The Changing Industrial Relations

1
The Changing Industrial Relations Landscape in
the Republic of Ireland Bill Roche Professor of
Industrial Relations and Human Resources School
of Business University College Dublin
Presentation to Seminar on Changing Approaches in
Industrial Relations - The Republic of Ireland,
Northern Ireland and the UK, November 21st 2005
2
Change as Individualization?

• HRM practices, esp. performance-based pay
• individualize employment relations
• Unionization precluded or collective
  bargaining
• weakened
• Performance pay - the supreme
  individualizing
• force
• Problems and evidence

3
Change as Progressive Spread of Partnership and
Involvement?

• The Sabel-McKersie thesis
• Widespread experimentation evident
• Experimentation mainly fragmentory
• Has the high tide of workplace partnership
  passed?
• Some leading-edge models eclipsed or collapsed

4
Change as the Demise of Voluntarism?

• Explosive growth of employment and other
  legislation
• juridifying industrial relations
• New competencies and roles develop
• How important in shaping and reshaping
  behaviour,
• relative to other influences?
• Postures and responses to encroachment of law
  vary
• significantly, depending on the character of
  employment
• relationship.

5
Parallel Landscapes Divergence in Employment
Relations Models

• Crumbling of national industrial relations
• system based on ground-rules of adversarial
• model
• Alternative patterns/models now co-exist
• side-by-side

6
Patterns/Models of Employment Relations
Product and process dynamism And corporate
cultures Discontinuous commercial Change and
strong unions Intensified competition Gradualist
public service Reform programme Intensified
cost-based Competition distinctive Corporate
values
Human Resource Model
Substitute external law justice on the job
Partnership Model
Seek new modes of mediation
Modified Adversarial Model
Compliance with law
Unilateral Model
Test boundaries of law
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Some Implications for Institutions of Middle
Ground

• Different models of employment relations -
  different
• models of mediation and conflict resolution
• Internalizing dispute resolution, eschewing
  third-party
• institutions possible consequences
• Basic institutional fabric more contested than
  any time
• in half century?