Union organising in the “new economy” in Britain
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425450510572711 |
| Pages | 208-225 |
| Date | 01 April 2005 |
| Published date | 01 April 2005 |
| Author | Gregor Gall |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Union organising in the “new
economy” in Britain
Gregor Gall
Department of Management and Organisation, Stirling University, Stirling, UK
Abstract
Purpose – This paper examines the attempts by trade unions in Britain to gain organisational rights
for their members and for workers in organisations operating within the hitherto non-unionised “new
economy”.
Design/methodology/approach – By using data drawn from fieldwork interviews with full-time
union officials and supplemented by secondary sources, the paper assesses the genesis and progress of
these campaigns, suggesting a combination of employer hostility and worker indifference explain the
limited advances made to date.
Findings – In particular, the paper considers the configuration of the inter-relationship between
employer action, union strength and sudden grievances as the major explanatory variable in
accounting for the variation in the outcomes of the eight union recognition campaigns. Finally, the
high degree of dependence and reliance on full-time union officers, contra the “organising” model, is
examined.
Research limitations/implications – Further research on union presence and activity in the “new
economy” are needed to critically examine these conclusions, given that the research was based on a
study of eight employers.
Practical implications – The implications for trade unions are that not all campaigns for union
recognition can be expected to be equally successful, that campaigns are likely to take a relatively long
period of time before significant advances are made and that greater scrutiny of potential campaigns is
needed.
Originality/value – Provides lessons for trade unions attempting to gain organisational rights for
their members.
Keywords Trade unions, Industrial democracy,United Kingdom
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Aggregate measures of union membership, organisational presence, bargaining power
and political influence in Britain continue to show signs of further decline and
stagnation in spite of significant efforts to reverse these. Analysts and commentators
alike have often asserted that unions of necessity must begin recruiting and organising
in a much more forceful manner in the sectors of the “new economy” than they hitherto
have, if they are to stem or even reverse these aggregate declines. It is well established
that a major part of aggregate union decline has been union inability or unwillingness
to unionise the growing number of new workplaces (Machin, 2000). Nonetheless, some
attempts to do this are underway, the evaluation of which is likely to inform unions’
willingness and ability to carry out further such organising campaigns in the “new
economy”. The key consideration will be whether the campaigns achieve their goal,
namely, achieving recognition on gaining significant membership. However, this will
not be the only relevant consideration. Among those informing the contextualisa tion of
“victory” or “defeat” will be the cost and the length of campaigns vis-a
`-vis national
unions’ resources. Conditioning and influencing all these are employer actions when
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ER
27,2
208
Employee Relations
Vol. 27 No. 2, 2005
pp. 208-225
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/01425450510572711
facing recognition campaigns and the presence of the statutory recognition provisions
of the (ERA, 1999).
With these issues in mind, this paper examines and assesses evidence of a
number of union campaigns to gain a foothold in areas of the “new economy”. The
campaigns and their outcomes by mid-2003 are described on a case-by-case basis
in terms of origin, forms of campaign, campaigning issues, degrees of member
participation and progress made. From here, the paper considers the configuration
of the inter-relationship between employer action, union strength and sudden
grievances. When fully contextualised in both general and specific terms, this
inter-relationship is argued to be the major explanatory variable in accounting for
the variation in the outcome of the eight union recognition campaigns.
The data for the case studies draws on fieldwork from a wider project that
examined union recognition campaigns throughout Britain between 1998-2003. The
objectives of the research were to investigate the extent, nature and outcome of
union recognition campaigns, with a particular focus centring on the creation and
deployment of the human resources of workplace unionism, and employer
responses to the union campaigns. The fieldwork comprised semi-structured
interviews with regional field and national full-time officers (FTOs) from 15 of the
unions that were most active in running recognition campaigns. The FTOs were
those who were either substantially involved with, or responsible for, the
recognition campaigns. These officials were interviewed in 1999 (14 FTOs), 2000
(20 FTOs), 2001 (25 FTOs) and 2002 (25 FTOs), with interviews commonly lasting
between 2-3 hours. From this data set, the eight case studies are drawn. These
were selected on the basis of being campaigns among “new economy” operations
and companies that allowed for a number of different unions’ campaigns to be
examined, where different unions have reputations for different styles of operation
and organising, and the campaigns being of a sufficient duration and intensity of
activity as to allow for an examination of the processes at hand given the
assessment of the nature of the methodology deployed. Developments in the
campaigns were thus tracked over periods ranging from three to five years. The
data generated by the interviews was supplemented by monitoring the unions’
journals and internal documentation, attending union meetings and conferences,
newspaper reporting and Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) determinations.
The strength, and limitation, of this particular methodology is that because the
campaigns are examined through the prism of FTOs this leads to a refraction of the
issues and processes at hand from the organisational perspective of the
extra-workplace unit of the national union (the local or regional unit). This approach
was necessary in order to attain the overview required across the large number of
recognition campaigns throughout Britain. The strength lies in approaching the issues
and processes from a perspective that is centrally concerned with establishing a
workplace presence from without and creating and deploying the necessary resource s
for this to occur where the self-organised and self-sustaining workplace union is
recognised to be a distant goal. The weakness lies not in the focus not concerning the
milieu of workplace activists, union members, union sympathisers and potential
members but rather in that members of these groups were not themselves interviewed.
However, with the benefit of hindsight and ameliorating this to some extent, it should
also be recognised that often these groups (save the activists) would not have been
The “new
economy” in
Britain
209
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