Industrial Relations

While most organisations are primarily engaged with individual employment, there are many that still contend with collective employment issues, ordinarily with a trade union on the other side of the table.

What happens when:

• an ‘entry notice’ is emailed to you
• a person from a trade union arrives at your workplace, announced or unannounced
• an employee posts on the company intranet or sends out an email to announce that a trade union official will be coming
• a survey is sent to all of your employees by a trade union
• a log of claims lands in your in box, from a trade union demanding an enterprise agreement
• an organisation doesn’t like what they read in a proposed enterprise agreement but doesn’t convince the union to make any changes
• an organisation becomes aware of a protected action ballot and industrial action is about to begin

Employers have useful legal and strategic tools available to deal with collective action and trade union demands. A response may be co-operative or combative.

There are short and long term objectives to consider. And of course, shareholders, financiers, reputation and profits.