European Journal of Business and Management ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online) Vol.6, No.2, 2014
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• Bargaining Unit Bargaining unit refers to the specific group of employees and employers covered by a particular agreement or set of agreements. Collective bargaining takes place between one trade union and one employer or between one trade union and two or more employers or between two or more trade unions and one employer or two or more trade unions and one employer or two or more trade unions and two or more employers. Thus, bargaining unit refers to the composition of the parties involved in the negotiation. According to Fashoyin (1992, p.118), “the bargaining unit means any configuration, including workers and employers that is involved or covered by a collective agreement.” There is difference between bargaining unit and negotiating unit. Negotiating unit are representatives of workers nominated to represent them at the bargaining table. • Bargaining Scope This refers to the scope of issues involved in negotiation or collective agreements. Thus, bargaining scope is used to indicate the range of subjects covered within a particular bargaining unit by its collective agreements. The bargaining scope will be better understood in the course of discussing the contents of collective agreements. • Bargaining Form Bargaining form refers to the ways in which an agreement or a set of agreements is recorded whether it is written or formally signed like in Nigeria or unwritten and informal. 4. Behavioural Theory of Labour Negotiations/Collective Bargaining Behaviour Several writers have advanced models of collective bargaining behaviour. While it may be appropriate to describe collective bargaining as a struggle or an interplay of power relationship during which the union seeks more concession and management wanting to give less, it must be stated that the behaviour of the parties during negotiation are conditioned by the issues to be negotiated. In a collective bargaining situation, there are usually two major groups of issues: the conflict issues where both parties have divergent interests such as wages, hours of work, pension etc, and the non-conflict issues where both parties have mutual interests such as health and safety, canteen facilities, staff school to mention a few. Walton and Mckersie (1965) identified four models of bargaining behaviour. These models are also called the sub-processes of collective bargaining as contained in their book, titled “A Behavioural Theory of Labour Negotiations.” These are distributive bargaining posture or strategy, integrative bargaining posture of strategy, intra-organisational bargaining posture or strategy and attitudinal structuring posture or strategy. • Distributive Bargaining Strategy Whenever the parties in a collective bargaining face a conflict situation and neither party is willing to concede since such a concession will represent a loss for one party and a gain to the other, Walton and Mckersie (1965) suggested that the best bargaining strategy to use is distributive bargaining. The two parties bargain over the division of a pie and the gain of one party is the loss of the other. In real-life negotiations, most of the substantive issues fall into this category. Since there is a fixed supply of a resource over which both parties are bargaining and as long as no party wants to lose out completely the best strategy is to bargain to distribute the resource in a manner that is consistent with the bargaining power of the parties. Thus, a union may make a demand for 100 per cent salary increase. Since management would not be willing to grant 100 per cent salary increase nor could it walk away without any salary increase no matter how small, it must bargain to meet the union’s demand at a percentage point. Therefore, the function of distributive bargaining strategy is to resolve a pure collective bargaining issue, that is; issue where both parties have divergent interests. Distributive bargaining is the classic type of ‘win-lose’ negotiations. In most cases, the outcome is a zero-sum game or fixed-sum game because one party’s gains represent loss to the other.
• Integrative Bargaining Strategy In integrative bargaining, both parties offer solutions that could increase the size of the pie (Fashoyin, 1992). The objectives of the parties need not necessarily be divergent, as in the case of distributive bargaining. “Safety and security issues, which protect the health and security of workers and at the same time help management in many ways, are a typical example (Fashoyin, 1992, p.139).” Thus, integrative bargaining strategy is deployed on collective bargaining issues where both parties have mutuality or commonality of interests. Here, the feelings and suggestions of both parties are integrated into a common solution to the problem. The essence of integrative bargaining is cooperative bargaining towards solving a common problem in a mutually beneficial manner. The 191