Although the workplace have become less stable as a result, it has also become more exciting and brought better opportunities for all sectors of society.

The Role of Unions

With globalization and the differentiation in the workplace situation, Unions have also differentiated according not only to the specific needs of workers, but also according to their involvement in the wider contexts of politics and economics. (Martin and Bamber 2005: 382).

Current union organization often has an inherent element of collective bargaining in a decentralized way. They are moving away from industry-level bargaining, as was the case before globalization, towards a more decentralized aspect, where enterprise-level collective bargaining takes place. According to Martin and Bamber (2005: 383), developed countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom have focused their union activities upon consultancy, advice, technical support and professional development. In Germany, on the other hand, industry-level unionism has remained, while in Poland, this level of unionism never developed. In general, however, the authors note that unionism has become more individualized in terms of employer-employee relations, and how these relationships are facilitated by union involvement.

Job Stability

In the globalized world, several authors mention the fact that job stability in terms of contract duration has been significantly reduced. While growth and employment opportunities have therefore increased with globalization, the specific forms that these take has brought several challenges (Auer 2005: 4). Workers who are uncertain about their workplace situation for example experience a significant level of increased stress and strain. Increasing global competition, which could result in mergers and acquisitions could also result in job displacement and job loss. Companies are therefore under pressure to integrate their economic activities with the rest of the world by means of exports and expansion. Large businesses that fail to do this are likely to fail entirely. For countries that do not take part in the global arena, this means a reduction in growth and employment with an increase in poverty.

Countries that do not take part in the global economy cannot offer their businesses the opportunity to grow beyond the country's borders. On the other hand, participation is not without its problems. In labor markets, for example, the creation of new jobs occurs in concomitance with job losses as a result of globalization. According to Auer (2005: 4), the distribution of advantages and disadvantages related to globalization is often unfair, differentiating in terms of qualification and requirements. Hence, losing a job in one sector or country does not necessarily guarantee that an individual will regain employment somewhere else without first adjusting his or her education or skills.

In addition, Auer (2005: 5) mentions that long-term employment relations are rapidly making way for more short-term arrangements. This occurred as a result of the rapid adjustments that businesses are often obliged to make in response to the demands and increased flexibility of globalization.

Kalleberg (2009) also addresses the issue of workplace stability and security for individual employees. In the United States specifically, the author notes that the "most recent era" of uncertainty in the workplace began during the mid-1970s, a decade during which the global market place began to play a significant role in the nature of the workplace (Kalleberg 2009: 2). Specifically, macro-economic changes such as the changes in the oil market led to increased global competition.

In the automobile and steel industries, manufacturers in the United States were challenged by Japanese and South Korean companies, where cheaper products were manufactured. This led to a drive to outsource work to countries with lower wages to increase the competitive edge of United States companies. This in turn created new local labor pools, where immigrants were willing to work for lower wages than American citizens. Hence a discrepancy began to occur in employment relationships, where competition rather than worker demand began to influence wages as a major factor.

The increase in technological advances also brought about a concomitant process of the need for companies to become more globally competitive, while also making this possible for them. Unions also declined, making it possible for businesses to exploit their relationships with employees in order to increase competition. Workers in turn were faced with weakening sources of institutional protection (Kalleberg 2009: 3).

As globalization and competition increased, the decline in regulation continued, with not only unions, but also government regulations for employment standards becoming unimportant in the relationship between employer and employee. In this way, there was a balance of power shift towards employers and away from employees. This situation reached its peak during Ronald Reagan's rule from 1980. Businesses as it were received the power and freedom to do whatever they wished in order to increase their competitive edge in the international marketplace.

According to Kalleberg (2009: 5), there was a global revolution towards new-liberalism during the1990s, where individual responsibility for work and employment began to take precedence over an employer's sole responsibility to care for workers. In addition, the focus was on the market and its drivers, while privatization and the removal of government protections continued to contribute to worker uncertainty in their relationship with employers.

Globalization also significantly influenced the work process, with the requirements of the move towards the information age evident in a rise in the service industry while sources of jobs in manufacturing, mass production companies declined. The new economy was in fact based upon flexible production. Greater flexibility was also brought about in employment relations, where employers began to seek greater flexibility in these relationships. The traditional system, providing a relative measure of security in terms of full-time work for a predetermined number of years at a single employer, became less the norm than the exception. The newly precarious work relationship led to further transformations in the workplace, which brought further effects within the broader context of society as a whole (Kalleberg 2009: 4).

There was for example an increase in diversity among the workforce, with women, non-white, immigrant and older workers entering the labor market on the same level of opportunity as white males. Furthermore, an increase in immigration was encouraged not only by globalization, but also by a reduction of barriers to new entrants into the country.

There have also been advances in the concepts relating to work and physical space with the increase of interconnection among people and organizations. It has become increasingly easy not only to expand a business across the borders of a country, but also to relocate workers and goods on a national and international scale. This in turn has contributed to worker uncertainty in terms of work space and work security. Expanding internationally would mean that workers would need to be willing to relocate or to lose their employment. This could put strain upon factors such as family and friendship relationships.

In addition, the relocation of company resources also brought employers greater access to cheaper labor, which also affected current employment relationships with local employees. In the same way, information and communication technologies have enabled countries such as China, India and Russia to enter the global economy during the 1990s. This brought further opportunities for the countries with existing capital to exploit the increasing labor pool within these countries.

Concentrating their efforts upon capital rather than labor relationships, companies have become increasingly focused upon maximizing their profit by not only expanding globally, but also by making layoffs one of the standard elements of transformation strategies. In this way, short-term profits are… READ MORE

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