Economic Citizenship and Workplace Conflict in Anglo‐American Industrial Relations Systems
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12150 |
| Published date | 01 June 2016 |
| Date | 01 June 2016 |
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12150
54:2 June 2016 0007–1080 pp. 358–384
Economic Citizenship and Workplace
Conflict in Anglo-American Industrial
Relations Systems
Denise Currie and Paul Teague
Abstract
This article argues that the expansion of individual employment rights is
presenting a series of challenges to the collective model of economic citizenship
that prevailed in most of the Anglo-American world during the last century.
We examine developments in the management of workplace conflict in Anglo-
American countries to highlight the institutional manoeuvrings that have been
taking place to mould the nature of national regimes of employment rights.
We argue that Governments almost everywhere are actively seeking to create
institutional regimes that weaken the impact of employment legislation and
we find that statutory dispute resolution agencies are eagerly trying to develop
organizationalidentities that are aligned with rights-based employment disputes.
1. Introduction
Many lament the weakening of collective industrial relations processes, but
few deny that it is occurring. When these processes were thriving, they gave
rise to what might be called a collective model of economic citizenship:
the economic status of those in employment was determined by collective
bargaining reinforced to varying degrees by other collective institutional
processes. However, this collective model of economic citizenship is now in
retreat and has been for some time. A battery of initiatives and programmes
has been pursued almost everywhere to revive this model, but it is fair
to say without much success. In this context, it is important to ask the
question: with the fraying of the collective model of economic citizenship
what new institutions areemerging to invent the rights and obligations used to
incorporate people into working life? In other words, is economic citizenship
being institutionally reformed?
Denise Currie and Paul Teagueare at the Management School, Queen’s University Belfast.
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Economic Citizenship and Workplace Conflict 359
This article suggests that the huge expansion in individual employment
rights that has occurred almost simultaneously across Anglo-American
countries is having a significant impact on the traditional collective model
of economic citizenship. It seeks to tease out the nature and significance of
the institutional changes taking place by examining the changing nature of
workplace conflict and its resolutionin the Anglo-American world. It suggests
that a new ‘rights-based’ dimension is emerging to economic citizenship in
these countries. Testimony to the significance of this development is the active
attempts being made by Governmentsand employers across Anglo-American
countries to institutionalize regimes of individual employment rights that are
business friendly. Moreover, statutory dispute resolution agencies, once an
institutional buttress of collective industrial relations, are seeking to reinvent
themselves so that their services are more aligned with new emerging ‘rights-
based’ patterns of workplace conflict. All in all, the article suggests that
economic citizenship may be institutionally mutating in the Anglo-American
world.
The article is organized as follows. The first section explains the concept of
economic citizenship and shows how for a good part of the twentieth century
it was embedded in a battery of collective industrial relations institutions in
Anglo-American countries. The following section suggests that the collective
model of economic citizenship has been under pressure for some time and
identifies the big expansion of employment legislation on individual rights
across the Anglo-American world as a significant cross-country institutional
development. The third section examines the extent to which the growth
of individual employment rights should be seen as one example of the
wider juridification of economic and social life. Next we assess attempts at
creating a private ordering of the employment relationship in response to
these juridification developments. The penultimate section assesses how the
rise of individual employment rights has encouragedpublic dispute resolution
bodies to reconstitute themselves internally in an eort to be aligned with
rights-based employment relationsactivity. The conclusions bring togetherthe
arguments of the article.
2. Industrial relations and economic citizenship
Normally, a range of institutional rules and procedures are used to not only
incorporate people into the labour market, but also to shape expectations
and obligations that employees, employers and societies have for work and
employment relationships (Grahl and Teague 1994). We call this economic
citizenship, but others use dierent terms: for example, Kochan (1999) uses
the notion of a social contract. For most of the twentieth century, Anglo-
American countries had national regimes of economic citizenship, which
shared both similar and distinctive features. Like Jackson and Kirsch (2014),
we consider it important not to followthe varieties of capitalism approach and
characterize these countries as possessing a set of tightly prescribed common
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2015 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.
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