No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Multi‐employer collective bargaining in liberal market economies: Reasons for survival and reinvigoration
Abstract
This article examines the preconditions for successful implementation of multi‐employer collective bargaining in countries lacking supportive institutions. It presents cases from the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, three liberal market economies where multi‐employer bargaining has either survived in some sectors or where there have been recent attempts to strengthen it. The findings highlight the importance of both “regulatory” institutions (e.g. laws) and “cognitive” institutions (e.g. social norms) to ensure that, first, employment relations actors have the power and resources to support multi‐employer bargaining in practice and, second, workers and employers accept this form of wage‐setting as legitimate.
... There are significant barriers to multi-employer collective bargaining in 'liberal market economies' due to the absence of institutions to support these arrangements (Wright 2024). Business groups in these countries tend to fiercely resist attempts to strengthen workers' rights and boost wage growth. ...
... These laws removed barriers to multi-employer bargaining especially in low-paid sectors and made it easier to establish agreements covering multiple employers in the same sector, region or business structure (Murphy et al. 2022). In December 2023 and February 2024, the Australian Parliament passed further laws to provide institutional support for multi-employer bargaining including by strengthening union workplace delegates' rights, extending multi-employer agreements to subcontractors and penalising employers who evaded multi-employer collective agreements (Wright 2024). ...
This paper addresses the puzzle of how and why multi-employer bargaining has revived as a policy idea given the apparent dominance of neoliberalism. Multi-employer bargaining has emerged as a solution to problems caused by failed neoliberal policies. These solutions have been generated and disseminated through a process of vertical 'new knowledge' transfer between international, regional and national governance levels, which local actors have mobilised to influence policy debates and outcomes. We develop these arguments using case studies of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's changing position on collective bargaining, the European Union Minimum Wage Directive 2022 that encouraged multi-employer bargaining, and bargaining reforms implemented in 2022-24 in Australia. We contribute insights to power resource theory regarding how new knowledge as a distinct form of ideational power is operationalised vertically across different governance levels to resolve localised labour problems.
... In retrospect, the bargaining regime established by these Fair Work reforms limited worker capacity to improve their wages and conditions by largely restricting bargaining of collective agreements to the enterprise level. This made it difficult for unions to negotiate agreements in sectors with low bargaining coverage (Wright 2024). Further, employers (not unions or workers) were given a central role in the agreement-making process, and there have been considerable restrictions on collective power including a very limited capacity for workers to engage in industrial action (Forsyth and McCrystal 2023, 1105, 1107. ...
Precarious work, the problems it poses in terms of labour standards/regulation, and remedies to this, have sparked considerable attention from researchers and policy-makers over the past three decades. This paper examines industrial relations (IR) legislation introduced by the Australian Labor government elected in 2022, and which, amongst other things, has addressed precarious work. These initiatives are placed in historical context, noting how essentially similar problems shaped IR regulation a century earlier. The article also examines the more immediate precursors to the legislation, by reviewing state and federal inquiries into precarious work and related issues in Australia from the 1990s onwards. Placing the new legislation into historical context enhances our understanding of the law and surrounding policy debates. The Albanese federal Labor government package of industrial relations laws introduced between 2022 and 2024 marked a paradigm shift from earlier measures. While these reforms are rooted in Australian institutions, law and industrial relations history, they provide an alternative policy template for addressing the problems wrought by neoliberalism on labour standards, especially if accompanied by synergistic reforms in other areas, such as immigration and economic policies promoting manufacturing.
This article reviews the international evidence for economic benefits of multilevel collective bargaining, indicating that the expected gains are highly contingent and depend upon a raft of interlocking enabling conditions. We argue that the process of institutional reform requires that particular attention be paid to four key factors ‐ a country's political commitment to social dialogue, the degree of understanding of the complex institutional architecture of collective bargaining, the prioritizing of inclusive democratic representation and the resources available to invest in the capacities of workers' and employers' organizations. The article concludes by setting out key policy issues.
This article reviews the international evidence for economic benefits of multilevel collective bargaining, indicating that the expected gains are highly contingent and depend upon a raft of interlocking enabling conditions. We argue that the process of institutional reform requires that particular attention be paid to four key factors ‐ a country's political commitment to social dialogue, the degree of understanding of the complex institutional architecture of collective bargaining, the prioritizing of inclusive democratic representation and the resources available to invest in the capacities of workers' and employers' organizations. The article concludes by setting out key policy issues.
Across the world, many workers have experienced prolonged wage stagnation and insecure working conditions. At the same time, employers face challenges with staff shortages and low productivity. Sectoral and multi employer bargaining that covers broad segments of the workforce can help to solve these challenges and can bring positive outcomes to workers, firms and wider society. This King’s Business School Research Impact Paper examines different types of institutions to support high collective bargaining coverage. It reviews systems with high union density and employer density, different types of state intervention that extend the agreements to all workers within a sector and instruments that allow unions to establish multi employer agreements to safeguard against outsourcing.
During Chile’s shift to neoliberalism, the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet passed a swath of probusiness labor legislation. Subsequent labor reforms by democratically elected progressive administrations have sought to shift power back to workers, but this task has proven difficult. In Building Power to Shape Labor Policy, Pablo Pérez Ahumada explains why. Focusing on reforms to collective labor law, Pérez Ahumada argues that analyzing how both workers and employers mobilize power to influence government policies is crucial for understanding labor reform outcomes. He examines the relational character of power to explain how different types of power—structural, institutional, associational—interact with each other, and proposes a relational understanding of power and how it is balanced among competing social classes. While workers and employers both have a hand in shaping labor law, their influence is not equal. Analysis of recent events in Chile reveals how the balance of power and the lingering effects of neoliberalism manifest in labor reform.
This article analyzes how engagement in legitimation politics in Australia and New Zealand has enabled unions to influence the industrial relations policy process. It demonstrates how enhanced moral legitimacy with the wider public positively impacts unions’ pragmatic legitimacy with governing political parties. Drawing on Grant’s insider–outsider typology, we show how enhanced legitimacy can increase unions’ power resources as insider groups with center-left and, to a lesser extent, center-right governing parties, which can enable greater influence over industrial relations policy.
In 2017, Australian unions faced ongoing membership decline and new institutional constraints, but emerged reinvigorated from a change in leadership and a policy re-set. Many unions faced a hostile environment for bargaining, with protracted negotiations in key sectors, attended by robust industrial action at times. The decline in union members and collective agreements reached a crisis point. A surprisingly diverse collection of individuals expressed concerns that the system of enterprise bargaining was not producing outcomes that were fair or economically sustainable, with some questioning whether the system had created the level playing field its architects had envisioned, as well expressing growing unease that reforms intended to constrain unions were undermining the original objective of the legislation. Heading into 2018, unions and the Australian Council of Trade Unions were seeking a political and legislative solution to the seemingly entrenched industrial difficulties they face, campaigning around the theme ‘change the rules’. Without significant change in the system, it is difficult to see that the coming years will see any change to these dominant patterns.
Labour market fragmentation, the development of a single employer model of employment law and the integration of production systems have combined to make it more difficult for unions to create labour standards through collective regulation today than in previous eras. Instead of focusing solely on individual employers and workplace-by-workplace strategies, unions should also seek to use the commercial power of large firms to influence labour standards among their suppliers. Private firms whose reputations rely on social responsibility and public sector bodies with an obligation to provide high quality services can be vulnerable to charges of allowing poor labour practices to develop among their suppliers. Using ‘reputational risk’ strategies around the supply chain alongside their organising efforts is a potentially potent way for unions to improve labour standards in parts of the labour market where collective regulation is weak.
This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval; and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.
Over the past 30 years, British unions have been marginalised from economic policymaking. Union membership and collective bargaining coverage have fallen dramatically, and the sometimes negative economic impact of unions at the workplace level has disappeared. While strong unions were once key contributors to macroeconomic problems such as high inflation, the weakening of organised labour has created other economic problems for policymakers in Britain, such as rising inequality. The social and political consequences of deepening inequality may force a reconsideration of the role of both the state and of unions in upholding labour standards.
The traditional mechanisms for improving and protecting labour standards in advanced economies are failing. In Britain, the effectiveness of collective bargaining has diminished substantially over the past quarter century. Legally enforceable minimum labour standards have been an inadequate substitute. A new form of ‘joint regulation’ is emerging that may be better attuned to the contemporary structure of product market competition. It involves employers and unions coordinating action on labour standards across the supply chains of firms that contribute to the production of a particular good or service. This article explores the circumstances in which these ‘socially sustainable sourcing’ mechanisms develop and examines their impact on labour standards, by means of two case studies.
John W. Budd contends that the turbulence of the current workplace and the importance of work for individuals and society make it vitally important that employment be given "a human face." Contradicting the traditional view of the employment relationship as a purely economic transaction, with business wanting efficiency and workers wanting income, Budd argues that equity and voice are equally important objectives. The traditional narrow focus on efficiency must be balanced with employees' entitlement to fair treatment (equity) and the opportunity to have meaningful input into decisions (voice), he says. Only through a greater respect for these human concerns can broadly shared prosperity, respect for human dignity, and equal appreciation for the competing human rights of property and labor be achieved.Budd proposes a fresh set of objectives for modern democracies—efficiency, equity, and voice—and supports this new triad with an intellectual framework for analyzing employment institutions and practices. In the process, he draws on scholarship from industrial relations, law, political science, moral philosophy, theology, psychology, sociology, and economics, and advances debates over free markets, globalization, human rights, and ethics. He applies his framework to important employment-related topics, such as workplace governance, the New Deal industrial relations system, comparative industrial relations, labor union strategies, and globalization. These analyses create a foundation for reforming employment practices, social norms, and public policies. In the book's final chapter, Budd advocates the creation of the field of human resources and industrial relations and explores the wider implications of this renewed conceptualization of industrial relations.
In response to a renewed focus on multi‐employer bargaining in policy recommendations and policymaking, this article analyses and discusses coordination in the Danish multi‐employer bargaining system. Focusing on two main dimensions of coordination – horizontal, between various key actors at a centralized national level, and vertical, between national and local actors – I find that several interwoven processes of coordination strengthen the multi‐employer bargaining system, offering potential benefits for both employers and employees. However, it takes considerable resources to be part of a highly coordinated multi‐employer bargaining system and to harvest the benefits. Accordingly, various capacities among key actors are decisive for a well‐functioning multi‐employer bargaining system.
Low wage growth is a challenge common to many OECD countries including countries with very different institutional systems. This paper utilises and extends Rochefort and Cobb’s (1993) ‘problem definition’ framework to analyse how employer and union representatives in Australia and Denmark explain the causes of low wage growth. Drawing on elite interviews, which allow us to assess the nuance of actors’ perceptions, we find disagreement among Australian actors about the role of the collective bargaining system in contributing to low wage growth. Despite disagreement over the extent of the low wage growth problem in Denmark, both unions and employers expressed confidence in the ability of the bargaining system to resolve it. We argue that the greater degree of consensus in Denmark compared with Australia reflects differences in national institutional systems and knowledge regimes, which have influenced the ways actors in these countries perceive low wage growth.
Applying the new economics of organization and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross‐national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies. Building on a distinction between ‘liberal market economies’ and ‘coordinated market economies’, it explores the impact of these variations on economic performance and many spheres of policy‐making, including macroeconomic policy, social policy, vocational training, legal decision‐making, and international economic negotiations. The volume examines the institutional complementarities across spheres of the political economy, including labour markets, markets for corporate finance, the system of skill formation, and inter‐firm collaboration on research and development that reinforce national equilibria and give rise to comparative institutional advantages, notably in the sphere of innovation where LMEs are better placed to sponsor radical innovation and CMEs to sponsor incremental innovation. By linking managerial strategy to national institutions, the volume builds a firm‐centred comparative political economy that can be used to assess the response of firms and governments to the pressures associated with globalization. Its new perspectives on the welfare state emphasize the role of business interests and of economic systems built on general or specific skills in the development of social policy. It explores the relationship between national legal systems, as well as systems of standards setting, and the political economy. The analysis has many implications for economic policy‐making, at national and international levels, in the global age.
This book has both empirical and theoretical goals. The primary empirical goal is to examine the evolution of industrial relations in Western Europe from the end of the 1970s up to the present. Its purpose is to evaluate the extent to which liberalization has taken hold of European industrial relations and institutions through five detailed, chapter-length studies, each focusing on a different country and including quantitative analysis. The book offers a comprehensive description and analysis of what has happened to the institutions that regulate the labor market, as well as the relations between employers, unions, and states in Western Europe since the collapse of the long postwar boom. The primary theoretical goal of this book is to provide a critical examination of some of the central claims of comparative political economy, particularly those involving the role and resilience of national institutions in regulating and managing capitalist political economies. Essential reading for researchers and students interested in comparative politics and industrial relations. Argues that liberalization of industrial relations has been a universal tendency among European countries over the last thirty-five years. Offers a comprehensive description and analysis of what has happened to the institutions that regulate the labor market, as well as the relations between employers, unions, and states in Western Europe since the end of the 1970s.
Labour relations are at the heart of China's extraordinary economic rise. This growth, accompanied by internal migration, urbanisation and rising income have brought a dramatic increase in the aspirations of workers, forcing the Chinese government to restructure its relationships with both employers and workers. In order to resolve disputes and manage workplace militancy, the once monolithic official trade union is becoming more flexible, internally. No longer able to rely on government support in dealing with worker unrest, employers are rapidly forming organisations of their own. In this book, a new generation of Chinese scholars provide analyses of six distinct aspects of these developments. They are set in the broader context by the leading authority on Chinese labour law and two western specialists in comparative labour relations. The result is a comprehensive study for scholars and graduate students working in Chinese industrial relations, comparative labour law, human resource management, NGOs and international labour organisations.
Labour relations are at the heart of China's extraordinary economic rise. This growth, accompanied by internal migration, urbanisation and rising income have brought a dramatic increase in the aspirations of workers, forcing the Chinese government to restructure its relationships with both employers and workers. In order to resolve disputes and manage workplace militancy, the once monolithic official trade union is becoming more flexible, internally. No longer able to rely on government support in dealing with worker unrest, employers are rapidly forming organisations of their own. In this book, a new generation of Chinese scholars provide analyses of six distinct aspects of these developments. They are set in the broader context by the leading authority on Chinese labour law and two western specialists in comparative labour relations. The result is a comprehensive study for scholars and graduate students working in Chinese industrial relations, comparative labour law, human resource management, NGOs and international labour organisations. Provides a concise, rounded account of the rapidly changing industrial relations of China, focusing on the period since 2010, in accessible, non-technical English, suitable for a non-specialist reader Largely written by young Chinese scholars, drawing on their own case studies and surveys, it provides primary evidence on recent legal and institutional developments in China Uses Western concepts and scholarship to provide a deep understanding of the wider functioning of the Chinese state and Communist Party.
Applying the new economics of organization and relational theories of the firm to the problem of understanding cross‐national variation in the political economy, this volume elaborates a new understanding of the institutional differences that characterize the ‘varieties of capitalism’ found among the developed economies. Building on a distinction between ‘liberal market economies’ and ‘coordinated market economies’, it explores the impact of these variations on economic performance and many spheres of policy‐making, including macroeconomic policy, social policy, vocational training, legal decision‐making, and international economic negotiations. The volume examines the institutional complementarities across spheres of the political economy, including labour markets, markets for corporate finance, the system of skill formation, and inter‐firm collaboration on research and development that reinforce national equilibria and give rise to comparative institutional advantages, notably in the sphere of innovation where LMEs are better placed to sponsor radical innovation and CMEs to sponsor incremental innovation. By linking managerial strategy to national institutions, the volume builds a firm‐centred comparative political economy that can be used to assess the response of firms and governments to the pressures associated with globalization. Its new perspectives on the welfare state emphasize the role of business interests and of economic systems built on general or specific skills in the development of social policy. It explores the relationship between national legal systems, as well as systems of standards setting, and the political economy. The analysis has many implications for economic policy‐making, at national and international levels, in the global age.
This volume grows out of the research on the United States summarized in Low-Wage America: How Employers Are Reshaping Opportunity in the Workplace (Appelbaum, Bernhardt, and Murnane 2003), which sought to understand how U.S. firms were responding to economic globalization, deregulation, and technological progress and the impact of these responses on typical low-wage frontline workers. Two broad conclusions emerged from the array of qualitative and quantitative data presented in Low-Wage America. First, while most U.S. firms responded to the economic pressures of the last three decades by engaging in cost-cutting efforts that resulted in deteriorating pay and working conditions for their frontline workers, some firms chose different competitive strategies that yielded better outcomes for workers. These alternative "high- road" labor market strategies included focusing on reorganizing the work process, increasing capital intensity, introducing new technology, implementing innovations in products and services, and providing more and better training. These measures generally sought to raise the productivity or lower the turnover of low-wage workers in ways that would offset the higher initial investments or ongoing costs of taking the "high road."1 The second broad conclusion of Low-Wage America was that labor market institutions have an important impact on firms' choices about how to respond to competitive pressures. From the end of the 1970s to the present, the decline in unionization rates and the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, for example, have made it substantially easier for U.S. firms to respond to market challenges by taking the "low road." But still, some firms did choose high-road workplace practices in organizing and rewarding the work of less-skilled em ployees. And these decisions appear to have been shaped by labor market institutions-an employers' association in North Carolina that facilitated training and modernization, fostered new product development, sought new markets, and improved outcomes for both workers and companies; a training facility, jointly managed by hospitals and the health care union in New York City, that improved skills and pay for less-skilled hospital workers; high union density in a vacation destination city with upmarket hotels that led to substantially higher wages and better working conditions for hotel housekeepers. Nevertheless, only a small minority of the firms studied followed such high-road practices. In research focused solely on the United States, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the role of institutions in determining outcomes for workers in low-paid jobs. There is little institutional variation across the United States-the examples just given of strong labor market institutions in particular locales are widely recognized as exceptions to the general pattern of weak employers' associations, a low level of union density, and the failure of employers to train frontline workers. Our idea was that there might be much to be learned about the nature of jobs that are low-wage in the United States by studying these same jobs in other advanced industrial nations with very different institutional settings. More precisely, our key assumption was that the effects on national economies of changing technology, increasing globalization, and intensifying competition are filtered through institutional structures and, further, that these effects can be observed in the strategic decisions made by firms and in the quality of jobs held by workers. Indeed, this thinking was the genesis of the Russell Sage Foundation's decision to undertake industry-based case studies of job quality in foreign economies in 2005-2006. Selecting the comparison countries required balancing a set of factors. To be most useful, the comparison economies had to be different from the United States (and from each other), but not so radically different with respect to economic, political, and institutional (including cultural) institutions that they would bring little to a U.S.-focused discussion. Ultimately, three large economies-France, Germany, and the United Kingdom- And two smaller northern European economies-Denmark and the Netherlands-were selected. Researchers in all five countries followed a common methodology built around firm-level case studies in five industries-call centers, food processing, hospitals, hotels, and retail trade.2 Within each firm and industry, country teams focused on specific tasks typically performed in the United States by low-wage frontline workers: call center operators; operators in food processing; nursing assistants and cleaners in hospitals; hotel housekeepers; and cashiers and stock or sales clerks in retail. To complement these case studies, national researchers also used available data to draw the broader contours of low-wage and less-skilled work in each country.3 To measure the extent of low-wage work, national teams defined low-wage workers as those workers earning a gross hourly wage of less than two-thirds of each country's median gross hourly wage. The relative definition of low-wage work has several advantages over an absolute definition. The relative definition abstracts from differences in wages that simply reflect differences in average incomes across the six countries.4 More importantly, the relative definition reflects the view that relative pay matters both economically and socially. Firms are continuously making hiring and investment decisions based on the relative costs of different kinds of workers and different technologies. And workers are intrinsically concerned about the implied social valuation of their work that is included in the relative wage. This social aspect of pay suggests that relative pay is also a key dimension of job quality. Indeed, beyond pay, job quality is at the center of the analytical focus of this research. European countries have seen a renewed interest in this issue since the 1990s, and job quality has acquired an important place in the social and employment agenda of the European Union (see Gallie 2007). In this volume, we use the concept of job quality in its broadest sense, covering all the terms of employment and working conditions that may have an impact on the well-being of workers, both at work and in their private lives. Measuring job quality inevitably involves striking a balance between objective job characteristics and workers' subjective perceptions, including those related to job satisfaction. Most analyses of the key determinants of job quality focus on: compensation, including benefits or social entitlements (such as health insurance, pension, paid vacation, parental leave, paid sick days, and other nonwage compensation); contractual status, in particular whether the job is permanent or temporary (one of the fundamental determinants of job security); training and career opportunities; task discretion and other aspects of job design, such as work pace; health and safety conditions; and work schedules, including the scope for finding a balance between work and family life. The project's firm-level case studies, which focused on specific occupations in the same industries in all six countries, were particularly well suited to comparing these many dimensions of job quality across a variety of national institutional structures. As far as possible, national teams attempted to study eight firms in each industry in each country.5 In each firm, employers, executives, employees' representatives, and a sample of workers were interviewed following shared guidelines. The case studies also included workplace visits and, where possible, quantitative data provided by the firms. The results of each national research effort were first published in five national monographs.6 This volume seeks to extract some of the comparative lessons, reintroducing the American case. The main sources of the evidence and analysis here are the national monographs for the five European countries; this volume also draws less directly on earlier research presented in Low-Wage America, which has been updated and supplemented by U.S.-based researchers working with the European teams. The remainder of this chapter summarizes the main findings of the project.
This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.
At the outset of the Thatcher/Reagan era, the employment and labor law systems across six Anglo-American countries could be divided into three pairings: the Wagner Act model of the United States and Canada; the Voluntarist system of collective bargaining and strong unions in the United Kingdom and Ireland; and the highly centralized, legalistic Award systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors argue that there has been growing convergence in two major areas: First, of labor law toward a private ordering of employment relations in which terms and conditions of work and employment are primarily determined at the level of the enterprise; and second, of individual employment rights, toward a basket of minimum standards that can then be improved upon by the parties. The greatest similarity is found in Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. Ireland retains a greater degree of public ordering, while the United States diverges in favoring the interests of employers over those of employees and organized labor. The authors explore reasons for the convergence.
The construction of the London 2012 Olympic Park provided a model of employee relations that crossed organisational boundaries. This model was countercultural, contrasting with the unregulated approaches that are commonplace in construction and contrasting too with collaborative models that have been developed on other major projects.
This article presents a critique of the ‘methodological nationalism’ of traditional comparative industrial relations. It investigates nine different sectors across the 27 EU member states on the basis of seven empirical indicators. It is found that industrial relations vary across sectors as deeply as they do across countries, and that a cluster analysis of sectoral industrial relations produces very different results from one at national aggregate level. The concept of ‘national model’ of industrial relations, implying coherence and homogeneity within countries, and geographical typologies of industrial relations ‘types’, are therefore put in question. The article concludes by pointing at the theoretical and methodological implications of a focus on the sector as an important level of analysis.
Australia and New Zealand are best known for their systems of industrial relations based on compulsory arbitration. However, recent years have seen trends in both countries toward neo-liberalism—trends that represent the end of compulsory arbitration. This paper traces the path taken toward neo-liberalism, the speed of the journey, and the destination reached in both countries. In attempting to explain the differences between them, it is institutional factors—industrial and political—that are given highest priority.
This article examines the sole recent case of the comprehensive centralisation of bargaining. This ‘exceptional’ case allows new light to be cast on existing trends in multi-employer bargaining. The analysis suggests the importance of the state and unions as interlocutors in the political process of the determination of employer ‘interests’.
Trade unions have a number of functions, some of which have been more prominent than others at different periods in history. But over the course of time trade unions have developed five principal functions. These are respectively: a service function; a representation function; a regulatory function; a government function; and a public administration function. This paper examines these different functions and argues that the balance is shifting, with more emphasis being placed on service, governmental and public administration functions. We are witnessing the emergence of a new `supply side trade unionism` with a corresponding dilution of their representative and regulatory functions. These developments-engineered by governments of both parties in recent years-are assessed in the context of the Warwick agreement in 2004 where the trade unions and the Labour Party concluded a deal on the shape of a possible third term Labour government.
The Major Projects Agreement (MPA) is a framework collective agreement designed to enhance performance outcomes in large mechanical and electrical engineering projects. It includes the trade union as a partner in strategic, organisational and employment decisions. The agreement was recently implemented in the construction of Heathrow Terminal 5 (T5). We look at factors in the corporate governance and industrial relations environment that led to the use of the MPA at T5 and assess its contribution to the completion of the construction project there. That the MPA has not been more widely adopted since the completion of T5 is indicative, we suggest, of institutional constraints on labour-management partnerships in Britain.
Coordination through collective bargaining is recognised as an influential determinant of labour market outcomes and macroeconomic performance. This article provides a systematic review of the empirical literature on the subject. What emerges from the review is that it is different types and coverage of bargaining coordination, rather than cross-country variation in trade union density, that matter for economic performance. High levels of bargaining coverage tend to be associated with relatively poor economic performance, but this adverse relationship can be at least mitigated by high levels of bargaining coordination. In the absence of formal bargaining arrangements, economies often develop informal bargaining mechanisms whose effects are similar to those arising from formal bargaining provided they both operate at similar levels of coordination. The consequences of labour market coordination or absence thereof depend on the monetary policy regime as non-accommodating monetary policy can eliminate some of the adverse unemployment consequences otherwise associated with industry-level collective bargaining. Finally, bargaining coordination seems to matter most in times of rapid economic change rather than under more stable conditions. Overall, we conclude that it is the total ‘package’ of (formal and informal) labour market institutions that matters for the performance of the economy rather than unionisation as such or individual aspects of unionism.
Minimum-Wages Directive - History in the Making”.Social Europe 1
- Müller Torsten Andthorstenschulten
A Nudging ERA? Evaluating the Effects of a Legislative Default on Union Membership Decisions to Inform the Suitability of Nudge Theory in Employment Relations
- Treanor Damian
Treanor, Damian. 2023. "A Nudging ERA? Evaluating the Effects of a Legislative Default
on Union Membership Decisions to Inform the Suitability of Nudge Theory in
Employment Relations". PhD thesis, Auckland University of Technology.
Improving Pay and Productivity with Sector Collective Bargaining: A Review of the International Evidence” King's Business School Research Impact Papers No. 2. London: King's College London
- F Benassi Chiara
- Wright
Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee. 2022. Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill
- Australia
Australia, Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee. 2022. Fair Work
Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022 [Provisions]. Inquiry
Report. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia.
Australia Can't Afford Workplace Relations Own Goal
- Business Council
- Australia
Business Council of Australia. 2022. "Australia Can't Afford Workplace Relations Own
Goal", 27 October 2022. https://www.bca.com.au/australia_can_t_afford_workplace
_relations_own_goal.
Putting Good Work on the Table: Reforming Labour Market Institutions to Improve Pay and Conditions. London: Resolution Foundation
- Charlie Mccurdy
- Hannah Slaughter
- Gavin Kelly
McCurdy, Charlie, Hannah Slaughter, and Gavin Kelly. 2023. Putting Good Work on
the Table: Reforming Labour Market Institutions to Improve Pay and Conditions.
London: Resolution Foundation.
Minimum-Wages Directive -History in the Making
- Torsten Müller
- Thorsten Schulten
Müller, Torsten, and Thorsten Schulten. 2022. "Minimum-Wages Directive -History
in the Making". Social Europe, 1 July 2022. https://www.socialeurope.eu/
minimum-wages-directive-history-in-the-making.
Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill
- Jaan Murphy
- Scanlon Williams
- Elliott King
Murphy, Jaan, Scanlon Williams, and Elliott King. 2022. "Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Secure Jobs, Better Pay) Bill 2022". Bills Digest No. 34, 2022-23. Canberra:
Parliament of Australia.
Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. 2022. The Proposed Fair Pay Agreement System
- New Zealand
New Zealand, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. 2022. The Proposed
Fair Pay Agreement System. Wellington. https://www.mbie.govt.nz/dmsdocument/
27937-the-proposed-fair-pay-agreement-system.
On the Brink: The Erosion of Enterprise Agreement Coverage in Australia's Private Sector. Canberra: Centre for Future Work
- Alison Pennington
Pennington, Alison. 2018. On the Brink: The Erosion of Enterprise Agreement Coverage
in Australia's Private Sector. Canberra: Centre for Future Work, Australia Institute.