Representing Workers

Trade Union Recognition and Membership in Britain

Howard Gospel, Stephen Wood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134445653
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Employment relations are at a crossroad. Historically, trade union channels in advanced economies have dominated worker representation, but with the decline in union membership other forms of representation are becoming increasingly significant.

This timely book is the result of significant research addressing key issues underlying these developments. A group of internationally-renowned employment relations specialists, under the Leverhulme Foundation Future of Trade Unionism Programme, consider issues such as:

• trends in trade union membership
• factors behind the decline of union membership
• young workers and trade unionism
• the law and union recognition
• European influences on worker representation
• non-union representation
• trade unionism in the context of new forms of representation
• enhancing the appeal of unions.

This timely new study of worker representation contains powerful analysis and is one of the most broad-ranging studies of representation available. It is essential reading for anyone studying or working in employment relations.

Chapter 1
Representing workers in modern Britain

Howard Gospel and Stephen Wood

What is happening to trade unions is a key question at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In the majority of advanced market economies, their membership has shrunk, their ability to achieve strong bargaining relations with employers has declined, and their influence with national governments is less than in the past. In the UK, union density in the private sector has fallen to the lowest levels since the interwar years and the proportion of the workforce covered by collective bargaining has similarly contracted. Nevertheless, trade unions still have strength in some areas of the private sector and especially in the public sector; they have strongly influenced developments at the national level, most notably in campaigning for a minimum wage and statutory union recognition procedures; and there are new opportunities for them to exploit, such as those provided by European Union-inspired legislation and the heightened concerns of workers regarding issues such as job security, family-friendly practices, equality of opportunity, and training and career development.

This book is the first of a series of three concerned with examining the current state and future prospects of trade unions, derived from the Centre for Economic Performance–Leverhulme Foundation research programme on the Future of Trade Unions in Modern Britain. This book focuses on the interconnected areas of union membership, employer recognition and employee representation; the second will concentrate on questions of recruitment, organization and the structure of unions; and the third will examine the effects of unions on outcomes, such as economic performance and social justice. The series reports major research studies that together present a wide-ranging analysis of contemporary developments in industrial relations.

The waxing and waning of trade unions

Historically, trade unions were a vital concomitant of the process of industrialization and political liberalization in most countries. As their influence grew to unprecedented heights after the Second World War, social theorists saw them as a key ingredient of the capitalist economy and social democracy. Unions were seen to offer workers a channel to voice their grievances and to ensure due process in the workplace; they provided a means by which the benefits of productivity growth could be distributed in a fairer way than might otherwise have been the case; and they were seen as critical intermediaries in the model of the pluralist society that was the base of liberal democracy.

Yet through the 1960s and 1970s their activities increasingly became a source of concern to employers, governments and the public, not least in the UK. The purported role of unions in fuelling cost-plus inflation as well as their perceived adverse effect on unit costs, technological innovation and productivity growth was given particular prominence. Wages and conditions in unionized firms were certainly more favourable than those in non-union firms in economies such as the UK and USA, where decentralized bargaining made such comparisons possible. The effect of union activity on innovation and productivity was less clearly established. Moreover, some commentators argued that they could have positive effects on performance by providing workers with a collective voice and helping management to legitimize change. This view was subsequently confirmed by some academic research (Freeman and Medoff, 1984; Kochan et al., 1986a; Metcalf, 1990). Nonetheless, from the mid-1970s onwards employers and governments increasingly downplayed any positive effects of union representation or argued that these came at the expense of innovation and performance.

In the UK, the short, often unofficial, strike posed a question about the representativeness of union lay officials at workplace level and the authority and control of full-time officials at national level. The question was often posed as to whether the officials’ politics were more radical than those of their members. Within the labour movement itself there were also questions asked about the limits of collective bargaining. Issues surrounding redundancies, closures and investment policies were seen as requiring strategies and tactics that extend beyond traditional negotiations; there was also debate about how far the law should be used to further worker rights and extend industrial democracy; while the ability of collective bargaining to deal with rapidly rising concerns about gender and racial inequality in the workplace was questioned, with some even implicating a union movement founded on male manual workers in the generation of inequality.

Collective bargaining had certainly been the trade unions’ main mode of relating to employers, and indeed their raison d’être. In many countries, through the years of union growth, there was usually some kind of state support (direct or indirect) for collective bargaining. However, from the late 1960s this support began to be constrained. Thus, for example, wage policies were developed to control the alleged inflationary effects of unionism. In countries where relations between the trade unions and the social democratic political parties were strong enough to facilitate the development of what were known as corporatist relations between central government, employers and trade unions, these policies had some success. In the UK, however, the weakness of the central employer and trade union bodies, coupled with the increasing trend away from industry-level bargaining, militated against such arrangements. As a result, more direct and stronger measures were conceived by government. Under the Thatcher administrations, laws designed to outlaw the closed shop, curtail the ability of unions to strike and remove the support for collective bargaining were introduced. More fundamental economic policies of eliminating exchange rate controls, abandoning full employment as a primary economic objective, refusing to subsidize ailing enterprises, and the privatization and marketization of public sector activities fundamentally altered the context in which trade unions had previously flourished.

The Conservative years from 1979 onwards consequently marked a watershed in industrial relations. The main indices – union density, union recognition, collective bargaining coverage, strike levels – all declined (Millward et al., 2000). Such developments were especially stark when viewed in comparison with countries that entered the 1980s with more corporatist and cooperative arrangements, such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries (Boyer, 1995).

The effects of these changes were such that by the time the Conservatives lost the 1997 election, the landscape of industrial relations had been transformed. The 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, covering workplaces with 25 or more employees, revealed the depth of change in both union and non-union workplaces. Union density fell in such workplaces from 65 per cent in 1980 to 36 per cent in 1998, and if workplaces of between 10 and 25 employees are included the density was 30 per cent. The proportion of workplaces with a union presence fell from 73 per cent in the early 1980s to 54 per cent in the late 1990s. Unions were recognized in around 64 per cent of workplaces in the early 1980s, in 53 per cent in 1990, and in only 42 per cent by the late 1990s (Cully et al., 1999: 234–8). The failure of trade unions to organize new workplaces was a particularly important factor in this downward trend. In addition, the proportion of employees whose terms and conditions of employment were determined in some way by collective agreements fell from well over 80 per cent before 1979 to 70 per cent in 1984 and to 41 per cent in 1998, a decline especially pronounced in the private sector. Analysis at the individual level, based on the 1999 Labour Force Survey, shows that by the end of the twentieth century only 23 per cent of employees were both in a union and covered by a collective agreement, with as many as 7 per cent of union members not having their terms and conditions subject to collective agreement (Metcalf, 2001: 26). The majority of employees (57 per cent in 1999) are now neither in a union nor have their terms and conditions determined by collective agreement.

Even where collective bargaining has been maintained, the institutional arrangements have changed so that multi-employer bargaining is rare and bargaining is increasingly insulated within the company and/or the individual workplace. The content of bargaining has also changed, reflecting changes in the approach of employers, and perhaps trade unions, to employment relations. The main reduction in the scope of bargaining over non-pay issues occurred in the 1980s (Millward et al., 2000: 167–9), and by the late 1990s there were significant cases where unions were recognized but little or no bargaining occurred, even over pay (Brown et al., 1999). The break-up of the public utilities following privatization and the contracting-out of public services has further contributed to the decentralization of bargaining and a decline in its scope. The introduction of performance-related pay has in some cases curtailed collective bargaining, although, particularly in the public sector, this has not necessarily been at the expense of bargained salary scales. In addition the number of firms with multi-union bargaining has decreased so that by 1998 43 per cent of unionized workplaces had only one union and of these 72 per cent had a single-union agreement, while in 88 per cent of those with more than one union negotiations were on a joint (single-table) basis.

The precise role these changes have played in the economy is uncertain. Since the mid-1980s, inflation has fallen, unemployment has fluctuated downwards, and the British economy has grown over the business cycle at reasonably comparable rates to other economies. Performance within the unionized sector compared with the non-unionized sector has improved considerably, and on some indicators there is now no differential between the two. At the same time, however, there are persistent uncertainties about job security, the growth of precarious part-time and temporary jobs, fears that working hours and labour intensity are increasing, and attempts to increase wage flexibility and levels of pay inequality unmatched at any time in the twentieth century.

What is certain is that collective bargaining is no longer the dominant method of conducting employment relations. Whether this has been replaced by what some call the ‘authoritarian workplace’ or ‘take-it-or-leave- it management’ (Fernie and Metcalf, 1995: 381; Metcalf, 1999: 14), or by more sophisticated management practices and alternative consultative voice mechanisms, is unclear, not least because the precise nature and extent of so-called high involvement human resource management (HRM) – typically associated with some form of high involvement model – and its relation to unionism is uncertain. There has been some growth in nonunion forms of joint consultation in the private sector, and a very significant growth of direct forms of employee involvement. However, it is clear that in large areas of the economy management has come to be unilaterally in control of employment relations. In parallel with this, any decline in union membership and industrial action does not necessarily signal a significant reduction in dissatisfactions and grievances in workplaces, as is evidenced by the increasing number of enquiries to the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service and to Citizens’ Advice Bureaux, and cases to Employment Tribunals.

What lies behind these changes is a set of processes involving the interplay between macro-economic factors, government economic and employment policies, and the policies and practices of both employers and unions. Attempts to explain the decline in union density in terms of a single cause – business cycle (Carruth and Disney, 1988), compositional changes in the economy (Booth, 1989), or increased labour legislation (Freeman and Pellitier, 1990) – are likely to be in vain, and tend to lead to over-deterministic conclusions. Strong cyclical downturns and compositional changes have occurred in other countries without the same effects on unionism. The downward trend in union density continued during cyclical upturns in the economy, suggesting that there is nothing inevitable about union revival on the back of a buoyant economy. Nor is it inevitable that service-sector workers remain largely unorganized, as is revealed by the relative success of the UK compared with the USA in recruiting white-collar workers in the 1960s and 1970s or levels of unionization among such employees in some Scandinavian countries. As for the law, it is difficult to sustain an argument that it has had such an overall effect as some have suggested.

The Thatcher legislative programme had direct effects on industrial relations – for example, the demise of the closed shop, sympathy strikes and secondary action may be largely accounted for by the law. However, changes in the membership and role of unions and in employment relations have been significantly affected by broader economic factors (Brown and Wadhwani, 1990; Dunn and Metcalf, 1996: 3). Since the late 1970s two deep recessions, with high unemployment, intensified product and financial market competition, and changes in the composition of the labour force, have compounded any impact of the law on membership. Market pressures were often the initial stimulus for employers to search for new ways of managing their labour forces, but high unemployment and labour legislation undoubtedly gave management more freedom to do this.

The agency of the actors is also crucial in explaining trends in trade unionism. This includes employers who have discretion in how they respond to the intensification of competition; it includes the broader government policy that lay behind the legal interventions; and it also includes unions whose greatest problem has been deciding on how best to overcome their past emphasis on servicing existing members and how to recruit and represent new members.

An important legacy of the Thatcher policies is its impact on the attitudes of employers, employees and union officials. Collective bargaining is no longer the taken-for-granted norm for employment relations. It is seen by employers as at best an instrument by which the employees’ voice may be obtained but which is unable to solve the key motivational problems of employment relations and may have undesirable side effects, and at worst as being disruptive of working relations and an inhibition on the kind of employee involvement and commitment that employers say they desire. Moreover, the perceived relevance of trade unions to employees is in question, particularly in the case of young workers, who are increasingly unlikely to be in unions (Disney et al., 1998). For trade union officials, however, collective bargaining remains the prime means of improving the conditions of workers and, along with representation of individual members, the prime purpose of trade unionism. At the same time they are increasingly aware of the need to develop new policies to attract new members, as well as new types of relationships with employers, as they face increased pressure to justify themselves in the eyes of employers.

The Labour government, elected in 1997, has maintained key elements of Conservative policy, especially its labour laws, emphasis on low inflation and preference for market relations over state intervention. Other initiatives have been in line with the previous Conservative governments’ policy, such as the further encouragement of private finance and performance-related pay in the public sector and of share ownership in private companies. Nonetheless, changes have been made, most notably the new statutory recognition procedures introduced under the Employment Rela- tions Act (1999); the introduction of a national minimum wage for the first time in the UK; and the signing of the EU Social Chapter, with its implication for working time regulations and transnational consultative arrangements. The government has also (albeit with some reluctance) now accepted the EU Directive on Information and Consultation rights in national level undertakings. This will eventually cover over three-quarters of the labour force and will establish for the first time in the UK general consultative councils, which may be union-based or not, with statutory rights to be informed and consulted.

From the mid-1990s, in the face of the decline in their fortunes, British trade unions became more proactive. Achieving a Labour government was always paramount. First, they sought the restoration of a statutory union recognition procedure. Second, they began to orientate themselves towards organizing and recruiting new members so that they no longer concentrated on servicing existing members. Third, they became more positive towards EU-inspired labour policies and increasingly accepted the idea that there might be dual channels of representation through both voluntary collective bargaining and legally-inspired joint consultation.

Employers, for their part, have continued to seek as much freedom as possible to decide how they conduct their employment relations. The emphasis in their representations to the Labour government has been on the need for flexibility, and they have argued that the balance and scope of legislation was right when the Conservative government left office and that any rebuilding of trade unionism may herald a return to the conflictual industrial relations and the economic and political problems of the 1960s and 1970s. Thus, employers’ organizations opposed the principle of a statutory union recognition procedure and the EU proposals on information and consultation. Alongside this, the growth of management-initiated direct involvement is continuing and is the favoured method, especially for work-related issues (Millward et al., 2000: 127).

With these developments, it is timely to take stock of a number of key aspects of industrial relations. First, what lies behind the decline in trade unionism and collective bargaining and to what extent is a revival in membership and activity possible, perhaps taking advantage of the statutory recognition procedures and other EU-inspired changes? Second, what are union strategies in terms of recruitment and organization, and how have these affected the structure and governance of unions? Does revival require further changes in union strategies, perhaps involving so-called partnership agreements and accommodation to new forms of employee involvement and management methods? Or, again, does revival require more radical policies that reject such arrangements and pursue a more militant approach? Third, what are the main effects of trade unions on outcomes such as benefits for members, organizational performance and social justice? The series of books, of which this is the first, has been designed to deal with these three sets of issues; this book focuses on the first issue.

The focus of the book

The main issues addressed by this book are: the respective role of new workplaces and young workers in the decline of union recognition and membership; the latent demand for trade unionism amongst non-union members, particularly the young, women, and those who have never been in a union; the effect of enhanced state support for trade unionism provided by the Labour government; employer support for and opposition to trade unionism; and the growth of forms of representation other than collective bargaining and their link to trade unionism.

In Chapter 2, Stephen Machin examines the relative importance of new workplaces and young workers in the economy and their effect on union decline. First, he demonstrates that rates of union recognition and union membership are substantially lower in workplaces established after 1980. Unions have clearly been less successful in gaining recognition in new workplaces than in the past. Second, young workers are shown to be considerably less likely to be union members than they w...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Representing Workers In Modern Britain
• Chapter 2: Trade Union Decline, New Workplaces and New Workers
• Chapter 3: Young Workers and Trade Unions
• Chapter 4: Willingness to Unionize Amongst Non-Union Workers
• Chapter 5: Buying Into Union Membership
• Chapter 6: What Do Unions Do for Women?
• Chapter 7: The Impact of the Trade Union Recognition Procedure Under the Employment Relations Act, 2000–2
• Chapter 8: Dilemmas In Worker Representation: Information, Consultation and Negotiation
• Chapter 9: A US Perspective On the Future of Trade Unions In Britain
• Bibliography