Employee relations in the non-union hotel industry: a case of "determined opportunism"?

This paper examines employee relations management in a non-union sector, showing how employers in the hotel industry remain relatively free to manage in an arbitrary and determined fashion, in spite of an increasingly wide net of statutory employee rights. These management practices are effected in...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personnel review 2004-01, Vol.33 (6), p.693-710
Main Authors: Head, Jeremy, Lucas, Rosemary
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Autocracy
Catering
Employee relations programs
Employees
Employers
Employment
Employment practices
Hospitality industry
Hotels & motels
Human resource management
Individualism
Labor law
Labor unions
Management styles
Personnel policies
Protection
Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper examines employee relations management in a non-union sector, showing how employers in the hotel industry remain relatively free to manage in an arbitrary and determined fashion, in spite of an increasingly wide net of statutory employee rights. These management practices are effected in the way the workforce is structured, and in the differential treatment of workers in the same organisation. Notably "peripheral" unskilled workers, which are in the majority, are subjected to a more "hard" form of human resource management and are made more vulnerable from lack of eligibility to employment protection rights. Employers are not constrained from dismissing workers and fail to comply with many minimum legal requirements or observe the law in spirit. "Determined opportunism" represents an extreme instance of a "retaining control cost-control" style of management.
ISSN:0048-3486
1758-6933
DOI:10.1108/00483480410561565