Экономические науки/5. Управление трудовыми ресурсами

Valizade D.R.

Associate professor at Saint Petersburg University of Humanities and Social Sciences

CHANGES IN TRADE UNIONS POLICY FOR CONTINGENT WORKES

The main purpose of the given article is to analyze the changes in trade unions policy for contingent workers. Contingent workers are workers who were hired thorough non-standard forms of employment. It should be noticed that non-standard forms of employment are the most speculative labour issue in developed and developing countries. Labour market flexibility, which seems to be the obsession for neoliberal economists, shows no significant results in terms of alleviating the consequences of overproduction crisis. At the same time, after decades of labour priorities in economics, renewal forms of labour market regulation were developed. The policy of permanent work is no more a dominant one and temporal work. Non-standard forms of employment have occupied a growing part of the labour market in both developed and developing countries (Lips 1999). This trend is becoming more evident during the process of society transformation from the industrial to postindustrial stages, as the growing service sector allows employers to use different forms of flexible employment more effectively than it was in the industrial society (Evans and Gibb 2011). Transformations in labour relations have led to changes in employee behavior and employer strategy as well as trade union policy (MacKenzie 2010). Non-standard employment is associated with types of employment which are in opposition to standard employment relationship (full-time, continuous work with one employer). Non-standard employment is the type of employment which is often insecure, unprotected, and cannot support a household (Broughton et al 2010).

Developing countries follow the same processes of labour regulation as developed countries and debates about the status of permanent workers and workers hired through atypical forms are still in high interest. In Russia, for example, temporal work is a part of legislation like permanent work. At the same time temporal work is considered y trade unions as a main treat for stable work place, but for employers this is the easiest way to create a flexible management system and to reduce costs for workforce. In European Union countries these categories of work represented more than 30% of total workforce and have increased considerably in the last 20 years (Labour Force Survey 2011).

Latest research considers the effect of non-standard employment on social and economic policy, rejecting the harmful effects of precarious employment on workers (Edwards 2006). Others suggest that non-standard workers require special forms of representation (Burchell et al 1999). Further, some authors (Lobok and Zapesotskiy 2010) argue that non-standard forms of employment are the main threat for trade unions development because of the reducing membership effect caused by non-standard forms of employment.

Thus despite current contradictions about this issue the fact of more secure status of permanent workers is a common accepted fact among the most researches in the field of non-standard forms of employment.

Relevant changes in labour market policy forced trade unions to develop special forms of representation for contingent workers. It is been shown during the last decades that workers hired through non-standard forms of employment were not satisfied with unions’ attempts to protect them from threads associated with temporal contracts and other types of non-standard employment (Hoque and Kirkpatrick 2003) So currently all forms of non-standard employment and trade unions responses to them are in state of development.

Heery (2009) shows that the most common and fast developing non-standard forms of employment are:

1. Temporary work.

2. Agency work (or out-staffing)

3. Self-employment.

Different trade unions respond to different forms of non-standard employment using different strategies. The main four union responses also outlined by Heery (2009) can be summarized as:

1) Exclusion. Contingent workers are excluded from union membership.

2) Subordination. Reduced rights to participate in union government, locking contingent workers into secondary labour market positions.

3) Inclusion. Equal membership with full rights to participate in union government and equal treatment as for core members.

4) Engagement. Differentiated membership status and agreements and policies for workers hired through non-standard forms of employment.

According to Heery (2009) who investigated the current state of unions’ policy in the United Kingdom trade unions completed the way form exclusion to engagement in terms of contingent workers. Debates among Trade Union Congress members resulted in evolutionary changes first in the ways of joining contingent workers and then in the ways of representing them. Learned how to join contingent works trade unions now are looking for the best ways for enhancing their welfare.

At the same time it should be noticed that still smaller part of contingent workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements (Muller, Platzer and Rub 2006). Thus it is possible to indicate two main options for trade unions responses to contingent work:

- special agreements, which regulate hiring and allow to use advantages of collective bargaining.

- specific system of representation.

Heery (2009) highlights such methods as labour market regulation, special union services and an effective use of employment law. But the effectiveness of these and other recently developed methods still wasn’t investigated systematically.

Observation of main research papers in the field of unions’ responses to non-standard forms of employment shows several gaps in existing scientific results:

1. Despite a wide range of research there is no systematic evaluation of the effect of trade unions responses to regulating non-standard forms of employment. Research to date has proposed a classification of responses of European trade unions and proposals for future development of these forms. But there is lack of research looking at the results achieved by unions in regulating non-standard forms of employment.

2. Current research in the field of trade unions responses to non-standard employment are mainly based on data and statistics provided by trade unions. But, generally, they have not been compared to qualitative data derived from the contingent workers’ opinion about the effectiveness of unions’ policy. Without such comparison it is impossible to complete a picture of the effectiveness of trade union responses to non-standard forms of employment.

Prospect researches related to unions’ policy for contingent workers should investigated the outcomes of current strategies using for such types of workers and basing on the effectiveness of these strategies propose new methods necessary for further development of unions’ policy for contingent workers.

Bibliography

1. Broughton, A. Billeta, I. Kullander, M. (2010) Flexible forms of work: ‘very atypical’ contractual arrangements. Institute for Employment Studies and Eurofound.

2. Edwards, P. (2006) Non-standard work and labour market re-structuring in the UK, Rome.

3. Evans, J. Gibb, E. (2011) Moving from Precarious Employment to Decent Work DISCUSSION PAPER No. 13, ILO.

4. Gumbrell-McCormick, R. (2011) European trade unions and ‘atypical’ workers. Industrial Relations Journal Volume 42, Issue 3, pp.293–310.

5. Heery, E. (2004) The trade union response to agency labour in Britain. Industrial Relations Journal, 35:434–450.

6. Heery, E. (2009) Trade unions and contingent labour: scale and method. Cambridge J Regions Econ Soc., pp.429-442.

7. Hoque, K. Kirkpatrick, I. (2003) Non-Standard Employment in the Management and Professional Workforce: Training, Consultation and Gender Implications, Work Employment & Society, vol. 17 no. 4, pp. 667-689.

8. Lips, B. (1999) Temps and the Labour Market: Why Unions Fear Staffing Companies. The Cato Journal, pp. 31-39.

9. Lobok, D. Zapesotskiy, A. (2010) Trade Unions Responses to Transformations in Economic System. Saint Petersburg: UHSS.

10. MacKenzie, R. (2010) Why do contingent workers join a trade union? Evidence from the Irish telecommunications sector. European Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. 16 no. 2, pp.153-168.