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¶ … Interview

Functions of labor relations office

The responsibilities of the labor relations manager

In this paper, I present an interview that I conducted with the Labor Relations Officer/Manager within the Human Resource department of our company. The aim of this interview is to reveal the real world the functions performed by labor relations.

Summary of the interview

My interview with the labor relations officer revealed to me several things on the functions of the labor relations department. Good labor relations are a recognizable as well as a legitimate part of a given organization. A good labor relation involves a rather complex relationship between several people, organizations as well as other organizational variables.

Functions of labor relations office

According to the interview the labor relations office is mandated with the coordination of activities with workers in their formal as well as informal groupings. This includes aspects such as trade unions, representatives as well as organizations (Frederickson,1969).The interview also revealed that a good labor relations office must coordinate activities between the employers and their managers as well as formal organizations such as trade unions as well as professional associations.

Thee labor relations office is also concerned with the coordination of activities between the organization and the government as well as with the legislation agencies such as the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service.

An oversimplification of issues reveals that work involves the process in which managers issue instructions to be followed by workers. There is therefore a need for the rule of law to be used in regulating the worker-manager relationships. Several laws have been proposed and the existing ones have evolved in order to act to regulate the conduct of various parties. There are two type of rules that have evolved. They include;

Substantive;- to be used in the determination of the basic pay as well as the conditions of the services offered. This dictates the form of rewards that should be given to the workers.

Procedural: - to be used in determining the manner in which workers are to be treated as well as the methods and the procedures to be used.

The process of determining the labor relations rules involves the application of rules such as the financial, market as well as policy constraints on the bargaining parties (Curran,1990).This is because some of the unions does possess enough financial backing to support an effective industrial action while others have policies that can not allow them to participate in strikes. Yet again, some employees are noted to be more vulnerable as compared to others to the set industrial action. Other employ

The technology that is used in the production is also noted to have an effect on the process of determining the labor relation variables. This is because the effect of an industrial action (strike) in the production of daily consumables like newspapers is very immediate while on other services such as shipbuilding while take several months.

The distribution of power within the community is also indicated to have a direct influence on labor relations. In certain markets such as the Western ones, there is what is called voluntarism (Forbath,1990). This is when the negotiating (employers and workers) parties are free to come up with their own rules and agreements. It is worth noting that voluntarism does not mean that the negotiation process will be devoid of government interference/involvement (Watson and McKersie,1965;Rapoport and Orwant,1962). The government involvement is necessary in order to protect the weak workers in regard to the implementation of the minimum wage requirements, outlaw all forms of discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and disability, determine the minimum standard of hygiene, safety as well as other conditions that are important for the process of service delivery and to attempt to prevent any form of abuse of power by any of the negotiating parties.

The responsibilities of the labor relations manager

The labor relations manager is noted from the interview to have several responsibilities that depends the kind of organizations that they lead. The interview revealed a total of seven main functions all of which are played by the labor relations managers at the HR department.

These roles include;

1. To ensure that the organization keep abreast of the set labor relation laws. These include the legislations as well as precedents. The manager is also charged with advising the other managers on their various respective responsibilities such as the observation of requirements to be met while employing people with disability, never to discriminate, never to make public the 'spent' convictions of various employees, as well as to observe the set codes of practice such as the ones for discipline as well as redundancy

2. To conduct local negotiations (within the company) as well as act as the representative of the employer in various national negotiations. The manager could either be a supporter or a critic of a given aspect of the trade.