Mike Richardson

New unions, new workplaces: a study of union resilience in the restructured workplace

1. Unions Facing up to Crisis 2. Union Organising in the New Workplace 3. Job Reform and Recollectivisation in the Aerospace Industry 4. Manufacturing Change in an Era of Corporate Instability 5. The Insurance Industry - Back to Basics? 6. The Paradox of Partnership in the Public Sector 7. Negotiated Privatisation in Public Utilities 8. What Future?

Workplace Partnership and Employee Voice in the UK: Comparative Case Studies of Union Strategy and Worker Experience

This article addresses the role of ‘employee voice’ in workplace partnership. Drawing on two organizational case studies from the UK’s aerospace sector, it analyses employee experiences of two key dimensions of worker participation in partnership environments: joint consultation and union representation. Specifically, it investigates what consultation and union representation actually mean for employees in the context of different union responses to employer-driven partnership agendas. The article finds predominantly negative patterns of employee experience and attributes this partly to management control strategies and the short-termist dynamic of British manufacturing capital.

We sell our time no more: workers’ struggles against lean production in the British car industry

This is the story of struggles against management regimes in the car industry in Britain from the period after the Second World War until the contemporary regime of lean production. Told from the viewpoint of the workers, the book chronicles how workers responded to a variety of management and union strategies, from piece rate working, through measured day work, and eventually to lean production beginning in the late 1980s. The book focuses on two companies, Vauxhall-GM and Rover/BMW, and how they developed their approaches to managing labour relations. Worker responses to these are intimately tied to changing patterns of exploitation in the industry. The book highlights the relative success of various forms of struggle to establish safer and more humane working environments. The contributors bring together original research gathered over two decades, plus exclusive surveys of workers in four automotive final assembly plants over a ten year period.

‘New unionism’, organising and partnership: A comparative analysis of union renewal strategies in the public sector

The TUCs ‘New Unionism’ project contains contradictory tendencies in its promotion of both partnership relationships with employers and the adoption of more aggressive organising techniques. This paper investigates the impact of partnership-organising tensions on union activity at the workplace level in local government and the NHS. We explore these tensions by considering three dimensions of workplace union organisation: management-union relations; activist leadership style; and activist full-time officer relations. The paper rejects the argument that partnership and organising can be complementary union renewal processes. Instead, partnership relations detach senior activists from union members and restrict member participation and mobilisation.

Employee participation and involvement : Experiences of aerospace and automobile workers in the UK and Italy

This article questions the view of leading advocates of lean production and high-performance work practices that these increase employee influence. It examines workers’ experiences in the automobile and aerospace sectors in Italy and the UK. Despite national differences in industrial relations and cultural differences between firms, a significant democratic deficit existed in all cases.

The Realities of Partnership at Work

Partnership at Work What is Partnership The High Performance Workplace: Fact or Fiction? Gambling with Employee Voice in the Finance Sector Best Value in a Local Authority Partnership on Prescription in the NHS Goodbye Blue Sky: Partnership in the UK Aerospace Sector Whither Partnership?

Workplace partnership and professional workers: ‘about as useful as a chocolate teapot’?

The labour processes and employment relations that characterise the working conditions of many professional workers might be expected to generate the high-trust environment required for cooperative, partnership-style management–union relations. However, few studies have focused on partnership in ‘professional’ and ‘expert labour’ employment sectors. This paper assesses the efficacy of partnership through the lens of manager, union and employee attitudes at three cases studies notable for employing high numbers of staff in the professions and ‘marginal professions’. The analysis focuses on the nature of the cooperative relationship between union representatives and management (categorised as either ‘nurtured’ or ‘coerced partnership’), whether unions in these settings are able to expand the range and scope of their influence, and whether professional workers themselves display positive attitudes to cooperative union forms. The study finds that in all three cases the ‘partnership’ union is seen by its members as a weak, insubordinate entity in terms of collective influence over management policy though in the two ‘nurturing’ cases they see it to be more effective for individual member representation.

Trade Union Strategy and Renewal: the Restructuring of Work and Work Relations in the UK Aerospace Industry:

The adoption of new management strategies and flexible working practices in the manufacturing industry has caused a fragmentation of the traditional collective base of British trade unions. Such changes have led some commentators to argue that, in order to survive, manufacturing unions must reject oppositional stances and instead offer support for company objectives, work reforms and partnership relations with management at the workplace level. This article compares the responses of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) and the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union (MSF) to the rapid and wide-ranging restructuring of the UKs aerospace industry. The article questions current typologies of union policy and identity and associated prescriptive analysis of appropriate union strategy. We argue that such prescriptive analysis understates the complexity of union behaviour at the workplace level. Our findings suggest that the local traditions of workplace organizing far outweigh the influence of national union strategy. In the case of the MSF, the workplace unions failed to engage with the restructuring of work and were constrained by technical union traditions of sectionalism. By contrast, the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union (AEEU) workplace unions were able to adapt their historical form of organizing, based on work group representation and job control, to maintain significant constraints against managerial prerogatives.

Workplace Partnership and Work-Life Balance: A Local Government Case Study

This chapter explores the links between work-life balance and workplace partnership, principally through a local authority case study. This was one of six organisations studied in our research on ‘patterns and prospects for partnership at work in the UK’, part of the ESRC Future of Work programme.1 The local authority case study is of particular interest to the concerns of this book. In 2001, the Council introduced a work-life balance policy that was the product of a trade union — management partnership. It was among the ‘exemplars’ in the local government sector where the employers and trade unions identified workplace partnership as the means of extending flexible working practices to the benefit of employees, local authorities and users of council services. Our interest was in the benefits that employees stood to gain. This section sets the scene by introducing briefly the concept of partnership at work, sketching the public policy context of local government ‘modernisation’, and identifying the issues that guided our case study investigation.

Capital mobility, job loss, and union strategy: the case of the UK aerospace industry

Drawing on case study data, this article analyzes contrasting workplace union responses to organizational restructuring in the United Kingdoms aerospace industry. It critically evaluates two distinct union strategies that resonate with contemporary debates governing the future role of trade unions in the British workplace. The first response is based on “partnership” with management while the second reflects traditional “oppositionalism” via the assertive defense of rank-and-file member interests. The article highlights inherent weaknesses in partnership strategies arising from problems of management intention and union incorporation. By contrast, while militant opposition was more successful in constraining the exercise of managerial prerogatives, the traditions of “sectionalism” (or “localism”) in plant-based union organizing meant that this strategy was limited to securing a partial and transient defense of jobs and labor standards.