Reconceptualizing Local Union Responses to Workplace Restructuring in North America
| Author | Ann C. Frost |
| Published date | 01 December 2001 |
| Date | 01 December 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8543.00214 |
Reconceptualizing Local Union
Responses toWorkplace Restructuring
in North America
Ann C. Frost
Abstract
To date no clear consensus has emerged about how industrial relations scholars
ought to conceptualize union responses to workplace restructuring. Yet, local
union responses to management-initiated workplace change can differ markedly
and can have important implications for the outcomes of restructuring. This
study examines the experiences of three local unions engaged in workplace
restructuring in the North American steel industry and suggests a recon-
ceptualization of local union responses, away from a simple ‘militant’–
‘cooperative’ dichotomy towards a conceptualization based on the process by
which local unions engage with management over restructuring.
1. Introduction
The current era of rapid technological change, deregulation and global
competition has put unions under considerable pressure to alter traditional
Taylorist forms of work organization. Job control unionism and its demar-
cation and protection of narrowly defined jobs is seen to be a substantial
barrier to high performance in the current competitive environment. As the
process of transformation to more flexible models of work organization
continues, we observe considerable variation in the outcomes of these re-
structuring initiatives. Understanding and explaining this variation is a
critical research undertaking, with important implications for the firms,
workers and unions involved.
Over the past decade, a number of researchers have used the strategic
choice framework (Kochan et al. 1986) to explain such variation in work-
place outcomes by focusing largely on the strategies of management (see e.g.
Arthur 1992; Walton et al. 1994). However, in many cases management
strategy alone appears to be an insufficient explanation. The inability to
Ann C. Frost is at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
39:4 December 2001 0007–1080 pp. 539–564
#Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
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explain the often considerable variation observed creates the need for a
more integrated and richer conceptualization of workplace change.
In this paper I argue that the responses of local unions to management-
initiated workplace change are an important variable in explaining variation
in the outcomes of workplace restructuring. The local union is a critical
actor in workplace restructuring initiatives, as many of the changes sought
by management to ensure the firm’s future competitiveness occur at the
workplace level — the domain of the local union in unionized environments.
Moreover, the decentralization of bargaining that has occurred throughout
a wide range of industrialized countries over the past two decades has made
local unions, rather than national unions, increasingly responsible for
negotiating such workplace changes (Fairbrother 2000; Katz 1993; Katz and
Darbishire 2000).
The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptualization of local union
responses to management-initiated workplace restructuring that allows us to
better explain variation in the outcomes of workplace restructuring. Tradi-
tional conceptualizations of labour’s responses have tended, to one degree
or another, to rely on a unidimensional dichotomization between ‘militant’
and ‘co-operative’ positions. Yet they frequently mask significant and
important variation within each category. For example, ‘militant’ responses
can range from refusal to negotiate at all over workplace change to those
that force management to negotiate an agreement that better meets the
needs of all parties. Similarly, ‘co-operative’ responses can range from
negotiation that meets the needs of both parties to responses that are little
more than union acquiescence in the face of powerful management. Badly
needed in the literature is a richer conceptualization of the role played by
local unions in shaping workplace outcomes. That is the point of departure
and motivation for this paper.
I focus on the process of workplace restructuring. Using evidence from
three case studies of United Steelworker locals involved in workplace
restructuring initiatives, I examine how and by whom alternative models of
work organization were generated, the process by which an alternative was
selected, and how the selected model was then implemented. By doing this,
I show that traditional conceptualizations have masked important differences
in labour responses to management-initiated restructuring. In contrast, the
conceptualization of local union responses developed here serves to better
explain how, in two cases, workplace restructuring initiated by management
led to positive benefits for the stakeholders involved, while change in a
virtually identical setting produced little lasting change and few sustainable
benefits for the parties involved.
2. Previous conceptualizations of union responses to workplace restructuring
Empirical evidence is emerging that labour’s involvement in the process of
restructuring often leads to superior outcomes (Bacon et al. 1996; Cooke
540 British Journal of Industrial Relations
#Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2001.
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