Restructuring and Workplace Unionism at Manchester Airport

This paper provides evidence from empirical case-study research into the impact of compulsory competitive tendering on workplace union organization among the baggage-handling workforce at Manchester Airport. It documents the main processes of development within an historical context, assessing the strengths and weaknesses of workplace unionism during the 1980s, the recent challenge posed by managerial restructuring in the early 1990s, and the wider implications for debates about the 'state' of workplace unionism in Britain today.
Compared with the union resilience displayed by the baggage handlers during the 1980s, the nature of shop-stewards' organization appears to have changed drastically to managemenťs advantage during the last few years. However, continuing underlying tensions in worker-management relations suggest that this situation may not necessarily amount to a fundamental and irreversible transformation in the nature of workplace unionism in the manner in which those who use the vocabulary of the 'New Industrial Relations' would suggest.     

Industrial Relations Climate, Attendance Behaviour and the Role of Trade Unions

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the impact of co-operative union–management relations on firm performance and organizational outcomes such as employee turnover and absenteeism. This paper seeks to identify the factors that affect the development of a co-operative industrial relations climate and analyses the effects of that climate on organizational and union allegiance and on employee attendance behaviour. The data are drawn from a study of a large automotive manufacturer in Australia. The results indicate that a positive union–management relationship is associated with higher levels of work attendance. Moreover, this outcome is consistent with the presence of strong and effective unionism at the workplace.     

From monopoly to voice effects? British workplace unionism and productivity performance into the new millennium

Britain has featured prominently in debates about unionism and productivity. This article suggests a recent revolution in the productivity effect of British unionism. A thorough review of extant evidence at various levels of aggregation indicates that whatever the broader cost to employee welfare and well-being, the hollowing and erosion of workplace unionism under Thatcherism delivered a one-off productivity dividend. However, by the turn of the millennium, extant Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) analysis shows that workplace unionism, where it remained, was no longer robustly linked to poorer productivity performance. Our private sector analysis of WERS2011 confirms this, while our analysis of the WERS2004–2011 panel indicates that stronger workplace unionism now positively promotes private sector productivity. A thorough contemplation of the shifting concomitants of modern British unionism suggests a variety of processes which may underlie our striking panel findings, underscoring the suggestion that there has been a revolution in British unionism's productivity implications, but also indicating mechanisms which may underlie positive productivity effects of joint regulation already apparent in other countries.     

Trust Formation in Collaborative New Product Development*

This research examines antecedents of trust formation in new product development partnerships and the effect of trust on performance. Trust is modeled as an outcome of communication behavior, shared problem‐solving, perceived fairness, the existence of conflicts during the development project, and partner egoism. The hypotheses are tested with data on 44 product development partnerships representing the perspective of the manufacturer. The findings suggest that communication behavior and fairness are positive contributors to trust. In contrast, conflicts during product development and perceived egoism of the partner appear to have a detrimental effect. High levels of trust were found to create the conditions for successful outcomes. A higher level of trust clearly differentiates between high‐ and low‐performing collaborative relationships in new product development. Trust also was found to be a powerful mediator, particularly as it relates to mitigating conflicts during such partnerships.     

Membership Participation in Workplace Unionism: The Possibility of Union Renewal

This article reports membership involvement (participation and commitment) in five case studies. Membership participation in and commitment to workplace unionism is greater than is customarily portrayed and, additionally, there are fluctuations in both. However, the solidarity dimension of commitment is more important in discussing participation than that of ideology since active members can have either an instrumental or an ideological orientation to unionism. Surges of involvement in a workplace are experienced in response to the impact of events in the local union environment, as mediated particularly by local leadership style. The possibility for union renewal comes through building up the base level of participation by careful local leadership so that members can more easily be encouraged to take part in collective activities in times of necessity.     

Employee Voice in Union and Non-union Australian Workplaces

The fall in unionism and the rise in the non-union workplace over the past two decades raises the question as to whether workers now have a reduced capacity to initiate issues and articulate grievances. For some commentators independent unions are the only source of genuine voice. Others have argued that the adoption of the HRM paradigm within an enterprise will provide workers with adequate voice mechanisms. This paper addresses the issue by comparing employee voice in non-union and unionized Australian workplaces.     

Theorising labour unrest and trade unionism in the platform economy

The article develops a novel conceptualisation of labour unrest and trade unionism in the platform economy, extending current understandings in two ways. First, we situate platform work historically, in the longue durée of paid work under capitalism. Secondly, we introduce a consideration of social structure into debates on union practices often framed in terms of agency. Building on Silver and the Webbs, we highlight the importance in platform work of associational power over structural power; legal enactment over collective bargaining; and geographical over workplace unionism. While mainly a theoretical article, we draw on empirical evidence from research into platform work over five years, comprising interviews, case study, observation and documentary analysis. We conclude that platform labour unrest and unionism bear marked similarities with 19th century forms rather than the 20th century models that often dominate industrial relations perspectives. Consequently, unions organising platform workers should consider adapting their approach accordingly.     

The Effect of Works Councils on Employment Change

Despite recent changes in the relationship between unionism and various indicators of firm performance, there is one seeming constant in the Anglophone countries: unions at the workplace are associated with reduced employment growth of around ?2.5% a year. Using German data, we examine the impact of the works council—that country's form of workplace representation—on employment change from 1993 to 2001. The German institution appears to have much the same negative effect on employment growth. That said, survival bias seems to play a small role, and works councils do not seem to further slow the tortuous pace of employment adjustment in Germany.     

A New Voice or a Waste of Time? Wage Premiums from Using Computers for Communication in the UK Workplace

The paper uses the Workplace Employee Relations Survey data on workers to investigate the wage premium from using e‐mail in the workplace against other more traditional forms of communication. I try to discern whether the existence of a premium from using e‐mail is the product of the workplace encouraging worker productivity through voice, or represents unobserved worker skills in using new technology. Results indicate that any observed premium from using e‐mail is likely to arise from unobserved worker skills, and that any premium associated with voice in the workplace is likely to result from management choosing to reward such worker involvement.     

Enabling ‘managed activism’: the adoption of call centres in Australian,British and US trade unions

This article examines how trade unions in different country settings have utilised call centre technologies. Rather than viewing union call centres as simply a means of service delivery, our research suggests they can also enable a more strategic approach to workplace organising. We explore the implications of union call centres for debates on servicing and organising models of trade unionism.     

Unions and Employment Growth: The One Constant?

Sequential analyses of the major workplace data sets available to British researchers—the cross-sectional Workplace Industrial/Employee Relations Surveys (WIRS/WERS)—have revealed shifts in some previously well-established associations between union presence and firm performance, so much so in fact that it has become conventional to speak of a pronounced reduction in the "disadvantages of British unionism." One finding that seems to have persisted in cross section, however, is the negative effect of unions on employment growth. Following on a recent study in this Journal, we reexamine the issue using employment data from a panel of firms surveyed at two points in time rather than a single cross section. We report similar evidence of employment retardation in union regimes. On the other hand, the new data also suggest that some other unfavorable union effects may be longer-standing than previously reported.     

Pressurised partnership: a case of perishable compromise in contested terrain

This paper analyses the life cycle of a partnership agreement in the context of managerially driven changes to work organisation at an aluminium manufacturing plant (Aluminium) located in South Wales, UK. The paper highlights the contingent, context‐specific nature of workplace partnerships and their limited influence and vulnerability to the operation of the market.     

Trade Union Presence and Employer-Provided Training in Great Britain

Using linked employer-employee data from the British 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, we find a positive correlation between workplace union recognition and private-sector employer-provided training. We explore the avenues through which union recognition might affect training by interacting recognition with the closed shop, the level at which pay bargaining takes place, and multiunionism. For non-manual-labor men and women, only union recognition matters. The various types of collective-bargaining institutions have no separate effect. However, the male manual training probability is significantly increased by union presence only through multiple unionism with joint negotiation. In contrast, for women manual workers, union recognition at the workplace has no effect on the training probability.     

Attribution Biases in the Evaluation of New Product Development Team Members*

Managers are often concerned with the potential negative reputation impact of being assigned to a new product development project. Social psychology theories, and in particular the group attribution error theory, suggest that their worries might be justified, with individual team members being evaluated on the basis of the overall project performance, without regard for the processes by which the team outcome was reached. The objective of this paper is to empirically test for the existence of such biases in the evaluation of new product development team members. For this purpose, three independent experiments based on scenarios test the extent to which the group attribution error is at play in the evaluation of new product development team members and the extent to which it can be removed. Overall, this paper indicates that this bias does indeed affect the evaluation of new product development team members as well as decisions based on these evaluations. In the studies presented in this paper, analysis of variance showed that subjects inferred that team members' attitudes were consistent with the decision made and failed to adjust adequately for the decision rule used. Subjects then used these summary judgments as the basis for deciding on reward allocations and making competence attributions about the team members. In Study 1 , the decision rule used was either a vote or a team leader decision, and therefore the bias might have been explained by the lack of information available. Study 2 , however, provided unambiguous information about team members' positions, yet subjects did not adequately take this information into account. Study 3 replicated these results with experienced new product team managers, suggesting that theses biases are likely to be at play in the workplace. Moreover, subjects in Studies 2 and 3 felt quite confident that their judgments were being fair, even in the cases where these judgments truly were not, which suggests a lack of awareness of the bias on their part. The robustness of this bias should be cause for concerns for managers working in new product development teams or involved in the evaluation of the performance of such teams. The studies conducted in this paper suggest that team members can get unfairly rewarded or punished for decisions over which they have little or no control and that their reputation can also get affected by these decisions. Moreover, the fact that the group attribution error affected evaluations even in the case where experienced participants had specific information about team members' positions suggests that this bias will not be easy to remove.     

New Labour's Reform of Britain's Employment Law: The Devil is not only in the Detail but in the Values and Policy Too

The Labour government's goal of social partnership embodies a particular view of the appropriate role of labour within the employment relationship, which requires the marginalization of trade unionism as an autonomous force. Its programme of employment law reform combines a dual focus: first, the reaffirmation of measures that weaken workers' collective power through the exclusion of autonomous trade unionism, and second, initiatives to regulate the labour market, strengthen workers' rights within the employment relationship, and include enterprise‐confined, cooperative unions as subordinate 'partners'. However, the second policy dimension has been diluted because of the commitment to free‐market values.     

Fighting for Life: South African HIV/AIDS Peer Educators as a New Industrial Relations Actor?

This article examines HIV/AIDS peer educators in South African workplaces, drawing on research in five companies with large peer educator programmes. The research indicates that peer educators are primarily focused on reducing new HIV infections and ‘normalizing’ the epidemic by promoting change in the behaviour of individuals — a feature that is not accounted for by theories of workplace mobilization based on collective action. Similarly, their role is inadequately explained by theories on the emergence of new workplace actors based on the changing nature of work, shifting identity salience in society, and the nexus between workplace and communities as opportunities for union regeneration. After outlining the profile and activities of workplace HIV/AIDS peer educators, attention is paid to their motivations and methods of action, their relationship to management and unions, and the way in which they straddle workplace and community. The implications of this and the possible trajectory of workplace peer educators as a new industrial relations actor are discussed.     

Development Resource Planning: Complexity of Product Development and the Capacity to Launch New Products

Overcommitment of development capacity or development resource deficiencies are important problems in new product development (NPD). Existing approaches to development resource planning have largely neglected the issue of resource magnitude required for NPD. This research aims to fill the void by developing a simple higher‐level aggregate model based on an intuitive idea: The number of new product families that a firm can effectively undertake is bound by the complexity of its products or systems and the total amount of resources allocated to NPD. This study examines three manufacturing companies to verify the proposed model. The empirical results confirm the study's initial hypothesis: The more complex the product family, the smaller the number of product families that are launched per unit of revenue. Several suggestions and implications for managing NPD resources are discussed, such as how this study's model can establish an upper limit for the capacity to develop and launch new product families.     

Managers and union membership

White-collar unions have been growing substantially in the last decade and managerial unionism is forming an important partof the growth. A number of new trade unions designed exclusively for managers and professional workers are expected to have more appeal than traditional unions. The increasing concentration of employment, more favourable attitudes of employers to white-collar unions, changes in labour law, continuing problems with the managementof the economy and the effecton pay differentials and the developmentof defensive managerial unions with a moderate character are seen as the main factors explaining the growth of managerial unionism. By virtue of their avowed moderation and exclusiveness, doubts are expressed about the likely effectiveness of these unions, and as managers and professional workers are joining the unions for instrumental, rather than ideological reasons, lack of results may lead to further developments toward traditional trade unionism.     

Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers

How common is workplace transformation in the American economy? What are its implications for work force skill requirements and training investments? The existing literature addressing these questions is based on firm-reported survey data. Using new data available in the 1993 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this article examines the same questions from the perspective of individual workers. Our empirical results suggest that workplace transformation is commonplace. Fully 40 percent of private-sector workers surveyed report that in the space of just one year, a change occurred at work that required them to learn new job skills. About 23 percent of all respondents reported experiencing a workplace change we term anorganizational transformation. Incidence of formal training is positively related to indicators of organizational transformation, but the effect of these indicators is found to be sensitive to the inclusion of other important workplace change variables (namely, new products, new equipment, and new government regulations). While we expected to find strong positive relationships with product development and physical capital investment, government regulation has a surprisingly large impact on formal training.     

How do internal capabilities and external partnerships affect innovativeness?

How do a firm’s internal capabilities and external partnerships contribute to its product and process innovativeness? How do their impacts differ? Based on the theoretical framework of exploitation and exploration, we develop an integrative model linking the impact of both internal capabilities and external partnerships on product and process innovativeness. Survey responses from Taiwanese biotechnology firms indicate that research and development (R&;D), marketing, and manufacturing capabilities have different effects on product and process innovativeness. Of the four types of external partnerships, only partnerships with universities and research institutes seem to add value, whereas partnerships with suppliers, customers, and competitors do not contribute to innovativeness. Moreover, marketing capability and customer partnerships have a positive interaction effect on product innovativeness, while manufacturing capability and supplier partnerships have a positive interaction effect on process innovativeness.