International Journal of Marketing and Management, Volume 7, Number 2, 2017

ISSN: 2290 – 2811

CARDS Journal International - Copyright©2017

INDUSTRIAL HARMONY: AGREEMENT AND RULE VIOLATION

Victor, Barinua Y.

Department of Management, Faculty of Business Studies,

  Ignatius Ajuru University of Education, Rumuolumeni, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

Email: vbarinua@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

This paper is on industrial harmony. Specifically the paper focuses on agreements and rules violation; lack of good fate by parties in industrial relations.  In this paper parties of industrial relations are employers, employees and government.  These parties operates within the confines of established agreement and rules (law) that governs their existence. However, as noted in this paper some of these laws are violated and thus hampering the existence of industrial harmony.  Specifically, Section 251 and other related Sections of Nigerian Constitution clearly outline some of such labour laws.  This paper further stress that a breach of these laws by parties result into a show of lack of good fate. It was revealed among others, that a lack of trust could lead to violation of agreements and rules and limits the existence of industrial harmony.  Consequently, it was concluded among others that good cooperative working conditions fueled by the spirit of trust among workers can lead to industrial harmony.  It was therefore recommended among others that parties of industrial relations must respect and adhere to mutual agreements and rules once reached.

Keywords: Industrial harmony, industrial relations, agreement and rules violation, employers and employees.

INTRODUCTION

The Nigerian workplace has been characterized by unfavorable conditions over the last decade.  In most cases there have been conflicts between labour and management of various establishments.  These conflicts usually affect the flow of activities among employers and employees.  Most organizations in Nigeria today have been bedeviled with a myriad of industrial challenges as a result of inefficient and ineffective management style within organization. Studies have shown that conflicts is inevitable at work places, family, political and religious domain. Scholars have further stress that a greater share of interest should not only be placed on its emergence as a normal occurrence in human life, but also on the procedures which conflict can be managed so as to have stability and industrial harmony which improves the extent to which workers interact. The extent to which workers interact within the organization has a greater impact on the kind of atmosphere workers enjoy over a given period of time.  It is believed that the tranquility of a workplace solely lies with the choice of industrial harmony which reflects some forms of relative unity among both management and employees.  It is expected that such harmonious tranquility reflects an existence of a healthy and cooperative working relationship between managers and the managed.  Such cooperative working relationship usually comes with some form of responsibility and expectations from the respective parties within the organizations. Cooperation is greatly required for agreements to be reached in other to reduce conflict and enhance industrial harmony. To this end, cooperation among employer and employees becomes eminent.  It is important to state that a good cooperative working relationship among employers and employees is indeed the foundation for any industrial harmony and where such cooperative relationship does not exist within the organization, agreement and rules violation becomes the order of the day. Thus, a lack of good fates is exhibited by parties concerned and ultimately becomes a threat to industrial harmony. Consequent upon the foregoing, this current paper is considered; industrial harmony: agreement and rule violation. Specially, the paper attempts to focus on the lack of good fate by parties of industrial relations.

Industrial Harmony: Agreement and Rule Violation

Agreement and Rules in industrial Relations

Parties of industrial relations operates by agreement and rules that are extracts (Labour Laws) of the 1999 Constitution which governs the overall transactional activities of companies.  Specifically, Section 254c, (1) of 1999 Constitution amended the provision of Section 251 and 257 and conferred on the National Industrial Court exclusive jurisdictions in civil cases and matters that:

1. Relating to or connected with labour, employment, trade unions, industrial relations and matters arising from workplace, the condition of service, including health, safety, welfare of labour, employee, worker and matters incidental thereto or connected therewith;
2. Relating to, connected with or arising from Factories Act, Trade Dispute Act, Trade Unions Act, Labour Act, Employee Compensation Act, or other Act or Law relating to  Labour, employment, industrial relations, workplace or any other enactment replacing the Act or laws.  

Various sections of the constitution explicitly outlined provisions that relates to employment issues such as terms of employment, wages and remuneration, at-will employment, employee privacy, dispute resolution, etc. However, other agreements and rules that are generated from translated laws for the organization have been explicitly captured in the constitution but may not be expressly stated in this paper but may be used operationally and occasionally where applicable to industrial harmony.

Industrial Harmony

Industrial harmony plays a critical role in the success of organizational existence and ultimate survival.  Industrial harmony has been viewed from different angle by scholars, but there seem to be an overlap in its consideration. Industrial harmony reflects a system that has a friendly and cooperative agreement on the entire working relationship that exist between the manager and managed (employers and employees) for their collective interest (Laden, 2012).  To Puttapalli and Vuam (2012), industrial harmony refers to the relationship between management and employee with respect to their teams and condition of employment. It is simply a situation where the flow of relationship between employee and management is cooperating for the ultimate good of the organization.

For me, industrial harmony is concerned with the cooperate efforts of employers and employees in providing a peaceful working environment which fosters the culture of unity, dialogue, tolerance and a deliberate attempts to reducing conflicts among members in the organization.  Consequent upon the various consideration of industrial harmony, I opined that industrial harmony should reflect a system where:

1. Rules and duties are clearly spelt out for members of organization to adhere to.
2. Parties of the organization usually understand their expected responsibilities and reflect same to promoting the objective of the organization.
3. Employers attempt to take steps to ensure that organizational agreements and procedures are maintained.  
4. The flow of communication system is such that allows for an exchange of information between different levels in the organization.
5. Supervisors are briefed about innovation and changes before they occur so they can explain managements’ policies and intention to workers.
6. Employers encourage the establishment of effective procedures among members of the organizations for the settlement of grievances at all levels.

Considering the understanding of industrial harmony above, the role of respective parties in industrial relations system becomes very essential if there will be any industrial harmony.  It is the compatibility of these parties that establishes an opportunity for industrial harmony in any organization.  However, the strength of such compatibility is defined by how much agreement and rules reached are adhered to among the respective parties.  Specifically, the parties of industrial relations among others are;

1. Employers

International Journal of Marketing and Management, Volume 7, Number 2, 2017

2. Employees
3. Government

These parties operate with agreement and rules which defines their respective roles in the entire organizational practice.  A breach in any section or part of the industrial relations agreement will hamper the overall desire for industrial harmony.  The kind of agreements and rules are mostly employment related and ranges from:

1. Terms and condition of employment
2.  Agreement that improves the status for workers process of collective bargaining among various levels in the organization.
3. The freedom of expression and association for employees.
4. Rules that ensures the commitment of employment
5. Rules that establishes the procedure for negotiating terms and expression of grievance
6. Agreement of remuneration systems.
7. Rules that relates to condition of services.
8. Rules that establishes standard of operations.etc

It is my believe that the elements which reflect the issues of the above rules and agreement can be summarized into what I call the three denominators of agreements and rules in industrial relations, which are:

1. Employment laws and industrial relations
2. Organizational operational requirements
3. Mutual responsibility of parties to industrial relations

It is only when rules and agreement relating to employment issues, organizational operation requirement and mutual responsibilities of parties are properly obey and applied in the various levels of the organizations’ live, that industrial harmony can be attained because of the synergy that exist in the actualization of the denominators of industrial relations. Conversely, the violation of these denominators of industrial relations will amount to a lack of good fate by the parties concern.

Lack of Good Fate By Parties In Industrial Relations On Agreement and Rules

As earlier stated that the centrality of the agreement and rules from parties of industrial relations focuses mainly on; employment laws and industrial relations, organizational operational requirements and mutual responsibility of parties to industrial relations which for me is regarded as denominator of industrial relations.  They are denominator of industrial relations because any categorization of agreement or rules and laws that relates to industrial relations actually can be embedded into the above mentioned three areas.

Understanding the roles of denominators of industrial relations especially as it relates to the respective parties actually defines the existence or none existence of any industrial harmony envisage. It is therefore imperative for parties of industrial relations to respect agreements and rules collectively reached for the interest of industrial harmony. However, as shown by extant literatures, some parties resent to their obligations when called upon and thereby living the affected party to exhibit a lack of good fates for any subsequent agreement or rules that may be required by the said parties concerned.

Among other factor that causes a lack of good fate for parties are:

1. A breach of collective agreement and rules on employment related laws and conditions of service.
2. A deliberate attempt to subvert established procedure of negotiations and collective bargaining by both managers and the managed.
3. Intentionally negating established standard of operation by organizational members
4. Establishment of stringent laws that affect employee relations.  
5. Polarization of punishments and sanctions without recourse to the outcome to respective parties concerned.  
6. Political interferences

Industrial Harmony: Agreement and Rule Violation

7. Poor consultation among principal agents and the representative of parties in industrial relations.

Consequent upon the factors listed above that compels parties of industrial relations to exhibit a lack of good fate; I therefore summarized these factors into three categories.

1. Loss of confidence in the representatives of parties in industrial relations (issues of trust).
2. Subversion of procedural rules and agreements that relates to employment matter (issues of procedural negligence).
3. Short sighted regulatory system that pays attention on immediate solution without considering the outcome and effect of actions by parties (issues of forecast).  

From the summary of factors that create a lack of good fate by parties of industrial relations, the following measure should be adopted in handling such factors. Thus, requiring the need for remedies to lack of good fate by parties of industrial relations.

Remedies to Lack of Good Fate By Parties of Industrial Relations

Having summarized the lack of good fate factors into three it will also be interesting to state that the remedies when viewed from any direction will basically capture the interests embedded therein. To this end, the following are some remedies that may help to reduce the likelihood of lack of good fate by parties in industrial relations.

1. Parties should development and reflect the culture of trust.  It is my believe that organization world over are built on the foundation of trust, sustained on the pillars of trust and expound on the roof of trust.  Therefore, the parties that are constituents of these organizations must stick to norms when agreement (employment agreement, wages agreement, condition of services, etc.) and rules are preempted and finally establish in order to promote conducive working relationship that will enhance industrial harmony.
2. Parties of any industrial relations system must understand the role of procedures for or against any action it intends to embark on. Specifically, roles and agreement are useless once statutory procedural requirements are skipped irrespective of the party’s rights.   It is expected that once rules and agreement are reached, parties concerned follow the appropriate channel in expressing these rules and agreement.  A good case in point will be that of employee right to strike and the legality of such strike action as explicitly stated in Section 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Trade Union Acts (2005) No. 17.
3. Parties in industrial relations must always be aware to their options before any rule or agreements are reached because it is expected of them to respect their side of bargaining.  Most parties tend to exhibit a lack of good fates to other parties once the outcome of any agreement or rules tends not to have favoured certain expectations that was not adequately covered by their independent assessment and lack of forecast. A situation that reveals the lack of understanding to the futuristically implication of an agreement entered by a party.  

 Agreement and Rules and Industrial Harmony

The objective of every party in an industrial relations system is always to have a conducive working relationship that will trigger the needed industrial harmony envisaged. However, such quests most times are not attained because rules and agreement are not violated to by parties concerned.  The outcomes of such violation are usually caused by factors such as:

1. Leadership behaviour
2. The flow of communication channel
3. Lack of understanding to the legal explanations of rules and agreements that relate to employment issues

International Journal of Marketing and Management, Volume 7, Number 2, 2017

4. The responsibilities of parties concern
5. The work environment
6. Non recognition of trade union as a bargaining party
7. Breach of collective agreement, etc.

Given cognizance to the peculiarity of factors that hampers industrial harmony and the multiplier effects on the entire organization.  It is imperative therefore to outline some measures that will enhance the desired industrial harmony. Amongst them are:

1. Joints consultation
2. Participation and broadening of collective bargaining
3. Adherence to stipulation rules and agreement
4. Effective flow of communication process among respective parties
5. Proper articulation of individual and collective responsibilities of parties.
6. Enforcement of sanctions and penalties on offenders who breach statutory agreements and rules Etc.

CONCLUSION

The interest of organization world over is to have a harmonious and conducive work environment; this situation is not an exception in the Nigerian context.  However, such a situation requires pains-taking and deliberate efforts by parties of an industrial relations system to respect rules and agreements that govern their existence and operations.  Parties such as employers, employees and government all have specific functions as stipulated by the Constitution of the land.  On the strength of the foregoing, it is expected that these parties operate within the constitutional provisions which informs their very existence in order to enhance a cooperative working environment for the manager and the managed and lead to industrial harmony. It is instructive to state that any factor that may hamper the actualization of industrial harmony among parties of industrial relations must be eliminated and factors that will fuel the spread of industrial harmony be supported.

Finally, organizations can only thrive when workers and management can see eye to eye, which can be made possible where organizations have joint consultative committee and where there is no breach of collective agreement.

RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Parties of industrial relations must identify and understand their specific and collective responsibility.
2. The quest for industrial harmony is a collective effort that must be approached by parties concerned.
3. Section and provisions of the Nigeria Constitution that relates to employment and labour issues should be studied by both the managers and the managed.
4. The door of collective bargaining should never be closed if industrial harmony is envisaged.
5. Proper consultation by party’s representative must be done where in doubt before agreements and rules are accepted as a working document.
6. They should be mutual adherence to any agreement and rules by parties concerned.

REFERENCES

Puttapalli, A. K. & Vuram, I. R. (2012). Discipline: The tool for industrial harmony. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, 1(1), 146-151.

Ladan, M. T. (2012). The imperatives of industrial harmony and academic excellence in a productive educational system. A paper presented at the flag-off of the “Do the right

Industrial Harmony: Agreement and Rule Violation

thing: Campus focus” students re-orientation programme, organized by the National Orientation Agency, held at the University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria, 13th November, 2012.

Fallah, R. (2015).  Nigeria: Employment Law In Nigeria: Part II.  http://www.mondaq.com/Nigeria/x/415704/employeee+rights+labour+relations/Nigeria+Part+II Retrieved 13/10/2016.

http://www.lawsofniger.placng.org/laws/TRADE%20UNIONS%ACT.pdf Retrieved 13/10/2016.