Financial Management and Financial Performance in British Trade Unions

This article examines changes in the financial performance of British trade unions in the early 1990s. Using survey data, it looks for a relationship between changes in financial management and changes in financial performance. Unions have continued to increase the concentration of financial decision-making and the sophistication of financial systems. However, financial concerns have become no more central to union decision-making and as a result financial management improvements do not lead to improvements in financial performance. We argue that new financial management techniques lead to increases in the cost base as union organizations become more centralized and bureaucratic. The implications for representative effectiveness are discussed.     

Peering into the Black Hole: The Downside of the New Employment Relations in the UK

Using a national sample of 1,000 employees, this paper examines the proposition that those working in so-called 'black hole' organizations (i.e. where there is neither a set of progressive HRM practices nor a recognized trade union) will report more negative attitudes and work experiences than those in settings where there is either HRM, a trade union presence or both. The results lend some support to this hypothesis with respect to job satisfaction and organizational commitment and in judgements about experiences of fairness of treatment and trust in management. However, the most negative views about employment relations are reported by those who belong to a union in workplaces with little HRM. The findings indicate that it is HRM practices rather than trade union membership that have the major impact on attitudes and experiences. Even in black hole organizations some employees report satisfaction. This can be largely explained by a positive psychological contract between individual and organization. The implications for the role of trade unions in the promotion of fairness at work are discussed.     

The Nature of Some Recent Trade Union Modernization Policies in the UK

This article draws on recent research to present findings concerning the nature of some recent trade union modernization policies in the UK. In response to decline, it can be seen that the unions have increasingly been encouraged to represent and service members more as individuals than as part of a collective. This appears to be consonant with the frequently expressed view that greater individualism, both in employment and in society more generally, has largely been responsible for recent union weaknesses, and that if they are to endure the unions should adapt to it. Using data generated from interviews with full-time officers from a number of unions and from a case study of Unison organization within a local authority, the paper identifies two crucial problems with such an approach. First, it is argued that the substantial difficulties that the unions have experienced recently have been caused by a process of decollectivization in employment relations, and not one of individualization. Second, an indication of the complexity of the relationship between individualism and collectivism within trade unionism is given, something that is entirely ignored by proponents of the thesis that unions should concentrate solely on appealing to individuals.     

Negotiating ‘Difference’: Representing Disabled Employees in the British Workplace

Drawing on qualitative interviews with disabled employees, union officers and disability‐related organizations, this article examines employee attempts to negotiate workplace adjustments and associated issues of workplace representation. UK employment law utilizes an individual medical model of disability, which conflicts with traditional collective approaches favoured by trade unions, which has implications for disabled employees and union representation. We explore the different strategies available to unions and conclude that, despite the role played by disability‐related organizations in supporting employees, unions are the only workplace actors who are capable of reconfiguring the ‘personal as political’ and integrating disability concerns into wider organizational agendas.     

Credit Unions: Fringe Suppliers or Cournot Competitors?

Recent work has demonstrated the competitive relationship between credit unions and banks in consumer financial services. One issue underlying the nature of competition between the two, however, concerns the most appropriate way to model their interactions.Two possible approaches are the dominant-firm price-leadership model and the generalized Cournot model. In the former model, credit unions act as fringe suppliers who are price-takers in a homogeneous product market. In the latter, they possess (limited) market power. Oneway to distinguish the two is by examining the impact of credit union market shares on their pricing, as the two models imply differing effects. Our results are more consistent with the ``credit unions as fringe suppliers' view. Using a pooled cross-section time seriesof 77 small local consumer lending markets throughout the U.S., each with 10 observations over 5 years, the focus is on a loan product ex ante thought to be sold in local markets, unsecured (non-credit card) loans. For this product, increasing credit union market sharesreduces credit union loan rates, consistent with a fringe supplier hypothesis.     

Trade Unions, Political Fund Ballots and the Labour Party

The Trade Union Act 1984 required trade unions to reballot their members on continuation of their political funds. All unions voted for retention. A second wave of balloting has now taken place: the results are broadly similar to those in 1985/6. This paper examines the outcome of the 1994/6 voting, compares the results with those from 1985/6 and considers the implications of the results on the relationship between unions and the Labour Party. The distancing of the relationship between unions and Labour is related to the political fund campaign which stressed union rights to campaign politically rather than their specific political links with the Labour Party.     

UK Unionism and Innovative Activity: Some Cautionary Remarks on the Basis of a Simple Cross-country Test

Abstract : This paper offers a preliminary investigation of union impact on investment in intangible capital. We first report evidence on the raw correlation between union membership density and R&D intensity. This suggests that higher union density is associated with increased innovative activity among an important subset of British industry. Attention then shifts to a consideration of whether the 'stylized facts' are indicative of a causal relation or are instead an artefact produced by the concentration of unions in those sectors evincing greater scope for R&D. We offer a simple cross-country test in which German R&D outlays serve as the benchmark or comparator. No support is adduced for the notion that unions cause higher R&D.     

The Impact of Union Experience on Job Satisfaction

The relationship between union status and job satisfaction is commonly estimated without recognizing the heterogeneity of non‐union members. Many non‐union workers have experienced union jobs in the past while others have not, suggesting past estimations of the impact of unions on job satisfaction may miss a critical distinction. After separating non‐union members into those workers with and without union experience, this article shows that job satisfaction increases significantly for first‐time union workers, but decreases as workers accumulate experience in the union. Finally, after leaving the union jobs, worker job satisfaction recovers but does so only as the time since unionization grows.     

Union Involvement in Workplace Change: A Comparative Study of Local Unions in Canada and Mexico

This paper examines the sources of local union power to cope with workplace change. Are workplace unions active participants, merely passengers, outright opponents, or entirely excluded from the change process? Drawing on 18 case studies and a survey conducted in the auto and metalworking industries in Mexico and Canada, the results suggest that greater internal solidarity, stronger articulation with other levels of union and community activity and the pursuit of an autonomous agenda all provide the basis for enhanced local union bargaining power in the context of globalization. This general conclusion applies to Canadian as well as Mexican local unions and suggests analytical paths for understanding the construction and renewal of union power.     

The Developing Role of Unions in China's Foreign‐Invested Enterprises

This article evaluates the development of Chinese enterprise unions, drawing on case‐study evidence from foreign‐invested enterprises in the Pearl River Delta. Findings suggest that it was difficult for such employers to resist the establishment of an enterprise union. However, they generally sought to co‐opt the union to meet organizational needs. Management strategy was critical in shaping the union's role, and our evidence suggests that this was influenced by factors such as home‐country policies, the expectations of overseas customers, management ideology and pressures from the ACFTU and the Party‐State to comply with the requirement for a union. The implications for the role of unions are evaluated.     

Institutional Change and Union Membership: A Longitudinal Analysis of Union Membership Determinants in Israel

We examine the degree to which factors associated with workers' union membership decisions are sensitive to shifts in the institutional environment of unions. Comparative logit analyses of the relationship between potential determinants of membership and actual union membership over time suggestthat the factors associated with membership are elastic and may reflect shifts in the institutional context of unions.     

Decentralization in the NHS: Prospects for Workplace Unionism

The substantial changes that are taking place in the organization of the UK public sector are transforming traditional patterns of industrial relations based on centralized and institutionalized collective bargaining. Whether the trade unions can successfully respond to this process will be of prime importance for the future development of industrial relations in the public sector. The paper considers recent evidence of the impact of decentralization on union organization in four hospital units. The research findings suggest that there is a growth in union activity as a result of the process of decentralization, but that the effectiveness of unions is likely to vary considerably between hospitals.     

Union–Member Relations and Satisfaction with Unions in South Korea

This paper uses a large sample of South Korean union members working in different industries and occupations to test a model of union satisfaction. The results suggest that union–member relations — member representation and union leader effectiveness — are more important than the economic results that unions provide to members. These findings are in line with our general argument that, where unions rely on decentralized collective bargaining as the prime method of employment regulation, they depend heavily on internal union relations for their effectiveness. We contend that, if unions are to limit the decline in their influence, assessing and changing internal union relations should be a priority.     

Strategy and Trade Union Effectiveness in a Neo-liberal Environment

In the absence of state sponsorship, unions must become more effective in the workplace or suffer the inevitable consequences. The analysis of union strategy and effectiveness, however, presents special difficulties. We adopt a strategic choice perspective, defining strategy as a framework of critical, enacted choices about the ends and means of an organization. For unions in a neo-liberal context, this means that strategy can be described in terms of the nexus between two complex dimensions: union-worker relations and union-employer relations. On this basis, we identify four broad patterns of union strategic choice in the New Zealand environment: classic, paper tiger, consultancy, and partnership unionism. Those patterns in which union-worker relations rely on 'servicing' are seen as fatally flawed at worst, and strategically vulnerable at best. On the other hand, those patterns in which union-worker relations are more securely based on servicing complemented with robust forms of organization also contain strategic tensions. These must be managed carefully if unions are to become more effective. While illustrated with New Zealand case studies, this framework provides lines of analysis for the strategic review of unions in neo-liberal contexts more generally.     

Union Formation through Merger: The Case of Ver.di in Germany

This article is concerned with the recent merger of five German unions to form the new multi‐industry union, ver.di. Its focus is on the effects of the merger and on developments in the post‐merger phase. The article explores the various internal problems of the new union, concentrating on those that flow from the adoption of a matrix form of organisation. It deals also with the external relations of ver.di, with other unions and with the central organisation of German trade unions, the DGB. Central conclusions here are that the creation of ver.di is likely to exacerbate competition amongst German unions and further erode the position of the peak association.     

Tweeting and Retweeting for Fight for $15: Unions as Dinosaur Opinion Leaders?

Advocacy campaigns are central to unions’ efforts to impact labour rights beyond unionized workplaces. Social media and on-the-ground campaign dynamics are intimately related. Thus, if unions can become leaders on social media, they could have more impact on campaign framing and mobilizing. Drawing on primary data and applying a sequential mixed method, we analyse unions’ ability to emerge as opinion leaders in Twitter dialogues on the Fight for $15 (FF$15) campaign. We track FF$15-related activities of Twitter profiles over seven months and compare union actions to those of others along three dimensions: level of activity, prevalence of tweeting versus retweeting and endorsement within FF$15 community and in the Twitter universe. Regression results show unions prefer advancing their own ideas over supporting those of others, and their messages are more endorsed than others’ messages in the Twitter universe. In-depth interviews and a focus group reveal that while their actions are slow and conservative, unions can count on internal support and institutional reputation to gain leadership. The article concludes by noting the implications of the findings for unions’ strategies to become opinion leaders on social media.     

The Prevalence and Effects of Occupational Licensing

Our study provides the first national analysis of the labour market implications of workers who are licensed by any agency of the government in the USA. Using a specially designed Gallup survey of a nationally representative sample of Americans, we provide an analysis of the influence of this form of occupational regulation. We find that 29 per cent of the workforce is required to hold a licence, which is a higher percentage than that found in other studies that rely on state‐level occupational licensing data or single states. Workers who have higher levels of education are more likely to work in jobs that require a licence. Union workers and government employees are more likely to have a licence requirement than are non‐union or private sector employees. Our multivariate estimates suggest that licensing has about the same quantitative impact on wages as do unions — that is about 15 per cent — and that being both licensed and in a union can increase wages by more than 24 per cent. However, unlike unions which reduce variance in wages, licensing does not significantly reduce wage dispersion for individuals in licensed jobs.     

The multidivisional firm and control over the work process

This paper investigates the role of M-form organisation in enabling management in large UK companies to regain control over the work process subsequent to the growth of strong shopfloor trade union organisation in the 1950s and 1960s. A dynamic model is proposed in which the degree of control over the work process shifts between managers and workers. Logit analysis is employed to test two specific propositions: (i) that management in M-forms will seek to relocate bargaining at a level where unions are organisationally weak — the division, (ii) that unions will subsequently respond by creating inter-plant organisations. Both propositions receive empirical support.     

Union Exclusion and the Decollectivization of Industrial Relations in Contemporary Britain

A major focus of the Conservative government's employment policy since 1979 has been the reduction of union power within the labour market, the employment relationship and as representatives of a separate ‘labour interest’ in society ' union exclusion. The principal impact of the legislative changes is to deny workers access to resources of collective power, thereby commensurately increasing employers' discretion to determine the terms of the employment relationship. When forming new subsidiaries and establishments, or purchasing non-union subsidiaries, employers have been able to resist unionization and recognition except on their own terms, but comparatively few have terminated existing union recognition agreements, preferring to marginalize the role of unions through the adoption of partial exclusion policies ' joint consultation, direct communication, performance-related pay, and the fragmentation of common employment and bargaining.     

Negotiating Amalgamations: Territorial and Political Consolidation and Administrative Reform in Public-Sector Service Unions in the UK

Since 1990 there has been a series of union amalgamations among Britain's public-sector unions. This study examines three amalgamations and one aborted amalgamation. Each was initiated by union leaders reacting to government-sponsored reforms of the public sector, and all involved unions with either defensive or consolidatory merger motivations. The complex negotiations are presented as resolving issues of political, democratic and administrative concerns. It is argued that the balance of power on critical constitutional issues lay with the leaders of the consolidatory unions, particularly the dominant activist groups within such unions. As a consequence, success in amalgamation negotiations lay in satisfying such group's interests in sustaining the existing political ethos and democratic system, while securing agreement on the desired administrative reforms.