Employment with a Human Face
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John W. BuddÆs book, Employment with a Human Face, deals with the competing values and demands of the U.S. labor relations system. Budd is primarily concerned with the issues of efficiency, equity, and voice, and the dilemma of how to balance them so that each is accomplished without downgrading the others. When they conflictùas they often doùhe examines that conflict and analyzes its ramifications and the potential avenues for resolution. Budd defines ôemployment with a human faceö as ôa productive and efficient employment relationship that also fulfills the standards of human rightsö (2). This employment relationship sounds relatively simple, but it is amazingly complex, comprising such issues as competitive markets that guarantee efficiency but not equity, policies that favor employers but not employees, the balance between property rights and human rights, ethics, workplace governance, and a multitude of other issues that must all be weighed into the balance between BuddÆs three primary issues of efficiency, equity, and voice.BuddÆs identification of efficiency, equity, and voice as the underlying issues in the employment relationship is perceptive. Efficiency represents the employerÆs perspectiveùwhat he wants accomplished. Equity should be balanced between employer and employee. Voice is the ability of the employee to make his concerns known and heard. As Budd points out, the attempt to balance these concerns is an att
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mentary but in other ways conflicting. What he is essentially advocating in his book is to explore the factors that affect each of these issues and perform the balancing act on a broad-brush level while fine-tuning at the micro level by leveraging an understanding of the many issues that can pull the balance one way or the other. This is a rational approach, and one that improves upon the usual ideas that either argue for employees and against employers, or vice-versa. BuddÆs approach is to address the needs of both, balance them, and provide insight to all the ways they are interrelated and impacted by other issues. He does an excellent job of explaining and detailing the real-life complexity in the issues rather than just boiling them down to theories that sound good on paper but which would be undermined by one of the many peripheral issues if put into practice.
In the last analysis, the labor relations issues he addresses do need to be seen in the light of all the other issues he raises in order to approximate a workable reality. Without understanding all of the issues, it is virtually impossible to formulate effective policy that can promote and achieve the balance desired between efficiency, equity, and voice. Although
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Approximate Word count = 2277
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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