Involving Employees Through the Recession

The biggest influence on employee relations since 1980 has been the increasingly competitive environment, according to a 1984 survey revisiting 18 different workplaces in a wide variety of industries (originally contacted in 1980). Organisations have, however, responded in differing ways, the majority showing job losses but some gaining employees, and three remaining static. Job losses have been structured in a variety of ways, including voluntary redundancy, early retirement, and the “losing” of peripheral jobs. Unions have not been weakened by employers, on the whole, by means of the recession; consultative arrangements have been revitalised in some cases and collapsed in others, while on the employee involvement front, a range of techniques have come into play.