Managing Conflicts between Employees and Employers - Essay Example

Strikes are an overt demonstration of employee unrest in the sense that they are a visible form of the demonstration of employees through a collective medium. Covert demonstration of employee unrest on the other hand is not easily discernible as it is an individualistic action that takes different forms like absenteeism and an increase in labor turnover.

Figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) for loss of working days due to an overt demonstration of industrial dispute in the form of strikes show a steady fall in a number of strikes and the number of working days lost from 2004 to 2007. This indicates a slow down in employees resorting to the collective demonstration of industrial disputes through strikes. Absenteeism is a temporary withdrawal of work by an employee as an escape valve for the frustrations experienced at the workplace, which is proving costly to industrial productivity on an increasing basis. This can be seen from the estimates in 1998 that put the loss on productivity by absenteeism as $2.6 billion to the Australian industry, while in 2006 the loss increased to almost $7 billion.

Industrial employee turnover as a result of employees’ lack of satisfaction at the workplace is also on the rise. Employees change jobs as a covert behavior in their expression of conflict with their employers. While the rate of industrial turnover across the various sectors of industrial activity is uneven, which may reflect the ease in changing jobs in the different sectors of industrial activity, there is no denying the increase in industrial turnover rate on an average across all sectors of industrial activity. ABS figures on the trends in employer turnover between 1992 and 2006 demonstrate this. In 1992 the percentage of employees spending less than 12 months with an employer was 19.6%, while in 2006 this figure had risen to 21.4%. Employees’ decision to leave an employer is not merely influenced by dissatisfaction with salaries, but a range of other factors that employees consider more important. These factors include job design, job content, supervision, and training. The consequences of increased industrial turnover are reductions in productivity across all sectors in the Australian industry.

Strikes and lockouts due to industrial disputes were earlier taken to be the main factors that affected industrial productivity. There are very clear indications that strikes and lockouts are on the decrease, while there is a significant increase in absenteeism and industrial employee turnover behavior of employees as a covert expression of conflict with employers, which is hurting industrial productivity. Thus, in the modern workplace, managing covert demonstration of industrial conflict has become more meaningful.