Why industrial relations is not for amateurs

One of the most memorable sentences ever to come out of the Industrial Court of TT was “industrial relations is not for amateurs.” And it is an admonition worth listening to. Making decisions outside of the boundaries of what is known as “the principles of good industrial relations practice” simply because it will bring an assumed financial advantage to a company may turn out to be a disadvantage.

An example hit headlines last week when a new manager set out to impose his will on a long-standing employee in the company he was now joining. Word has it that people new to management positions, but with computer skills, promise to provide technological advantages companies will need going forward. However, they may be prone to making mistakes in leadership.

One of the business myths of the current Industrial Revolution is that replacing people with computer technology will make a company more profitable. Computers don’t take sick leave and they don’t go on strike. They don’t go on three or four weeks vacation every year and they don’t get 13 weeks maternity leave every two years, nor do they suffer post-Carnival exhaustion.

But the initial capital expenditure is high. Maintenance is demanding and can be expensive. Importing new parts to replace ones damaged inadvertently by untrained employees, climate or natural disasters can take months, if available at all. They can also become obsolete within two years as their technology changes at great expense.

Be that as it may, employees can adapt to new conditions, demands, and environments under skilled leadership, and be motivated to do so. I am not sure whether computers or machinery can adapt or develop loyalty to their managers. Maybe they can.

But high-tech and expensive managers have a tendency to be introduced into a new job under the expectation that a new broom will sweep clean and either save money, or open new markets. It is one of the ways the top recruiters prove their worth. If it means that heavy pressure must be exerted on the old staff, so be it. “Either it is my way or the highway,” as one of my early managers put it. And he meant it. He had the power. Some of us learned; some of us left. The Industrial Court did not exist yet.

One way those managers exercise their power is by making the employees they want to get rid of so unhappy that they leave — resign of their own accord. And if they don’t resign, they can be manoeuvred into resigning by bullying, by constant criticism, by harassment, by forcing them into accepting responsibilities they are not trained for. And if that doesn’t work, by “reorganisation”. Employers have a right to reorganise their companies to make them more efficient, to upgrade skills and procedures. But when they use “reorganisation” as an excuse to make a worker or a group of workers declared redundant, there are responses for that.

Managing workers’ attitudes and behaviours is one of the most difficult jobs there is to do successfully. It is doubly difficult because each employee comes with different personalities, carries different baggage, and is motivated differently. Some respond to a military authoritarianism, some to logic and reason, some to flattery and persuasion, some to bullying, some to fear. Much may depend on how their parents brought them up, or how their school teachers guided their learning.

I do not believe the rumour that people newly qualified in the newest of computer technologies are so full of their own importance that they believe themselves superior to anyone with lesser or older qualifications, and so will demand respect and obedience rather than earning it. I could be wrong. I often am.

But when a new broom does assume that people can be led through bullying, it can prove to be a costly mistake. A million-dollar mistake.

An Industrial Court award issued last month gave a worker with 15-years service a million-dollar recompense when the court judged the retrenchment of that worker to not be a genuine retrenchment at all but a poorly constructed dismissal in response to that employees’ reaction against being bullied, condescended to, criticised and harassed by a new IT manager.

I do not know if the employee was rude or subordinate in return. The published award did not give details of what transpired between the employer and IT manager. The judges do not have to give details. All they have to do is analyse, and based on their perception, issue the award. Employers must therefore be aware, not only of what they decide to say and do to their employees, but also of how what they do will be perceived by other people in the organisation against the principles of good industrial relations practice.