Trade Union Approaches towards the ICE Regulations: Defensive Realism or Missed Opportunity?
| Author | Mark Hall,Sue Hutchinson,Jane Parker,Michael Terry,John Purcell |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12033 |
| Published date | 01 June 2015 |
| Date | 01 June 2015 |
Trade Union Approaches towards the ICE
Regulations: Defensive Realism or
Missed Opportunity?
Mark Hall, John Purcell, Michael Terry,
Sue Hutchinson and Jane Parker
Abstract
Reflecting debates about whether statutory workforce-wide consultation
arrangements are likely to undermine or underpin trade union representation,
unions’ approaches towards the UK’s Information and Consultation of Employ-
ees Regulations 2004 have been ambivalent and their engagement with the
legislation limited. Evidence from longitudinal case studies in 25 organizations
suggests that the introduction of information and consultation bodies did not
have the effect of marginalizing trade union representation and collective bar-
gaining, and in some cases reinforced unions’ standing within the organization.
The article highlights the implications for union strategies and legislative
reform, and suggests a research agenda.
1. Introduction
Since the mid-1990s, the prospect and eventual reality of EU-driven legisla-
tive intervention providing universal employee rights to information and
consultation (I&C) has prompted extensive debate about the potential orga-
nizational consequences for unions. The official reaction of the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) to legislative developments in this area has been positive. It
hailed the adoption of the 2002 EU Directive on informing and consulting
employees as a ‘real strategic breakthrough’ (Hall 2005; Koukiadaki 2009).
This enthusiasm reflected not only the fact that the Directive entailed a
significant extension of statutory consultation rights in the UK context, but
also the perceived opportunities it offered trade unions in terms of organizing
strategies and extending union influence in the workplace. The resulting
Mark Hall, John Purcell and Michael Terry are at the University of Warwick. Sue Hutchinson
is at the University of the West of England. Jane Parker is at Massey University.
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
53:2 June 2015 0007–1080 pp. 350–375 doi: 10.1111/bjir.12033
Information and Consultation of Employees (ICE) Regulations 2004 intro-
duced, for the first time in the UK, a general statutory framework governing
workforce consultation. But despite the TUC’s emphasis on the potential
organizational benefits for unions (TUC 2005), in practice union responses
to the legislation have been highly ‘ambivalent’ (Hall 2006: 461). Proactive
union use of the legislation has been limited, and union reaction to employer
I&C initiatives has been largely defensive.
The aims of this article are twofold. First, it explores the reasons for the
ambivalence exhibited by trade unions towards the ICE Regulations and the
low level of union engagement with the legislation in practice. It then uses
evidence from a programme of longitudinal case studies in 25 organizations,
undertaken between 2006 and 2010, to analyse unions’ responses to, and
experience of, the introduction and operation of I&C bodies. This indicates
that initial union concerns about potential negative impacts on their organi-
zation and/or bargaining role were largely unrealized. On the basis of this
evidence, implications for union strategies and legislative reform are drawn
in the final section.
2. Analysing the implications for unions of statutory consultation
Development of Union Policy
Historically, employee consultation in the UK has not been subject to statu-
tory regulation. At key junctures in the first half of the twentieth century,
governments considered but rejected the use of legislation to promote the
Whitley committee’s 1917 proposals for works committees and also joint
production committees during and after the Second World War. According
to Dukes (2008), this outcome reflected a preference on the part of both
ministers and the TUC for workplace worker representation to be organized
on a single-channel basis to ensure control by moderate union leaderships as
much as adherence to voluntarism per se. It also reflected the long-running
fear that employers would use consultative committees as a form of union
substitution.
In the modern era, in the context of the Bullock committee of enquiry on
industrial democracy in the mid-1970s, the TUC argued strongly for single-
channel, trade union-based representation on company boards and against
the introduction of ‘works councils’ on the grounds that they would ‘dupli-
cate’ or ‘supersede’ existing trade union structures (TUC 1973: para. 94,
cited in Koukiadaki 2009: 398). But from the late 1980s onwards, the
TUC’s ‘unequivocal support for the single channel’ at the time of Bullock
(Towers 1997: 207) underwent a reappraisal, prompted by the sustained
decline in union membership and collective bargaining coverage in the
UK, and the increasing influence of continental regulatory traditions via
EU legislation. Successive TUC conference resolutions and policy reviews
reflected union interest in whether representation arrangements, such as
© John Wiley & Sons Ltd/London School of Economics 2013.
Trade Union Approaches towards the ICE Regulations 351
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