Negotiate Pay amid this Economic Downturn

The current downturn of global economy has already generated heaps of pink slips across the globe, and each passing day is getting filled with the news of either job cut or pay cut. This is an unprecedented situation, considering the magnitude of loss all around. Many industries are either forced to shut some of their operative units, or to suspend their operations, because there is no buyer and there is no cash flow to maintain the usual routine of business.
Consequently, workplace environment in many organizations wearing a pall of gloom, as the existing employees too are not free from the worry of losing their jobs or pay cuts, or, at the least, missing that promotion or pay-rise, for which they have been working hard for so long. Thus this essay explores the feasibility of pay negotiation amid such a situation, where it aims to analyse the perspective of all the parties involved it – viz. , the employees, the unions, and the management, before coming into its own conclusion.
2. 0. Employees’ Expectation Regarding Pay Negotiation Rewards or recognition system serves to the emotional need of humans, which in turn motivates them. “Every behaviour comes out of ‘pain and gain’ principle”, says Shiv Khera (p110). There can be many types of gains, ranging from money, vacations or gifts to medallions, or even they can be intangible too – recognition, appreciation, sense of achievement, growth, responsibility, sense of fulfilment, self-worth, accomplishment, and belief are the examples of such gains.

The reward structure of a company can make it or break it as it is assigned to fuel the employee cooperation, effort and overall satisfaction of all members of the company Cacioppe (1999). A host of other researchers like Hackman (1997) Shea and Guzzo (1987) too have endorsed this view, where they clearly advocated for aligning rewards with group activities.
2. 1. Intrinsic Rewards According to Deci (1975), intrinsic rewards are the tools to evoke a sense of personal causation – i. e., an inward mechanism serving as the guiding engine for the action, where its elements are usually intangible and working on the plane of one’s perception, where the journey is being enjoyed over the outcome. This kind of rewards too is expected to generate higher frequency of response from the employees. 2. 2. Extrinsic Rewards Extrinsic rewards are supposed to generate perceptions of external causation (Deci, 1975). Here the nature of rewards is mostly tangible in nature – a hike in salary or status, or material gains in other forms.
However, not all researchers like Guzzo, (1979), subscribe to this demarcation of reward system, on the ground of being polemic rather unnecessarily! For them rewards are rewards, meant to bring the change in the frequency of desired response of the employees towards a desired direction. However, no one can deny the fact that the categorization of the types of rewards facilitates one to underpin the efficacy of a certain kind of reward under certain condition.
The elements of intrinsic rewards are mostly intangible; its components can at best be bunched together as a package of signals that deals with the temporal activity of humans. Words of inspiration, public recognition, and stimulus from the examples of achievers – all such elements can generate a sparked response from an individual or from a group, where the response would mostly be free from the desire of material gain, and instead, it would want to be engaged in a cerebral orgy!