BUSM1080 Employment Relations - Assignment Solution

Negotiation with an employer

KFC Australia as a company is proud of its flexible and fair workplace arrangements as the organisation provides ample growth opportunities to employees who are parents. The company claims to provide parental leave benefits way above as specified by the government. The company has also made several arrangements for female employees to transition back into the work after their maternity leave. The company support its claim by several statistics: Approximately, 80% of the female employees who take maternity leave return to work after the leave. Another statistic is that over 50% of all full-time administration and management positions are held by female employees. Also, the company has several flexible working arrangements including carer's leave and the option of purchasing additional leaves to look after the personal commitments. This promotes a healthy work-life balance for the employees of KFC (KFC Australia, 2019).

Whilst KFC is often considered to be a good organisation to work for, it is not true for all organisations. Employees have their responsibilities and many employees want to work while giving due considerations to their family responsibilities. Despite the benefits of flexible working arrangements for employees, the organisations are reluctant as the management fears losing out the productivity of the employee (Fursman & Zodgekar, 2009).

In Australia, the employees can ask for a flexible working arrangement.  This flexible working arrangement can alter the conditions of the enterprise agreement so that the (short-term and long-term) needs of the employee and employer can be addressed (Fair Work Ombudsman, 2019). However, arriving at a flexible working arrangement is not an easy task as there needs to be a negotiation between the employees and the management (Nadler, Thompson & Boven, 2008).

In Australia, there are certain rules and obligations which must be followed over any negotiation process which are governed by the Fair Work Act 2009 (Fair Work Commission, 2019). Any employee can either negotiate on his own, or ask his union, or appoint a representative. Usually, the representatives for the employees are the trade union, however as Maddux (2008, p.462) highlighted, the international laws are becoming against the unions as the unions are accused of disrupting the work. Weingart et al. (1996, p.1203) added that a commonly acceptable choice for negotiation is through an employee representative as the representative has the necessary skills to negotiate (which may not be the case with the employee) and the representative also does not disrupt the work (like a trade union).