If you have a unionised workforce, you must consider the union(s) as part of the implementation and change process. Without this facilitating structure in place, you will have very little chance of a smooth and successful implementation process.
Fortunately, many employees and unions do not resist new technology or innovation. When labour reacts against innovation and technical change, it will often be because: (1) they perceive that they are being exploited, degraded, de-skilled, and/or being expected to work in unsafe or unhealthy working conditions (e.g., job fractionalisation or over-simplification), and/or (2) they fear job displacement.
As the implementer of innovation and technical change, your main concerns regarding unions surround these issues of job-loss, severance and de-skilling. People, whether they are unionised or not, will want to know if they are likely to be losing their jobs as a result of these changes. If they are likely to lose their jobs and they accept this as inevitable, they will want to negotiate severance packages and issues regarding retraining and other outplacement services. If they are not willing to accept job-loss as inevitable, they will want to be involved with you in finding ways to work around it.
Below you will find three main sections that can be accessed by clicking on the text below or by scrolling down the page:
The numbers and types of workers likely to be made redundant are of particular interest to most unions in terms of the level of redundancy payments offered, the choice of workers made redundant and the support mechanisms made available (e.g., to find other jobs for them or to provide retraining). If redundancies are unavoidable, trade unions are likely to try to ensure voluntary redundancies and early retirements are given priority and particular groups, like women or migrants, are not unfairly treated.
Formal
workplace change agreements
In
Australia recently, a popular response to these types
of concerns has been to enter into formal workplace
change agreements. This is an approach that has been
supported by trade unions and other peak bodies adopting
model agreements which can be adapted to a range of
situations. The reason for adopting formal agreements
is that they provide a framework in which decisions
can be made. They can provide guidance on sensitive
issues, and can act as a reference point in case of
dispute.
The process of developing cooperative workplace agreements may still be considered by some to be a waste of time and an unnecessary loss of authority. This is not necessarily the case, as evidence from both enterprises and economies where this approach has been adopted illustrates the opposite effects (Department of Trade, 1987; Hilmer, 1991).
Further evidence comes from the Australian Workplace Industrial Relations Study (1991, AWIRS) of private and public sector managers' views in workplaces where joint consultative committees that managed change existed. The benefits from these committees were: improved employer/employee relations (90 per cent of responding managers); greater ease in introducing change (81 per cent); improvements in productivity (70 per cent); improvements in product and service quality (68 per cent) and lower labour turnover (19 per cent).
One earlier obstacle to change in Australia, was the centralised system setting awards for wages and conditions of employees. This meant inflexibility was created in individual workplaces by the existence of industry-wide awards and the sharp delineation of duties in workplaces. This is, however, no longer necessarily the case as an increasing number of awards are being reformed through the agreements for broad-banding and the creation of career paths for workers under the Structural Efficiency Principle embodied in the 1987 Accord.
The Structural Efficiency Principle itself has often been seen in part as a euphemism for technological change in its broader sense. These arrangements have been supplemented by workplace agreements to vary them in specific cases. The AWIRS study revealed that a number of variations existed in 1989/90, embodied in a range of registered awards and unregistered agreements to vary pay and work conditions, as well as change workplace structures, especially in the public sector. The possibilities of variations will increase with the greater emphasis now placed on enterprise bargaining in the industrial relations system. What is clear from the AWIRS survey is that while explicit reference to new technology as the agent of change was low (4 per cent of cases), the lack of technological change and resources to undertake it was seen by managers as a major obstacle to improved efficiency.
References
Much of the above was adapted from
work done by Michael Johnson (1994) and taken from
Unit 10 in The Management of Innovation and Technical
Change by James Carlopio, University of New South Wales,
Graduate School of Engineering MBT Program.
Australian workplace industrial relations survey (AWIRS) 1989-1990. Prepared by Social Science Data Archives. Canberra: The Archives, 1991.
Australian Department of Trade (1987), Australia reconstructed, AGPS, Chapter 5, Canberra.
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