Trade union merger strategies: good or bad?
| Date | 02 January 2009 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450910925274 |
| Pages | 116-120 |
| Published date | 02 January 2009 |
| Author | John Gennard |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
EDITORIAL
Trade union merger strategies:
good or bad?
John Gennard
Department of Human Resource Management, University of Strathclyde,
Glasgow, UK, and Editor, Employee Relations
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to review the significance of Roger Undy’s book, Trade
Union Merger Strategies: Purpose,Process and Performance, Oxford University Press, 2008.
Design/methodology/approach – The editorial outlines and evaluates the arguments put forward
by Dr Undy to explain why trade union mergers take place. It also evaluates the book’s analysis of the
politics of trade union mergers.
Findings – As trade union membership has declined mergers have been prominent features in
strategies of union revival. Yet, there is little empirical research into the effects of mergers on the
unions actually merging or on their impact on the wider union movement. Dr Undy concludes that
mergers do not provide a solution to the problem of falling membership and that transfers of
engagements are often more successful than amalgamations.
Originality/value – The editorial offers insights into the process, performance and effects of trade
union mergers.
Keywords Trade unions, Books
Paper type Viewpoint
Trade unions have in the last 25 years found external challenges of globalisation,
increased international competition, technological change and the de-centralisation of
collective bargaining. Amongst the consequences of such changes have been a marked
decline in union density across most industrialised societies. Various strategies have
been adopted by trade unions, including mergers, in the hope of improving union
behaviour. There have been few studies of an empirical nature which have evaluated
the effectiveness of such a strategy, including an examination of the post-merger
performance of trade unions. With respect to the UK this gap has now been filled by
Roger Undy’s Trade Union Merger Strategies: Purpose, Process and Performance
(Undy, 2008), published by Oxford University Press in 2008. This will become a classic
industrial relations text alongside H.A. Turner’s, Trade Union Growth, Structure and
Policy published by Allan and Urwin in 1962 (Turner, 1962), which sought to explain
trade union mergers through the economic concept of the elasticity of derived demand,
and J. Waddington’s The Policies of Bargaining, published by Mansell (Waddington,
1995), which attempts to relate union marriage to the trade cycle and other macro
economic variables.
Undy points outs that the core hypothesis regarding the concentration of union
members into fewer unions, especially if associated with a plan to reduce inter-union
competition, will enhance the new merged union’s collective bargaining power vis-a
`-vis
employers and the political influence exercised in relation to governments and the
TUC. It is also, Undy points out, commonly assumed that mergers automatically
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
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ER
31,2
116
Employee Relations
Vol. 31 No. 2, 2009
pp. 116-120
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450910925274
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