Trade Unions and Socialist Politics

Question: Discuss about the Trade Unions and Socialist Politics. Answer: Introduction Top Trucking Company is a transportation company that was acquired by a new company three years ago. The company had a yard in Wollongong that was underperforming under the supervision of the previous owners and became the highest performing yard once the company was acquired by the new firm. A new manager was appointed at the workplace and the previous manager was declared retired as soon as the new owners took charge of the company. Another person who played an important role in bringing about the transformation was the union delegate of the company George Psaros. Let us now discuss the changes introduced by the new manager and the owners that helped the yard in becoming so successful. New Workplace Changes The previous scenario at the Wollongong yard of the Top Trucking Company was not good. The vehicles of the company had become older than they should have been and the manager was not discharging his duties responsibly. He used to demonstrate his autocrat nature by directing the staff every time and was also rude to them on his bad days. The staff of the company was not bring properly looked after and the absence of proper human resource management resulted in lower productivity and increase in workplace conflicts and stoppages. The scenario of the yard started changing once the new owners took charge of the operations. As soon as the new owners took charge of the company, the previous manager was asked to retire and a new manager was recruited to look after the operations of the company. The new owners invested a large amount of resources in improving the conditions of the vehicles and started working towards improving the condition of the human resources in the company. The new mana ger also played an important role in improving the conditions of the whole yard. He introduced a new computer system in the organisation and new uniforms for the employees. The new management also introduced training and development programs for the employees as they wanted them to become more technically qualified and increase their occupational health and safety. The changes made were in perfect harmony to each other and the implementation of the changes made it easier for the yard to achieve the success that it is enjoying today. Let us now discuss some reasons that made the change program so successful and made the changes complementary to each other: Communicating - one of the most important factors that helped the changes to become successful in the workplace was the communication between the management and the employees. From the case study, we can easily identify that the communication between the labour and the manager was very effective. The manager never hesitated in talking to the labour union delegate and always consulted him when something important came up in the organisation. The manager also made sure that he shared the success of the organisation and that of the labour with everyone. The way in which he used to openly communicate with the employees and the labour delegate allowed the labour to put their trust in him and as a result, the change management program became more successful (The Thriving Small Business, 2014). Change agents - from the literature, we also study that during a change management process, it is important that there are some change agents in the organisation who can help in facilitating the change across the workplace. In this case, the manager and the union delegate acted as change agents and efficiently promoted the change across the organisation. They demonstrated their leadership qualities and ultimately implemented the changes to make the workplace more effective (Official Blog - Australian Institute of Business, 2015). Cooperation between the union and the management - it has been found that the union and the management of a company are never satisfied working with each other. They are always standing on crossroads, facing each other, as they have conflicts in their interests. The labour unions want their own prosperity and increase in standard of livings whereas the management wants the company to grow, reduce the operational costs and maximise the wealth of the shareholders. In the case of Top Trucking Company, we find that the relation between the labour union and the management started to improve after the entry of the new manager in the workplace. The union delegate as well as the labour found the new manager to be quite efficient in managing the operations, human resources and any problems that were experienced in the workplace. As a result, the relation between the two entities became stronger and it became easy for them to implement the changes in the organisation (The Thriving Small Busine ss, 2014). Changing the entire system - Another major reason that made the changes complementary was that the changes introduced in the organisation were directed towards the betterment of the entire system. The management planned all the changes by keeping all the parts of the system in its mind, such as the workforce, machinery, vehicles, infrastructure, etc. It improved the work condition and the technical skills of the employees by rejuvenating the entire fleet of vehicles and by introducing training and development programs. To bring about an improvement in the infrastructure of the organisation, the management also introduced a new computer system in the organisation. The results of all the changes were that the employees became motivated and more job satisfied that lead to an increase in the overall performance of the workplace. If we study the literature available in change management, we will find that the experts of the subject have suggested the importance of a change being planned f or the entire system (Go2hr.ca, 2016). If an organisation fails to consider the entire system while planning and implementing changes, the change management program will fail drastically. Thus, the ability of the management to plan and implement the change management program for the entire organisation also helped in making the changes complementary to each other (Official Blog - Australian Institute of Business, 2015). Problems in Sustaining the Changes Change management is a necessary evil for business organisations of the present day world. Organisations are facing such a fierce competition today that they have to change their way of working and operations in real time. The business environment has become so complex that there are changes in the internal and external environment of business almost every day, such as changes in economies, technological changes, social preferences, environmental changes, etc. which forces business organisations to make changes in order to sustain (Greener and Hughes, 2006). Top Trucking Company has demonstrated its ability to plan and implement changes very well but it is also important for the company that it sustains the changes that it has been able to introduce in the organisation in the longer run. There are a number of risks that the organisation faces in sustaining the changes implemented. The risks to sustain the changes are discussed below: Change in leadership - if we search for failure of change management programs in the literature, we will find that a change in the leadership of the organisation can actually cause the failure of a change program. Each and every leader of an organisation has his own way of getting things done from others and preferences. Whenever there is a change in the leader of an organisation, there are a great number of changes introduced immediately and it becomes very difficult for the organisation to sustain the changes that had been previously introduced in the organisation. In the case of Top Trucking Company, the two leaders i.e. the new manager and the union delegate are efficiently managing the workplace and if the company replaces any one of them, it would become very difficult for the management to sustain the changes. In case a new manager is appointed, he might treat the employees differently and also might lose the trust that the labour had developed in the management of the company (Gallup, 2016). On the other hand, if the union delegate is replaced, a new union delegate might now lead the labour properly and might raise unnecessary conflicts in the organisation. In any of the cases, the productivity and efficiency of the workplace will drop and the management would not be able to sustain the changes that have been introduced in the workplace (Albo and Kelly, 1991). Blue-Collar Unions Amongst all the stakeholders in a business, the most important stakeholders are the employees who put in their best efforts to run the operations of a company and to contribute towards the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. In case of workplace changes, employees are the first people to get affected by the change. As a result, willingly or unwillingly, sooner or later, all employees have to become a part of the change management program as the changes will affect them in some way or the other. Blue-collar unions are groups of those workers that do manual labour in business organisations and public or service unions are those workers who offer services to the customers using technology or machinery (Parietti, 2015). Blue-collar unions have always been dominating when it came to the matters of the workplace. If we consider the literature from the past, we will find that workplace issues in organisation that are dependent upon blue collar unions have always been greater than the ones which have been service providers. The prime reason behind this statement is that blue collar unions face tougher work conditions as compared to service providers (Scott, 2016). They have to perform manual labour and even a small change in the workplace can have an impact on their personal and professional life. For example, an introduction of new machinery in the workplace would be a thing of joy for the unions that provide services to the customer but for the blue collar unions, it would mean a lot of lay-offs as the machine would take over the work of hundreds of employees. Thus, workplace changes can have an impact on the wages, jobs, shifts, bonus, incentives, etc. of blue labour unions whereas workplace changes for service or public sector unions are not that harmful. Therefore, it is obvious that the blue labour unions will always play a dominating role when it comes to workplace changes as compared to public or service sector unions. Conclusion Top Trucking Companys Wollongong warehouse has come far away from its earlier work conditions and is now and efficient, effective and high performing workplace. It has been awarded as the highest performing workplace in the entire region and people from all over the region have been visiting the workplace for getting tips about how to increase performance. The success that the company has achieved was only made possible because of the changes that were introduced in the workplace by the new management and the new owners. The company has also been able to establish a great coordination between the management and the labour union, which is turning out to be another key factor behind the success of the workplace. Therefore, the company should try its level best to sustain the changes that the workplace has experienced so that the workplace can continue to grow like it has been since the past three years. References 7 Key Factors for Successful Change Management | AIB Official Blog. (2015). Official Blog - Australian Institute of Business. 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