Exploring the Link Between Industrial Relations and Organizational Justice in India: What Are Your Thoughts?

Connection Between Industrial Relations and Organizational Justice in India

Do you think industrial relations and organizational justice in India are connected? If yes, how? Can you cite a few examples to justify?

The Role of Industrial Relations in Organizational Justice

One of the end products of industrial relations (IR) is organizational justice, in the sense that issues of grievances and consequently justice get highlighted in the IR forums and are resolved in the process. There are several individual issues as well as collective issues raised by trade unions and addressed through the IR processes. The ultimate result of resolving these issues is that the organization has ensured justice, or in other words, injustice has been removed.

Examples of Individual and Collective Justice

Examples of individual justice could be pay anomalies (meaning a junior employee drawing more salary than a senior employee in the same post) or promotion-related issues (like favoritism or supersession, etc.), disciplinary actions, etc. There could be collective issues like wage revision, relative discrepancies across different cadres, bonuses, etc. The essence of IR is the bargaining process, and this process ensures relative justice for the parties, leading to a conducive work environment.

If the IR processes do not yield results and the feeling of injustice prevails in the organization, it is like a time bomb waiting to explode at the right moment. If more details are needed, you can approach me.

Dear Sunanda-Bhattacharya,

Organizational Justice and Its Connection to Industrial Relations

Since the very concept of "organizational justice" refers to employee perception of fairness in the workplace, it is certainly connected and influential with industrial relations not only in India but everywhere organizations exist. What is meant here by employee perception is how the employees judge the behavior of the organization and how this behavior is related to employees' basic attitudes and reciprocal behaviors towards the organization. It comprises three main forms, namely distributive, procedural, and interactional.

Forms of Organizational Justice

The sense of distributive justice emanates from the employees' belief that both tangible outcomes like pay and intangible outcomes like positive feedback are fair. In short, when employees believe that they are paid or treated equally, it results in distributive justice.

Whereas distributive justice focuses on outcomes, procedural justice focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process or processes that lead to these outcomes. The fairness of the procedures is determined by aspects of consistency, accuracy, ethicality, and absence of bias in the decision-making process.

Interactional justice focuses on the considerate treatment meted out to the employees when decisions are made and thus breaks down into interpersonal justice, characterized by respectful and courteous treatment to employees, and informational justice, marked by effective communication of decisions affecting the employees.

Examples from the Indian Context

In the Indian context, the strikes and agitations by workers, marked by violence resulting in the loss of precious lives of top-level managerial personnel, criminal prosecution of a number of workers, and losses to the tune of tens of crores of rupees in cases like Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India, Gurgaon (2005), Graziano Transmission (2008), Mahindra & Mahindra (2009), PRICOL, Coimbatore (2009), and Maruti Suzuki, Manesar Plant (2010) are examples.

If you analyze the above cases, most of them relate to demands of temporary/contract workers for higher wages or regularization, while one or two might be due to union-management tussles on matters of discipline or recognition. Such a sordid state of affairs is indicative of the perception of disbelief by a certain section of workers about their respective managements.

Ideal Industrial Relations and Organizational Justice

Ideal industrial relations refer to the collective, amicable, and fair determination of basic employment conditions and their effective implementation. Therefore, scuttling unionization, casualization, or contractualization of perennial jobs for the sake of easy hire and fire, non-payment of monetary compensation like wages, bonus, etc., for jobs of the same or similar nature on par with permanent employees of the organization are indicative of organizational injustice that can have an adverse impact on industrial relations. To achieve overall organizational justice promoting cordial industrial relations in the modern era, Indian managers need a lot of unlearning, and the employees need a lot of learning.

Dear Madam,

The Connection Between Industrial Relations and Organizational Justice

IR and organizational justice are not only intrinsically connected but also hugely impact each other. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin.

The end goal of IR is peace and harmonious relationships, and that of organizational justice is equity and fairness in matters of wages, opportunities, caring, and humane treatment to create a lasting bond through positive policies, systems, and procedures. When both are in sync with each other, organizations continuously achieve peak productivity, profitability, and teamwork while employees feel satisfied and give their best.

When there is a breakdown in the relationship, the results are disastrous, manifesting in strikes, lockouts, violence, and closure. Several examples cited by our learned colleagues underline the need for continuously maintaining a well-oiled employer-employee relationship and delivery of organizational justice.

Regards,

Vinayak Nagarkar

HR and Employee Relations Consultant