Employee Relations AC219

1
Employee Relations AC219

• Lecture 3
• Radical and Marxist Perspectives on the
  employment relationship

2
Unitarism and Pluralism

• Unitarism identified with managerial approaches
  to organisations and the employment relationship
• Pluralism more influential among academics
• Public policy initiatives in UK and other
  western countries have mainly (until recently)
  reflected pluralist concerns
• Support for trade unions and collective
  bargaining an indication of this

3
Radical Approaches

• Important third approach to viewing and
  conceptualising the employment relationship
• Focus on Marxism, but other approaches feminist
  and post-modern challenge unitarism and
  pluralism
• Marxism essentially a wide-ranging critique of
  capitalism but with implications for work and
  employment

4
Marxism

• Not exclusively concerned with work and work
  relations, about capitalism
• For Marx capitalism contained the seeds of its
  own destruction doomed to failure
• Four key elements in critique of capitalism
• - Totality (social phenomena interrelated)
• - Change (social relations dynamic)
• - Class (social relations reflect different
  class interests)
• - Praxis (practice enacts theory)

5
Marxism

• Classical Marxism
• Nature of capitalism antagonism of classes
  based on ownership and non-ownership of means of
  production
• Exploitative relationship extraction of surplus
  value
• Structuralist account
• Base superstructure model
• Capitalist society generates capitalist
  institutions that operate in the interests of the
  capitalist class

6
Marxism

• Central features of Marxist accounts of work and
  employment
• Asymmetry of power
• Exploitation and alienation based on
  ownership/non-ownership of means of production
• Control key feature for employers especially
  control of decisions over work
• Frontier of control contested and in flux
• Work is contested terrain (Edwards 1979)

7
Marxism and the Labour Process

• Marx coined the phrase but others taken further
• Focus on control and how labour power (the
  potential to produce) is transformed into use
  value
• Braverman (1974) key figure capitalism about
  de-skilling and cheapening of labour through
  Taylorism the problem of labour control resolved
  via direct control of the labour process

8
Marxism and the Labour Process

• Marks a return to the indeterminacy of labour
  power and the active and contested construction
  of work regimes
• Central problem for any employer is that labour
  contract is indeterminate cannot specify
  everything in advance
• Moreover effort bargain is volatile subject to
  range of pressures
• For Marxists central problem is one of CONTROL of
  this relationship Labour Process

9
The Labour Process

• Braverman (1975)
• Degradation thesis
• Capitalist control achieved through de-skilling
  of labour and de-gradation of work through
  Taylorism and Scientific Management

10
Marxism and Labour Process

• Bravermans work spawned a huge wave of interest
  in labour process
• Bravermans work criticised one-dimensional,
  limited attention to worker resistance and
  challenges to managerial control but revived
  the Marxist contribution to understanding work
  and organisations
• Friedman (1977) two-dimensional direct control
  v responsible autonomy

11
Marxism and the Labour Process

• Edwards (1979)
• Typologies of control
• Crises of accumulation have led to more advanced
  systems of control
• Braverman, one-dimensional account
• Distinction between
• - Simple control
• - Technical control
• - Bureaucratic control

12
Marxism and the Labour Process

• Edwards (1979) labour control dynamic and evolves
  over time often in response to crises of
  capitalist accumulation
• Recent extensions of Edwards Barker (1993)
  concertive control, Ray (1986) use of
  cultural control
• Edwards, Gordon, Reich (1982), take this further
  - link to long waves of capitalist development
• Phases of control associated with periods of
  employee resistance
• Burawoy (1985) labour process a terrain of
  contest with central task of employers to
  persuade workers to co-operate in their own
  exploitation

13
Labour Process Approaches

• Elger and Smith (2005)
• Study of 5 Japanese MNCs in UK
• Their framework -complexity of influences on
  labour process
• Role of agency and relative autonomy of labour
  process
• Integrates elements of varieties of capitalism

14
Marxism and Labour Process

• Elger and Smith refinement and extension of
  labour process approach and influences upon this
• But
• Some Marxists unhappy about continued focus on
  control at point of production
• In Marxs terms, employers concerned not only
  with extracting surplus value but also with
  realising it
• Need to consider product markets and full circuit
  of capital (Kelly 1982, 1998) not just labour
  process as key to changes in work and
  organisation

15
Reflections (1)

• Activities of employers and unions ( employees)
  to be construed in terms of such concepts as ..
  class struggle
• The major contribution of Marxists has been.in
  the questions asked
• Work and management take place in a continuous
  process of pressure and counter-pressure,
  conflict and accommodation, overt and tacit
  struggle

16
Reflections (2)

• Where does this leave us?
• Different work contexts may give rise to
  different strategies of control
• Managerial control never complete
  contradictions (control v commitment) and
  resistance
• Need to understand work and employment in wider
  contexts of totality of peoples activities under
  capitalism
• Labour problem not unique to capitalism but
  labour problem under capitalism may have
  particular characteristics may provide a
  unique twist to labour problem
• Labour problem may also be resolved differently
  under different varieties of capitalism