Les conseillers en relations industrielles et la profession The Professionalization of Industrial Relations Specialists

Résumé

Le conseiller en relations industrielles est-il vraiment un professionnel? Il est significatif qu'on se pose la question, aussi bien à l'intérieur de la nouvelle société des conseillers en relations industrielles, qui jouit pourtant depuis plus d'un an d’un statut juridique non équivoque, à l’instar de groupements professionnels plus anciens.

Tel n'est pas le propos de ce document de travail de démontrer à tout prix que la réponse à la question précitée doit être affirmative. Il ne part, au contraire, d'aucune idée préconçue, visant modestement à étaler des éléments de réponse et à susciter la méditation sur les critères de la profession dans la mesure où ils s'appliquent au cas des conseillers en relations industrielles.

Abstract

Whether the Industrial Relations Specialist is a professional or not is still and important question within the new « Society of Industrial Relations Counselors » as well as outside, at a time when it is recognized by a legal status in a non-equivocal manner when compared to older professional groupings.

The purpose of this working paper is not to demonstrate at any rate that the above question should be given a positive and clear-cut answer. On the contrary, I am starting out with no preconcieved ideas. I intend to point out some elements of an answer and provoke thinking about the criteria of a profession as long as they pertain to the situation of « Industrial Relations Counselors ».

A profession can be defined as an occupation characterized by a specialized and protracted intellectual education, by the application of a technique which rests on a theoritical bedrock, by the emergence of a professional association, and also by the idea of service rendered to a client for a certain amount of money.

The tendency toward professionalization evolves from the very characteristics of an emerging industrial society. Large-scale bureaucratic organizations present an extensive division of labor and require a certain degree of impersonality. Professional associations provide a shield against a possible loss of identity or a possible feeling of alienation since one of the dominant features of a profession resides in the possibility for the individual to be independent and autonomous. An additional explanation of this tendency toward professionalization can be found in the tremendous development of scientific knowledge and the need for the expert to protect his self-image.

The professionalization can be looked upon as a moving and dynamic process which unrolls itself along a continuous line of development characterized by the following stages:

1 — A regular full-time work in the area of a speciality.

2 — The creation of an association.

3 — A formal academic education usually offered by a university.

4 — The classification of would-be members according to established norms

of eligibility for membershipholding.

5 — The struggle for setting the boundaries of a specific field pf knowledge.

6 — A code of professional ethics.

7 — A political pressure for legal recognition.

8 — An attempt to control university education.

The definition of a profession which has been given above contains most of the earmarks for differentiating a professional occupation from a non-professional one. Keeping those criteria in mind, it is interesting to examine the situation of a professional working for a large-scale organization. Here are some possible conflicting issues. The salaried-professional will serve other people through the social system of a business enterprise, a government agency, or a trade-union. He is not providing a service for a specific client. The opportunity for autonomous decion-making is narrower, since top-management defines the order of priorities. His view of administrative efficiency may be at odds with top-management's. Those are only some possible conflicting points that have to be dealt with in modem bureaucracies by a category of experts which also encompasses « Industrial Relations Counselors ».

« Industrial Relations Counselors » have passed through the phases of professionalization. Most of them enjoy full-time work and are members of legally-recognized association, Most of them have benefited from an university education and have been exposed to advanced specialization. All of them are providing services, but the majority does it in a bureaucratic framework, The main features of those services are incongruent with traditional professional services. In a near future, the association will have its code of ethics.