Schools of Thought

Schools of Thought

There are generally four schools of thought about employment relationship and they are mainstream economics, human resource management, industrial relations, and critical industrial relations. They each have their own rational and interesting view points, however, the schools that will be of major focus here are the mainstream economics and the industrial relations school.

According to our text in class, the mainstream economics school of thought focuses mainly on the economic activities of companies and workers that interact in competitive markets, and believe that equity, efficiency, and voice are attained through free-market competition. In this school of thought, labor problems are seen as a misuse or as an abuse if there is not enough labor market competition. Thus, labor unions are seen as labor market monopolies when they interfere with free-market competition by using their monopoly power to raise employees’ wages above the competitive level when they threaten to strike.

A practical example of how the mainstream economic school is applied in the real world today can be found in an article by the New York Times, titled Some Retail Workers Find Better Deals with Unions. Retailers in the New York area have been trying to get extra hours and a sense of job security for years to no avail. This article talks about two sets of people who work in retail, however one is in a union while the other is not. A lady by the name of Debra Ryan has been working for more than 20 years as a sales associate in the bedding and home furnishing department at Macy’s and is currently happy about not having to go to work guessing what her schedule will be like for the next upcoming weeks. She is a full time associate with assured work hours.

However, there are not too many people in the retail industry who can boast of guaranteed full time hours; in fact, this speaks true of the second lady in the article, Sonica Smith, who is also a sales associate and a...