Employee Representation and Consultative Voice in Multinational Companies Operating in Britain

Multinational companies (MNCs) from different countries of origin are widely held to have distinct preferences regarding the presence of employee representative structures and the form that employee 'voice' over management decisions takes. Such preferences are said to derive from the national models that prevail in the different countries of origin in which MNCs are based. Findings from a large-scale survey of the UK operations of MNCs indicate that country-of-origin influences on patterns of employee representation and emphasis on direct or indirect channels of employee 'voice' are attenuated by other factors, notably sector and method of growth. They also reveal significant recent innovation in representation and voice arrangements by this key group of employers.     

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.     

The Political Economy of Occupational Family Policies: Comparing Workplaces in Britain and Germany

With a shift in the political debate to more market‐driven social policy approaches during the past decade, politicians in a number of European countries have argued that employers should take on greater responsibilities in the provision of social policy. But why should employers get involved? After reviewing the relevant literature on firm‐level social policy, we analyse the conditions and causal pathways that lead to their provision. Our findings show that (i) the skill structure and level of the workforce are important conditions for firm‐level engagement; (ii) employers have usually been the ‘protagonists’; (iii) the role of unions has been more limited — in Germany they can largely be characterized as ‘consenters’, whereas in Britain, their impact is negligible; (iv) in accordance with the specific systems of industrial relations, the design in Germany very much follows the concept of social partnership; in Britain the design is usually based on unilateral management decisions; and (v) based on these conditions and causal pathways, ‘enclave social policy’ is the likely result of the expansionary policy development, although in Germany, these policies have the potential of becoming an element of ‘industrial citizenship’.     

Political Parties and Labour legislation in Canada and the U.S.

This article shows that structural political and legal factors, better than cultural or economic ones, explain why Canada's workforce is twice as unionized as that of the United States. Its main argument demonstrates that Canada's legal environment is more pro-union due to systematic national differences in party systems and constitutions—i.e., the presence of a social-democratic party and a federalized and parliamentary constitution, versus the U.S.'s separation of powers, more nationalized polity, and absence of a social democratic party.     

The Impact of Training on Labour Mobility: Individual and Firm‐level Evidence from Britain

We investigate the impact of different types of training on the mobility expectations of workers, using three surveys. Most training episodes produce some transferable skills, and most transferable training is paid for by employers. Overall, training has no impact on mobility in three out of every five cases; the remaining cases are split equally between those where training increases and those where it decreases mobility. We find that training is more likely to lead to lower mobility when it is less transferable to other firms, is sponsored by firms, and where its objectives include increasing the identification of employees with corporate objectives.     

Ten Years of New Labour: Workplace Learning,Social Partnership and Union Revitalization in Britain

The establishment of a role in workplace learning has been perceived as one of the achievements of trade unions under New Labour. This article analyses the part the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has played in public policy since 1997. It examines its attempts to influence government and develop social partnership and statutory backing for vocational training. It assesses its degree of success and considers whether the TUC's role is best characterized in terms of social partnership or as a rediscovery of the unions' public administration function. It reviews the literature which suggests that involvement in learning stimulates union revitalization. The article concludes that the TUC has failed to attain significant influence over public policy. Rather it has delivered policy determined by government with priority accorded to employer predilections. A public administration role focused on the Union Learning Fund has provided the TUC with a new, secondary function, which provides some compensation for the failure of its primary agenda. Nonetheless, on the evidence, involvement in workplace learning appears an implausible path to union revitalization.     

Exit, Voice and 'Mandate': Management Strategies and Labour Practices of Japanese Firms in Britain

This paper draws on case-study research on four Japanese transplants in one locality to trace the evolving and unsettled relationship between company policies and labour market conditions. It shows that managements continue to face problems of recruiting and retaining labour in this greenfield and non-union setting, as worker dissatisfactions are expressed more through 'exit' than 'voice'. It then analyses the variety of ways in which managers have sought to build a 'mandate' to manage, and the scope and limits of management hegemony within these workplaces. Finally, it suggests that differences in management policies reflect differences in ownership patterns, corporate histories and roles within intra- and inter-firm divisions of labour.     

The Korea Labour 'Problem'

This article documents the rise of organized labour and the emergence of overt industrial conflict in the Republic of Korea since democratization in 1987, and the crisis of world competitiveness of Korean industry to which the gains of organized labour contributed. Based on an analysis of the characteristics of the actors in the Korean industrial relations system, the nature of the conflict and its consequences are assessed. It is argued that, in forcing the pace of economic restructuring towards high-tech/high-wage sectors, organized labour, often characterized by state and business elites as a 'problem', may turn out to be a progressive force.     

Employer Organizations and Labour Immigration Policy in Australia and the United Kingdom: The Power of Political Salience and Social Institutional Legacies

This article examines employer organizations and labour immigration policy in Australia and the United Kingdom. Drawing on 102 elite interviews, it analyses employer organizations’ preferences and influence over recent reforms. The article builds on Culpepper's arguments relating to the significance of political salience and identifies the importance of various institutional factors, particularly social institutions, in shaping employer organizations’ decisions and engagement with the policy process. Political salience and social institutional legacies are critical for explaining why employer organizations played a central role in driving labour immigration reforms in Australia and a marginal role in the UK. Large intakes of workers from the European Union, which sustained immigration as a high salience issue and fuelled the Brexit campaign, also influenced the strategies of UK employer organizations.     

Understanding What Has Been Happening to the Public-Sector Pay Premium in Great Britain: A Distributional Approach Based on the Labour Force Survey

This article investigates what has been happening to the public-sector wage differential in Great Britain over the period 1994–2017. The evidence indicates that apart from men in the lower part of the pay distribution, the public-sector pay premium has declined for all public-sector workers. This decline has coincided with a decline in the overall pay gap, which is associated with changes in the composition of public- and private-sector workforces. As the relative pay disadvantage experienced by public-sector workers at the top of the pay distribution has worsened over time this must raise serious concerns about the ability of the public sector to recruit and retain the staff it needs to deliver public services.     

The Future of Employee Representation

This article examines the future of employee interest representation in Britain against the broader European background. An attempt is made to define the character of interest representation in terms of the concepts of autonomy, legitimacy and efficacy. The core section of the article discusses recent and current developments with a focus on five themes: the level, structure, process, agenda and outcome of representation. A brief conclusion considers alternative scenarios and policy issues for employee representation. Underlying the whole discussion is the question: What future for (British) trade unions? No more than an imprecise and ambiguous answer can be suggested.     

The Domestic Sources of Differences in Labour Market Policies

In this article we analyse what drives both the specific choices and the relative amount of change in labour market policies in two countries, Britain and Spain, in the 1990s. Although we find more substantial and radical labour market reform in Britain, Spain experienced greater union inclusion in policy‐making. We examine the roles of economic institutions and the ideology of the governing party and find that neither accounts satisfactorily for the labour market changes in our cases. Domestic political variables, especially electoral factors and the power and autonomy of government, give more insight into the similarities and differences between the two countries.     

Contractual (In)Security, Labour Regulation and Competitive Performance in the Port Transport Industry: A Contextualized Comparison of Britain and Spain

Spanish ports have traditionally been derided for poor performance and acrimonious labour relations. This situation has been reversed in recent years through a programme of reform that has (a) created a more congenial organizational ecology in which firms co-operate as well as compete; (b) ensured the collective provision of vital production inputs such as training and social peace; and (c) co-ordinated investment in new port capacity and equipment. Spanish ports now match the performance of Britain's privatized and deregulated port transport industry, where co-operation is more notable by its absence, insecurity is rife and price competition intense. Through a contextualized comparison of labour regulation in the two countries, it is possible to demonstrate that an 'institutionally saturated' and 'politically bargained' system of production and employment is compatible with, if not a necessary condition for, competitive performance in the international port transport industry.     

Political Entrepreneurs and Co‐Managers: Labour Transnationalism at Four Multinational Auto Companies

This article examines labour transnationalism within four multinational automakers. In our sample, we find different forms of labour transnationalism, including transnational collective bargaining, mobilization, information exchange and social codes of conduct. We explain the differences through the interaction between management and labour in the context of the company structure; of particular importance are transnational coercive comparisons by management and the orientations of worker representatives as political entrepreneurs or co‐managers. We conclude that, although intensified worker‐side cross‐border co‐operation has not prevented wage‐based competition in general (due to the lack of between‐firm co‐ordination), it has reshaped employment relations within these multinational corporations.     

The decline of paid overtime working in Britain

The share of paid-for overtime hours within total paid-for hours worked in Britain has declined from 5.4% to 2.0% between 1997 and 2020. We investigate this decline, focussing on its distribution across full-time (f/t) and part-time males and females and across 19 one-digit industries. It is established that f/t males are dominant in the decline both of overtime working and overtime hours. We explore the implications of the decline on the share of overtime pay within total pay as well as on the gender pay gap. We test for economic, structural and cyclical influences on overtime working via a two-part regression model that allows us to differentiate between the incidence of overtime working and weekly overtime hours of overtime employees. We examine how paid-for overtime has varied with collective bargaining coverage, low pay, the 2008 financial crisis, the arrival of Covid-19, job mobility and the public/private sector dichotomy. Combined marginal effects of changes in the incidence of overtime working and weekly overtime hours are also provided. The influence of the decline of collective bargaining in the last two decades on overtime working is highlighted using Blinder–Oaxaca decompositions.