The Viability of Trade Union Organization: A Bargaining Unit Analysis
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8543.00191 |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Author | Paul Willman |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
The Viability of Trade Union Organization:
A Bargaining Unit Analysis
Paul Willman
Abstract
The paper develops a model of trade union behaviour based on the concept of
the viable bargaining unit. Viability rests on five conditions: membership level,
service level, membership participation, employer recognition, and facilities.
Unions are seen as portfolios of viable and inviable bargaining units. Six prop-
ositions are derived, concerning union scale, growth, the impact of statutory
recognition provisions, the emergence of conglomerate unions, governance
structures, and relations with employers. Employer dependence is central, and
a simple game-theoretic approach is used to discuss employer co-operation.
Viability at the union level is achieved by portfolio diversification and employer
co-operation.
1. Introduction
This paper explores the idea that the bargaining unit is a useful focus for the
analysis of trade union behaviour. It is axiomatic that unions, in the UK at
least, consist of one or more bargaining units. The proposition here is that,
for a given trade union to survive, some or all of its bargaining units must be
viable in the terms defined below. Where a union contains, in addition,
inviable bargaining units, there are spillovers of resources and, perhaps,
bargaining power from the viable to the inviable. These spillovers have
implications for union growth, governance and recognition by employers.
There are also implications for the financial viability of trade unions. Various
dimensions of a trade union's behaviour may, therefore, be explicable
theoretically in terms of the status of and interaction between the bargaining
units in its portfolio.
The bargaining unit composition of trade unions may also be of interest
for a variety of empirical and policy-related reasons. First, union membership
has been declining in absolute terms in many industrialized countries for
Paul Willman is at Balliol College, Oxford, and the Centre for Economic Performance, London
School of Economics.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
39:1 March 2001 0007±1080 pp. 97±117
#Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2001. Published by Blackwell Publishers Ltd,
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some time. Decline may be generated by workplace closure, by derecognition
by employers or by quit decisions by individual members. Any of these may
alter the balance between viable and inviable bargaining units within a union.
Second, union concentration in many countries has also been increasing, and
the pattern of union mergers has often generated general or cross-sectoral
unions with diversified bargaining unit portfolios (Undy 1998; Willman
1996; Streeck and Visser 1997). Third, there is a policy issue within the UK.
A statutory route to recognition has recently become available, and the
viability of the bargaining units created by such a route is an important
question.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 develops the idea of
the viable bargaining unit. Section 3 uses this to develop the idea of union
viability. Section 4 assesses the usefulness of the approach for the analysis
of trade union behaviour. Section 5 explores the implications of this for
employers using a simple industry model of partial unionization. Section 6
summarizes and assesses implications.
2. Conditions for bargaining unit viability
This section develops previous work by Berkowitz (1954), Pencavel (1971)
and Willman et al. (1993) to produce a simple model of bargaining unit viability.
Berkowitz contains an early attempt to analyse the demand for and supply
of union services. These services are analysed on a disaggregated basis by
Pencavel such that their cost implications may be inferred. Willman et al.
develop the idea of employer subsidy of union activity through the argument
that, at the union level, survival depends on success both in raising member-
ship and in securing recognition from employers. In the following sections,
these ideas are developed further, initially at the bargaining unit level.
A viable bargaining unit is defined here as one that is capable of sus-
taining collective bargaining with an employer without long-term support
from elsewhere within the union.
1
The argument identifies five ingredients
of viability: membership level, union service level, employer recognition,
membership participation, and employer-provided facilities. Their roles and
interaction are described sequentially below.
Assume an existing union begins to recruit members within a non-union
establishment. It must normally achieve a certain level of membership before
the employer will agree to bargain. For some time, there may be obstacles to
membership growth of at least two kinds. The first is the standard collective
action problem: as Elster (1989: 40) notes, `before a union can force or
induce workers to join, it must have overcome a free-rider problem in the
first place'. Force or sanction based in law or group pressure may be
available, but it may give rise, as Elster also notes, to significant second-
order collective action problems, particularly at low levels of membership;
i.e., costs arise for existing members in the enforcement of sanctions against
those who will not join.
98 British Journal of Industrial Relations
#Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2001.
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