‘Unions were of course very important once upon a time, but their job has been done. The age of mass production is over. The new world is all about individual relationships, and unions will wither away. A glorious past perhaps, but no real future.’
The business world is witnessing a sort of Darwinism characterized by stiff competition, mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, outsourcing and downsizing, which have impacted employment relationships in many ways. Employers are implementing a range of innovative practices to meet the challenges posed by globalization. For instance, Neo HRM advocates unitarism, non-unionism, networking and individual bargaining, as some of its core tenets to manage people in the changed dispensation. In the face of a growing attack of this kind on traditional Industrial Relations, the question that is frequently raised is “whether industrial relations as a discipline has reached end of the road”.
