Critically assess the proposition that collective bargaining is the Essay

Critically assess the proposition that collective bargaining is the most appropriate channel to redress the power imbalance within the employment relationship - Essay Example With the cases of Company A and B, such demands can be regarded as a non-issue since it is the right of every employee to be provided with their basic needs. However, the unwillingness of employers to grant the aforementioned requests pose a big problem, and might eventually strain the relationship between the management and its numerous employees. Without a proper venue to hear both parties, a collective decision may render impossible to happen. If this happens, employees would have no other choice but to go to the streets and hold the picket lines until other labour unions or government agencies get hold of their case. Hence, there is a need to emphasise the fact that every company or organisation must acknowledge the rights of their employees. And the only way to meet halfway through the conflict is through a collective bargaining agreement between the two parties involved (Cornell, 2007). In the UK alone, collective bargaining has been exercised by at least 15.5 million employees from a manpower population of about 17.5 million since 1945 (Cite filename: Personnel & HRM). British Academic Beatrice Webb was said to have coined such term in her 1891 book entitled ‘Cooperative Movement’ in an effort to provide an alternative movement from individual bargaining between a company and its individual employee. However, it was the definition made by Allan Flanders, as a ‘process of rule-making leading to joint regulation in industry,’ that further refined the meaning of collective bargaining (Wikipedia, 2007). He even expanded the significance of the term as not only limited to determining pay but as well as in the (cite filename: employee relations): †¦management acceptance of a style of employment relationship which is based on the legitimisation of the expression of the different interest within the organisation (conflict), on joint regulation (constraining the unilateral exercise of managerial authority over