Importance of Industrial Relations.

¢ Industrial relations include the relationship between employers and employees in the course of running an industry and may project it to areas of quality control. Marketing, price fixation, disposing profits etc.

¢ Association of various persons, workmen, supervisory staff, management and employer in industry create industrial relations.

¢ This influences the economic, social and political life of whole community.

•          Labor Relations i.e relation between union and management.
•          Employer –employees relations i.e relations between management and employees.
•          Group relations i.e relations between various groups of workmen.
•          Community or Public relations i.e relations between industry and society.
•          Promotions and development of healthy labor – management relations.
•          Maintenance of industrial peace and avoidance of industrial strike.
•          Development of true industrial democracy.

¢ IR widens the areas of administration, organization, supervision and coordination, liaison, drafting of regulations, rules, law and order and their interpretation, job analysis, salary and wage administration, wage surveys and pay schedules, recruitment and employment, placement and induction, collective bargaining, employee benefits and social security measures.

Objectives of Industrial Relations

¢ To safeguard the interest of labor and management by securing the highest level of 
        mutual understanding and good will among all those sections in the industry which 
        participate in the process of production.

¢ To avoid industrial conflict or strike and develop harmonious relations, which are an 
        essential factor in the productivity of workers and the industrial progress ofna 
        country.

¢ To raise productivity to a higher level in an era of full employment by lessening the 
        tendency to high turnover and frequency of absenteeism.

¢ To establish and nurse the growth of an industrial democracy based on labor 
        partnership in the sharing of profits and of managerial decisions, so that individual 
        personality may grow for the benefit of the industry and of the country as well.

¢ To eliminate as far as possible and practicable, strikes, lockouts and gheraos by 
        providing reasonable wages, improved wages, improved living and working 
        conditions, said fringe benefits.

¢ To establish govt control of such plants and units that are running at a loss or in 
        which production has to be regulated in the public interest.

¢ Improvements in the economic conditions of workers in the existing state of 
        industrial managements  and political govt.

¢ Control exercised by the state over industrial undertaking with a view to regulating 
        production and promoting harmonious industrial relations.

¢ Vesting of a proprietary interest of the workers in the industries in which they are 
        employed.

¢ The main objective of industrial relations is to bring about minimization of conflict 
        and maximization of cooperation.

¢ It causes sound and healthy relations between employers and employees.

¢ It facilitates production and productivity by avoiding unhealthy atmosphere in the 
        industry.

Nature of Industrial Relations

}Industrial relations do not function in a vacuum and are conditioned with three determinants:

•   Institutional Factors
•   Economic Factors
•   Technological Factors

}Institutional Factors

¢ Economic Factors-
                                   Include economic organization (socialist, capitalist, communist, individual ownership, govt ownership), power of labor and employers, the nature and composition of the labor force and the sources of supply and demand in the labor market.

¢ Technological Factors

          The development of industrial relations is not due to any one single factor but rather been largely determined by the conditions existing at the eve of the industrial revolution in the Western Europe and the social, economic and political situations available in different locations.

¢ From the earliest phase of industrialization from which the workers formerly working with their own tools entered into power driven factories, owned by owners; to minimization of breakdown due to industrial conflicts of later state and further to industrial peace and hence to human relations approach to raise productivity in a democracy based on labor partnerships not only for sharing the profits but of managerial decisions themselves has been a long journey indeed. 

- Include state policy, labor laws, voluntary codes, collective agreements, laborers’ unions and employers’ organization, social institution like the community, caste, joint family, creed, system of beliefs etc, attitude of work, systems of power status, relative nearness to the centers of power; motivation and influence and industrial relations.

- Include the techniques of production, modernization and rationalization schemes, capital structures etc.

Origin of Industrial Relations

¢ Evolved during the industrial revolution.
¢ Low wages, long working hours, monotonous and dangerous work, abusive                

        supervisory practices led to high employee turnover, violent strikes and threat to  

        social stability.
¢ Important contributions were Industrial Democracy (1897) by Sidney Webb and 

       Beatrice Webb and John R. Commons who created first academic industrial relation   

       program at the University of Wisconsin.
¢ As a discipline, industrial relations was formalized in 1950’s with the formation of the  

       Oxford School by Allan Flanders and Hugh Clegg.

Branding Decisions

l Branding vs. No Brand
l Private Brand vs. Manufacturer's Brand
l Single Brand versus Multiple Brands (in one country)
l Local Brands vs. Worldwide Brand