Chapter 4 Labour Markets in Tourism and Hospitality

Chapter 12 Grievance and disciplinary procedures

Review and reflect question 1

What makes you unhappy at work? Would you be willing to articulate this dissatisfaction as a grievance? If not, why not?

Clearly there may be a large number of things which make people unhappy at work. That said, the number of employees who will be prepared to articulate this as an official grievance is likely to remain relatively small. For example, they may have concerns about seeing as a ‘troublemaker’. Within tourism and hospitality there may be obvious sources of dissatisfaction such as low pay, long hours and poor management. Indeed, evidence from a number of sources points to the hospitality industry in particular as having very high labour turnover rates, relative to other industries. It is not unreasonable to suggest that to an extent these relatively high levels of labour turnover are an obvious response to grievances arising in the workplace. Thus rather than formally articulating a grievance many employees will simply leave to go and work for another employer. See also the web links below. http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2007/07/26/315184/whole-catering-industry- needs-image-makeover.html http://www.caterersearch.com/Articles/2006/03/09/305589/workplace-grievance- procedure.htm

Review and reflect question 2

What might explain our pre-disposition to respect rules and authority?

This is a straightforward question which is interesting nonetheless in terms of getting students to think about why they respect rules and authority.

HRM in practice 12.1 and Review and reflect question 3

To what extent are courses of this nature ethical?

The example and question invite students to consider some of the ethical and practical issues of dismissal. As was noted in the text Edwards neatly captures the manner in which dismissal is considered describing it as the ‘dark’ and ‘murky’ side of HRM. Clearly the workshop offered by Padgett Thompson might fall into this description for some people. For others, it might be seen as simply a sensible and pragmatic response to get rid of under performing employees. To encourage further debate get students to check out Padgett Thompson’s website which describes the workshop, this can be found at: http://www.nationalseminarstraining.com/AudioConference/TSTAP.cfm? en=1717004

Unsurprisingly there are other people who would take a rather different view and one of the more polemical responses to this training can be found at: http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/sr177/stack.htm