Bargaining Power-A Hairy Affair

Once Benjamin Franklin said "Bargaining has neither friends nor relations".

Bargaining is basically the ability of one party to exert influence over another.Whoever

has the upper hand, is in a better bargaining position.As simple as that.So, it's nothing like either the employee or the employer is "always" at the receiving end.Their current positions determine their Bargaining Power.It's just that most of the the times, the employer is so abundant with available pool that it has an upper hand and hence it gives an impression that employee is always at the receiving end.Clearly in the case Darrel Hair that was'nt the case.

The bargaining power of an employee is almost directly proportional to two things-profit and loss i.e. how much profit would he able to generate for the company if he stays with the company and how much loss would he cause to the company if he is asked to leave the company without his demands being satisfied.As in case of Darrel Hair,it was because of his value in terms of expertise in umpiring and drawing in crowds cause of the controversies along with the favourable position of his to win the lawsuit and his potential to tarnish the image of ICC that gave him the confidence to write such a non-negotiable letter .

Whether I would be able to make such a non-negotiable offer or not-only time will tell. If I am in a favourable position, I would perhaps definitely go for it but only after looking at it from all possible angles and only after being certain I indeed am at a position to bargain! Else it's definitely going to backfire at me.

Incase I receive such a non-negotiable letter from my employee, first step would be to do a thorough investigation into the relevance of the demands and find out if the employee is actually in a position to make such a demand.Next would be to do a trade off between loss to the company in terms of money and reputation if it doesn't agree to the demands and value the company would achieve by agreeing to the employee's demands.If even after that, I find employee is at an upper hand and is indeed an integral part of the company, there is no harm in agreeing to his demands.

In the present scenario of reduced job opportunites, the chance of the same looks bleak though.

Regards

Subhrajit