Partnership as union strategy: a preliminary evaluation
| Date | 01 April 2001 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450110384697 |
| Published date | 01 April 2001 |
| Pages | 164-193 |
| Author | Peter Haynes,Michael Allen |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
23,2
164
Employee Relations,
Vol. 23 No. 2, 2001, pp. 164-187.
#MCB University Press, 0142-5455
Received July 2000
Revised September 2000
Accepted December 2000
Partnership as union strategy:
a preliminary evaluation
Peter Haynes
Department of Management and Employee Relations, University of
Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand, and
Michael Allen
Human Resiurces Group, Cranfield School of Management,
Cranfield, UK
Keywords Industrial relations, Employers, Partnerships, Trade unions
Abstract Two general viewpoints on workplace ``partnership'' as a union strategy are
identified: it is seen as either a potentially effective strategy for restoring union influence, or as
fatally flawed. Discusses the determinants of robust union-management partnership relations in
order to assist the evaluation of ``partnership unionism''as a union strategy. Outlines a definition
of workplace partnership based on practice. Although common elements with earlier attempts to
promote or implement union-management cooperation can be discerned, it is argued that
contemporary workplace partnership has distinctive characteristics arising from its specific
context. Two cases are used to illustrate the internal dynamics of workplace partnership and the
nature of interaction with environmental factors. The necessary components of robust
partnership relations are thereby isolated. Partnership is found to be not only compatible with,
but dependent upon, stronger workplace organisation. Such an understanding is found to be a
possible alternative to accounts that stress union incorporation and demobilisation.
Introduction
Union-management ``partnership'' is receiving greater attention in UK
employment practice and in the academic literature as growing numbers of
unions and employers enter into formal agreements to build long-term
relationships based on cooperation rather than adversarialism. Some
institutions and commentators, including the Trades Union Congress (TUC),
have advocated partnership as a beneficial and sustainable strategic choice for
trade unions facing a hostile economic and institutional environment. Others
have questioned the gains for unions or emphasised the dangers of co-option
and erosion of institutional strength. Fierce debate within the union movement
has paralleled the academic discussion in the UK and elsewhere (Claydon, 1998;
Nissen, 1997; Boxall and Haynes, 1997).
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as elsewhere in the English-speaking
world, UK trade unions faced concerted government and employer strategies
aimed at decollectivising the workforce, compositional shifts within the labour
market away from traditionally unionised sectors, and unfavourable product
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The authors would like to thank Peter Boxall, Chris Brewster, Nick Bacon and Tony Elger for
comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the managers and trade union officers interviewed
for their generous cooperation. The usual disclaimer applies. In addition, the support of the
Department of Sociology, University of Warwick for Peter Haynes as a visiting fellow is
acknowledged with gratitude.
Partnership as
union strategy
165
and labour market conditions. Union membership and influence fell
precipitately. Against this background, the ``NewLabour'' project, with its
emphasis on stakeholding, may offer the opportunity to fashion a new mode of
engagement that provides ``a favourable industrial relations terrain, in which
unions can regain the initiative and work to rebuild their institutional presence
in British society'' (Ackers and Payne, 1998; see also Boxall and Haynes, 1997).
Or, as one full-time union official put it:
If you've had years and years of something that's horrible, and something comes along that's
not quite so horrible, you support it. Partnership's not so horrible because we use it as a code-
word for recognition. It is an acknowledgement of the legitimacy of the other party. With
partnership comes the rediscovery of pluralistic industrial relations (interview, 4 May, 1999).
At least one prominent business lobbyist, the President of the Confederation of
British Industry, shares this view, albeit drawing radically different
conclusions in warning against ``a possibly damaging build up of trade union
influence, hidden behind the new buzzword partnership'' (CBI, 1999).
In addition to its broad appeal in the present context, various writers and
advocates of union-management cooperation have noted a number of specific
benefits to union members and to the institutional interests of unions. These
include improved rewards and working conditions, more positive relations
with supervisors, enhanced employee consultation and involvement, and
greater job security (Bluestone and Bluestone, 1992; Cohen-Rosenthal and
Burton, 1993; IPA, 1997; IRS, 1999; Kochan et al., 1984; Kochan and Osterman,
1994; Lazes and Savage, 1997; Monks, 1998; Schuster, 1984).
Other writers have stressed the dangers and pitfalls for unions of
cooperative relations with employers. These include duplicity or partial
commitment by management, external shocks such as corporate takeovers and
product market downturn, worker rejection of acquiescence and the possibility
of work intensification (Black and Ackers, 1994; Claydon, 1998; Kelly, 1996;
LRD, 1998; Taylor and Ramsay, 1998; Yates, 1992). Indeed, for some any such
engagement is a fatal error. The incorporatist[1] argument is summed up
succinctly by Parker and Slaughter's (1997, p. 209) blanket assertion that
employers ``want a union-free environment, not cooperation with unions. Where
they cannot (yet) get rid of unions they attempt to de-power and co-opt them.''
In a similar vein, Kelly (1996, p. 88) argues that, ``since it is difficult, if not
impossible, to achieve a partnership with a party who would prefer that you
didn't exist, the growth of employer hostility is a major objection to the case for
moderation''.
These two broadly categorised analyses differ critically in terms of the
assumptions held about the motivations and responses of employers, workers
and unions, and the internal and external dynamics of the process within which
they are played out. Critically, the incorporatist view equates partnership with
union weakness ± the union is dependent on state or employer sponsorship ±
and posits demobilisation of membership in the face of quiescence and
accommodation (see, for example, Kelly, 1996). In contrast, others are able to
conceptualise a more complex interaction between employer and membership
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