The uncertain road to partnership. An action research perspective on “new industrial relations” in the UK offshore oil industry
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450310501324 |
| Pages | 594-612 |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| Author | Graeme Martin,Judy Pate,Phil Beaumont,Alan Murdoch |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
The uncertain road to
partnership
An action research perspective on “new
industrial relations” in the UK offshore
oil industry
Graeme Martin
Edinburgh Business School, Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, UK
Judy Pate
Dundee Business School, University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee, UK
Phil Beaumont
School of Management, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK, and
Alan Murdoch
Dundee Business School, University of Abertay Dundee, Dundee, UK
Keywords Partnership, Labour, Industrial relations, Oil industry, United Kingdom
Abstract This paper examines the problems involved in developing collective bargaining in the
traditionally non-union environment of the strategically important UK offshore oil industry. In
doing so it provides evidence on the success of the “new”, stakeholder industrial relations
environment established by the present UK government. Drawing on an in-depth insight into
management and union strategies gained from action research, the paper documents the attempt
to establish a collective agreement and a partnership approach to industrial relations in the drilling
sector of the North Sea offshore oil industry, a sector which has had no previous history of
unionisation. In doing the research provides evidence partnership policy, the literature on union
recognition and the process of negotiation in international organisations.
Introduction
The new industrial relations, union recognition and partnership agreements
During the 1990s, developments in industrial/labour relations received
increasing attention in the USA and UK, following earlier commentary on
the US mutual commitment models (Kochan and Osterman, 1994) and more
recent discussion of partnership agreements by the UK New Labour
government as a key element of their stakeholder ethos on industrial policy.
Thus there was a strand of powerful and “official” rhetoric in the UK of
collaboration between employers and “new model unions” (Mitchell, 1998;
Martinez Lucio and Stuart, 2002). Such developments towards partnership,
however, rest on one of the classic pluralist nostrums of having independent
partners to an agreement, and that has increasingly not been the case in the UK
private sector since the highpoint of union density in the late 1970s. Thus
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
ER
25,6
594
Received June 2003
Revised July 2003
Accepted July 2003
Employee Relations
Vol. 25 No. 6, 2003
pp. 594-612
qMCB UP Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450310501324
recognition (or re-recognition) of unions in many organisations was seen to be
the first step to partnership, which, in turn, was thought would lead to a climate
of “new industrial relations” (IR), bringing direct benefit to employers in the
form of increased morale and productivity, and benefits to employees in being
given a voice in how they should be managed (Incomes Data Service, 1998).
As an essential step along this road to new IR and as part payment to
the unions for their help in gaining power, the UK Labour government
passed the 1999 Employment Relations Act. It was based on the US model
(Adams, 1999) and gave unions new rights to recognition. Such legislation
was also associated with European Union requirements to consult on issues
such as redundancy and to set up works councils in larger and
international organisations. The ideas discussed in the UK Government
White Paper, Fairness at Work (DTI, 1998), which set out the basis for the
1999 Act, discussed the promotion of a new culture of co-operation and
partnership at work.
For those employers who had no history of dealing with unions in the UK,
many of which were multinational enterprises with headquarters in the USA,
union recognition was seen as a doubtful benefit. However, the UK union
movement generally welcomed the legislation since membership, especially in
the private sector, was at an all time low. As some commentators have argued,
however, the legislation was infused with values and policy that attempted to
cast unionism in a different light from that which it had previously been seen
(Smith and Morton, 2001). These researchers quote Gordon Brown, the UK
Treasury Minister and one of the principal architects of the legislation:
The government is encouraging unions to develop the opportunity of being invited to the
negotiating table, rather than to develop the collective strength with which to force entry to it.
In this spirit, recognition will to a considerable degree not just depend on what employers
choose to offer, but also upon what unions can earn for themselves, by means of nurturing a
relationship of trust with management (Brown, 1999, pp 168-9, quoted in Smith and Morton,
2001).
Thus union recognition and the legislation brought in to assist unions in this
process was seen by government as a means by which unions would change
their previous behaviour of opposition and control to one of enterprise-based
partnership with employers to promote a business agenda. As we have already
alluded, however, there was a significant minority of unions and academics
which were also worried about the potential for incorporation of unions into
employers’ aims (Hayes and Allen, 2001) and about the hidden agendas of
employers in developing sophisticated human resource (HR) strategies
(Martinez Lucio and Stuart, 2002). Such scepticism has long been a feature of
the literature on unions and the development of human resource management
(HRM) in the UK (Hyman, 1975; Legge, 1995) for, as Adams (1999) has argued,
statutory recognition may have led to the decline of robust unionism and
collective bargaining in the USA since the 1950s.
The uncertain
road to
partnership
595
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