Establish Union Relationship at WorkplaceRelationship between union and management has changed together with environment and economical condition from time to time. Union relations with management should be seen as an essential part of management system and techniques, and not as a discipline or activity apart from management. This paper explores a step in how to establish the relationship between management and union and how management can shape their organization for reaching their goals with support contributed by union. It also attempts to identify some of the elements which may generally be regarded as features of a good industrial relations system. It is not to say the step through this article compulsory to being practice by all industrial life as no one kind of relationship is best and can be fit to all varied circumstances of organization. However, all good relationship has some common characteristic include trust, communication and a good leader to coordinate the movement of organization. These articles will deal in general terms of ways to achieving and maintaining any kind of good relationship in organization.
IntroductionOrganizations today are facing an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing environment (Johari,2006). Both management and employee want to protect their interest. Management has to increase their value while employees have to maintain or build up their outcomes in order to survive in the competitive environment. A voluntary organization like the union is a choice for employee to protect their needs in order to balance with needs of company.
Basically the union offers their promise to a number of benefits in order to solicit the member’s commitment. Johari (2006) indicated that some of the benefits include maximizing wages of their members, establishing a join system which both protect their members from arbitrary management actions, allows them to participate in decision making within the organization for which they work, allowing them to express the social cohesion, aspirations and political ideology of their membership.
Labor union can be defined as an organization of employees that uses collective action to advance its members interest in regards to wages and working conditions. (Ivancevich, 2010). According to Ramasamy (2008), Malaysia’s trade union movement is faced with a number of challenges, notably from neoliberal policies and changes structures of employment. According to statistic provided by Department of Trade Union Affairs, as at June 2011, the private sector employee unions at Malaysia are made up for 441 trade unions while trade unions for public sector, statutory bodies, local government and employers, there are 254. Total members who joined unions are 803,003 members. Thus only 6.3 percent of employees belong to a union out of the total labor force of 12.6 million.
In Malaysia, the Labor Party of Malaysia and the NLA as a whole can continue to strengthen their bargaining power by gaining a wide range of new members. On June 11, 2012, the prime minister informed the NLA to adopt the “right of collective bargaining to meet a public sector workforce development plan”, as it provides for a full implementation of the government’s plan. At that time, the government promised new training for workers to be provided for every new entry level employment, and also signed two “minimum wage” agreements. This new agreement provides for a minimum wage and also guarantees a monthly pay increase for employees of a public sector trade union. Both agreements were signed by Prime Minister Najib Razak. In January 2013, the Malaysian Labor Law Minister, Keba Selim, announced that the government will open a law and institute a minimum wage of 30,000,000 k (approximately $4,950,000 today) to a new community workers. It should reflect a shift in labor policy.
Work. An example of two labour groups are discussed. The MHL (Malaysian Labor Association and Malaysia National Association of Manufacturers) represents Malaysia’s largest small–business owners, they are the largest single union group or body in the country. They comprise 39 percent of Malaysia’s trade union members on a monthly basis. During the past two years, as of 2009, a total of 11,724 Malayali (19.4 percent) MHL persons were working on Malaysian trade unions, of which 22 percent are public sector union employees. Since April this year, there have been 23,788 MHL workers who are on the basis of the public sector government policy or sector specific policy, of which 10 percent are public sector employees. This represents a significant increase since 2013. According to the Department of Trade Union Affairs, as at July 2011, total net annual contributions of the Malayali MHL union group to the public sector workforce development plan (TSU) exceeded 6.25 percent.
The other organisations are concerned with the ongoing reform of labour relations in Malaysia, especially under the reforms introduced under prime minister Najib Razak. In May 2011, the government created the Malayali MHL’s Collective Action Group, based on a coalition of members of the trade unions, to work together to reform labour relations in Malaysia. It has been led according to the coalition by both government and private sector partners, as all five of the Malayali MHL members, including prime minister Najib’s wife Nusai, support reform and work to strengthen the social sector. However, in December, the coalition was dissolved, stating that the Malayali MHL has no ability to fulfil its membership demands as the government has banned the association from working in public sectors.
Labor leaders call on Najib to pursue reforms in the industry. The MHL union will be involved in every phase of the reforms. On April 8, 2013, the National Trade and Investment Agency (NTA) held a working meeting with the representatives from 11 trade unions
However,