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Employment Relations

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How would you characterise employee representation in the UK workplace? To what extent do you agree with the argument that the UK is ‘lightly regulated’ in this regard? Introduction This paper seeks to analyse the characteristics of employee representation in the UK and concerns about is the UK ‘lightly regulated’ in regard of the employee representation. Employee representation can be known as the right of workers to seek a union or an individual to represent them to negotiate with their organizations with a wide range of management issues, such as wage rate, working hours, working conditions, health and safety and also their benefits. It is vital to have a formal system of employee representation in a business. This can give an …show more content…

As we know that, there are still some workplaces are lack of employee representations, for example, smaller firms. According to the British Trades Union Congress, there were types of vulnerable workers, such as agency workers, atypical workers, young workers, industrial home workers, etc. Vulnerable workers can be defined as ’someone working in an environment where the risk of being denied employment rights is high and who does not have the capacity or means to protect themselves from that abuse. Both factors need to be present. A worker may be susceptible to vulnerability, but that is only significant if an employer exploits that vulnerability’ (DTI, 2006: 25). They are lack of employment protection (Pollert and Charlwood, 2009) and no union representations. They have no opportunity to express their opinion and no right to negotiate with their employers about their working conditions and terms. The UK government should set up unions for these vulnerable workers, in order to help them to receive better treat from their employers. Moreover, there is a significant decline in trade union recognition and representation and the nature of negotiation shifts to consultation (Terry, 2010). As it mentioned above, there is no absolute right to representation in the UK at the moment. The most common way to negotiate with firms is through the trade union. However, trade union

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