Productivity, wages and industrial relations

Galloping inflation, rising wage costs, and deteriorating economic conditions. of wage earners have drawn attention to the significance of productivity in labour relations and collective bargaining. Until recently, collective bargaining and productivity improvement were often considered to have little connection. But, today, managers in the public and private sectors, and union officials are aware that productivity increases can be secured through labour-management cooperation and collective bargaining, to the benefit of all concerned. The more enterprising among managers have also made limited experiments in this direction. This book aims at providing the much-needed materials for stimulating thinking in this area.
A paper examines, in the context of a live situation, the mechanics of productivity bargaining, the demands made on management, and the infrastructure for employee relations and union-management cooperation. It focuses on productivity bargaining as (a) an effective tool for eliminating wasteful practices and (b) a method of wage increases linked with reduc tions in costs. Policy implications of productivity bargaining have been examined in such areas as the involvement of the different categories and levels of management in the process of policy formulation, bargaining, and implementation of productivity agreements; the maintenance of communication channels and improvement in the functioning of participative forums; the development of the first-line executive; a change in the organizational outlook; the strategic position of the personnel department; and the appropriate strategy in dealing with a multiunion situation. The paper also discusses, as an integral part of productivity bargaining, the formulation of the procedure for sharing the gains of productivity.