Industrial Relations: Concepts, Actors and Perspectives
Industrial Relations: Concepts, Actors and Perspectives
This domain tests whether you can define industrial relations (IR) as the rules and processes governing employment relationships, not just conflict. The exam often asks you to identify actors and apply perspectives to a situation.
Core framework
- Actors: workers and their unions; employers and employer associations; the State, which acts as regulator, employer and adjudicator.
- Context: technology, market, budget, law and power. Dunlop's systems model links actors, contexts, ideology and rules.
- Perspectives: unitarist (shared interests; conflict is pathological); pluralist (legitimate competing interests; conflict is normal and managed by bargaining and procedures); radical/Marxist (conflict rooted in unequal power and class).
- Processes: collective bargaining, participation, grievance handling, dispute settlement and tripartism.
Worked example
A plant manager says a union is unnecessary because 'we are one family', yet employees are aggrieved over arbitrary transfers. From a unitarist view, the union and conflict signal poor communication. From a pluralist view, the transfer rule is a legitimate terms-of-employment issue, so consultation and a grievance procedure are appropriate. Radical analysis would ask who controls transfer decisions and whether workers have real power. The classification changes the remedy, not just the label.
Traps
Do not reduce actors to unions alone; the State has multiple roles. Do not call pluralism 'pro-union' or unitarism 'illegal'. Do not confuse IR with personnel management: IR focuses on the employment relationship and its rules, including collective actors.