Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations

Citation

Hickland, E. (2017), "Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations", Employee Relations, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 254-256. https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-11-2016-0209

Finding a Voice at Work? But what is this slippery concept of voice? Literature on employee voice can often be confusing with different terms used to describe similar processes. It is an umbrella term used to capture related practices including employee information, communication, consultation, participation, partnership or negotiation. Given the range of related concepts, there is no widely accepted or simple definition of the concept of employee voice. The term voice is a concept developed from the work of Hirschman (1970) and applied initially to understandings of trade union organised workplaces by Medoff and Freeman (1984). For these authors, voice was an alternative to exit when assessing worker responses to dissatisfaction. Hirschman’s work has been influential in the field of IR in bringing forward the use of the term into research on workplace voice regimes.

When one hears Teresa May, the latest Tory Prime Minister of the UK, issue a call for reform of company governance with workers on company boards in July 2016 – we could be listening to 1970s debates on industrial democracy such as those encapsulated by the Bullock Report (1977) on Industrial Democracy. So the question that comes to mind has the time for “real” employee voice arrived? Both Stewart Johnstone and Peter Ackers have being writing and researching dimensions of employee voice and perspectives on work for some time. Their edited volume Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employee Relations appears to be published at a fortuitous moment in UK politics.

The book attempts to offer more than a reflection of good modern research on voice but to link the contours of “existing” voice at work to a range of contextual and causal factors on employment relations. The book is structured in four parts – key concepts; union voice – competing strategies; European models and varieties of capitalism; and looking ahead. The chapter by Ed. Heery starts at the beginning of any understanding of voice with discussion of Fox’s (1966) frames of reference and chides some contemporary IR pluralists for moving towards unitarism by accepting the managerial fetish with business performance as a standard measure of worker participation. He further puts forward a “social justice” argument as a new frame of reference and Ann-Marie Greene discussing a diversity approach makes a similar interesting argument.

The second section of the book has three chapters concentrating on revitalisation of union organisation and how to “make” voice a legitimate concept at work. Johnstone makes a strong argument that the continuing decline of union density requires some form of representative structure for employees in the UK private sector, offering workplace partnership as a potential vehicle. He also adds, in a similar vein to Pateman (1970) that such bodies can add to sustaining a more pluralistic society and create mutual gains in the workplace. In her chapter, however, Simms argues very cogently for better union organising campaigns as an alternative to private sector workplace partnerships. Simms makes a strong point that in an era of “disconnected capitalism” partnership may lead to incorporation of unions into workplace management and blunt their very purpose of defending and advancing workers’ rights. Ackers makes an entirely different case for union revitalisation in his chapter by calling for a focus on regeneration by using the “profession” of the employee to re-establish more “craft” unions such as the Royal College of Nursing. He decries the ability of general unions to achieve revitalisation without some form of state support and in effect is calling for the complete reversal of union developments towards larger general unions.

The chapter by Dobbins and Dundon provides an empirical examination of the Information and Consultation of Employees Directive in workplaces. Alongside the chapter by Timming and Whittall, which takes stock of European Works Councils after 20 years, both conclude the failure of EU legal regulation to have any profound impact on workplace voice. A contrasting argument is made in the chapter by Samuel and Bacon who looked at forms of actual social partnership in the public sector in the NHS in Scotland and Wales and the emergence of consumerist pressure as a new dimension on employee voice. The divergences and tensions within the “exemplar” German model of employee participation by Gold and Artus is a good outline of the strains in the dualistic system. The German worker participation law remains in place but the practices of works councils have changed in reality. Employers and “core” workers increasingly coalesce to defend their positions in the face of the growth of new sectors that are unorganised (i.e. without works councils) and which rely on more precarious work forms.

The section of the book that attempts to look ahead for the future of voice has two chapters, respectively, by Richard Hyman and Bruce Kaufman. Looking into a crystal ball for evidence of the future shape of workplace voice appears to Kaufman a pessimistic prospect in the USA, in the face of more labour commodification and individualisation. On the other hand, Hyman is slightly more optimistic about the potential of economic democracy, if unions charge themselves with shaping political alternatives to neo-liberalism with an articulated humane and solidaristic programme, utilising all modern digital platforms.

Perhaps the outstanding chapter in the book is by Guest – Voice and employee engagement – and outlines the considerable interest over many years by managerial and political groups with employee “engagement”. This chapter is an excellent read for anyone who wants to understand and chart the theoretical and differing approaches to employee involvement or participation, and how the “new fad” (p. 63) of to getting more from employees is termed employee “engagement”. The chapter concludes that a variety of forms and types of employee participation will persist in workplaces but research and policy needs to grapple with how to promote them in practice.

There are two omissions from the book that may help make a future book be more holistic in the area of employee voice literature. One area that is needed is some research on the efficacy and presence of the financial participation dimension of workplace voice. The other is an examination into the cooperatives sector where workers control might just exist.

Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employee Relations is a valuable and worthwhile book in the contemporary cannon of literature and research on examining the existence and utility of employee voice in workplaces. This joins another excellent volume on the subject in Wilkinson et al. (2014) The Handbook of Research on Employee Voice (Elgar).