NATURE OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

The parties are managers, employees and employee representatives. The ‘substance’ incorporates the job, reward and career of individuals and the communications and culture of the organization as it affects them. It can also include collective agreements and joint employee relations machinery (works councils and the like). The formal dimensions include rules and procedures, and the informal aspect covers understanding, expectations and assumptions. Finally, the employment relationship exists at different levels in the organization (management to employees generally, and managers to individual employees and their representatives or groups of people). The operation of the relationship will also be affected by processes such as communications and consultation, and by the management style prevailing throughout the organization or adopted by individual managers.

BASIS OF THE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONSHIP

The starting point of the employment relationship is an undertaking by an employee to provide skill and effort to the employer in return for which the employer provides the employee with a salary or a wage. Initially the relationship is founded on a legal contract. This may be a written contract but the absence of such a contract does not mean that no contractual relationship exists. Employers and employees still have certain implied legal rights and obligations. The employer’s obligations include the duty to pay salary or wages, to provide a safe workplace, to act in good faith towards the employee and not to act in such a way as to undermine the trust and confidence of the employment relationship. The employee has corresponding obligations, which include obedience, competence, honesty and loyalty. 

An important factor to remember about the employment relationship is that, generally, it is the employer who has the power to dictate the contractual terms unless they have been fixed by collective bargaining. Individuals, except when they are much in demand, have little scope to vary the terms of the contract imposed upon them by employers.