Week 1 Lesson 2

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Study of Collective Bargaining : Critical Assumptions About Conflict

• Conflict is inherent between labor and management, but not pathological
• Conflict comes from the differing interests, economic and social, between labor and management
• Society has a legitimate interest in labor and workplace conflicts
• UIUC GEO Strike

Lecture Notes

Okay, but what about some of the alternative perspectives to labor relations, collective bargaining and the unions? What about some of their assumptions? So let's start with the human resource management perspective. In contrast to the industrial relations perspective that I just noted, the human resource management perspective states that conflict results from poor human resource management policies, not from an inherent conflict between the parties, not from an inherent conflict that stems from economic and social factors, and is not a permanent feature of the employment relationship, right? These are assumptions that differ from the industrial relations perspective and we can talk about these during the live sessions, we can have a debate about these during the live session. In terms of the critical industrial relations perspective, this perspective, which as you'll recall from previous slides, is to the left politically from the industrial relations perspective, states that inherent conflict over monetary issues between labor and management and that the conflict is over unequal power relations broadly defined, not just unequal power relations between labor and management, but unequal power from a broader societal class perspective.