Rethinking Labour-Management Relations

Offering a blueprint for ending the stalemate caused by strike action in labour-management relations, this work asks why the existing system of industrial relations has developed and outline their proposals for a better alternative. The authors show the benefits and drawbacks of three systems of industrial relations: a freely operating market for labour where workers bargain individually with employers, a strike-based system of collective bargaining, and a compulsory arbitration system. They show how the strike replaced individual bargaining, and highlight the deficiencies of both these systems. In their view, arbitration retains most of the benefits of the strike system, while avoiding most of the disadvantages, and so is a more efficient and effective way of settling disputes. They place the emphasis for finding solutions on the parties involved and show how government intervention can be kept to a minimum. The authors fit their practical knowledge of labour-management relations into a comparative and theoretical framework. This book should be of interest to lecturers and students of human resource management, industrial relations, public policy, management and labour law.