Performance‐related pay and trade union de‐recognition
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459710176954 |
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| Pages | 208-221 |
| Author | Edmund Heery |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
19,3
208
Performance-related pay and
trade union de-recognition
Edmund Heery
Cardiff Business School, University of Wales, Cardiff
Introduction
A central theme in current discussion of British industrial relations is the
compatibility of the old, union-based system with newer approaches to workforce
management being developed by employers. For some, new management
techniques represent a threat to trade unions and are indicative of a step-change
in industrial relations towards a union-free business environment (Smith and
Morton, 1993). For others, in contrast, a union presence not only is compatible
with the use of new management techniques, but also can actively contribute to
their effective deployment within the workplace (Storey and Sisson, 1993).
The purpose of this article is to explore this question of the compatibility of
the old and the new industrial relations by examining the effects on trade
unions of a particular management technique, individual performance-related
pay (IPRP). Payment systems of this kind, which link salary to the results of an
individual performance appraisal, have spread extensively over the past ten
years from managerial to non-managerial employees, from the private to the
public sector and from white-collar to manual workers (Kessler, 1994; Kinnie
and Lowe, 1990). They have also excited considerable concern within the trade
union movement (NALGO, 1990; NATFHE, 1992; NUT, 1991).
In principle, there is no reason why this kind of payment system should not
be absorbed within union-based industrial relations. Like any other procedural
rule, it can become subject to joint regulation and accounts of unions
negotiating IPRP can be found in the research literature (Kessler, 1990; Swabe,
1989). However, there are also accounts of unions being excluded from influence
over schemes and of their introduction serving as the occasion for union de-
recognition (Evans and Hudson, 1993; Ferner and Colling, 1991; Gall, 1993;
Ogden, 1994). The first objective of what follows, therefore, is to establish which
of these, equally plausible, developments has been dominant in recent years.
The second objective is to identify the circumstances where IPRP has been
associated with de-recognition. Research on de-recognition suggests there may
be a number of stimulants and facilitating conditions and this work can be used
to derive hypotheses about union exclusion and IPRP (Beaumont, 1995; Brown
et al., 1995; Claydon, 1989; Gall and McKay, 1994). One hypothesis is that
exclusion will be a function of union power and union policy. Where unions are
weak, that is, managers will be better able to implement schemes without
agreement and they may choose to act in this manner where unions are
oppositional and not prepared to accept IPRP.
Employee Relations, Vol. 19 No. 3,
1997, pp. 208-221. © MCB
University Press, 0142-5455
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