Let's use the controller in contract negotiations

The controller is in the best position to evaluate the costs of proposals and counter-proposals in bargaining sessions; he should be a regular member of the negotiating team.     

The social contract of work: Moving beyond the psychological contract

This paper develops the critique of psychologisation by going narrow and deep into the analysis of the concept of the psychological contract. In its early incarnation, the psychological contract literature explored key elements at the heart of the employment relationship. However, in the current mainstream psychological contract literature, there are four key problems. The paper shows that these problems match on to the wider problems associated with pyschologisation. The concept of the social contract of work is put forward as a way to return productively to the original focus of the field. The social contract of work is defined as workers' implicit, collective, and socially embedded understanding of the effort bargain at work.     

The new employment contract

From the turmoil of the last decade a new relationship has emerged between employees and their organizations. It is one that openly challenges many of the management assumptions behind the imbalance of power between the key participants. Making a successful adjustment to this change has enormous implications in terms of sustained competitive advantage based on the ability to access and retain a committed and skilled work force. Human Resource professionals will find themselves caught in competing loyalties as their roles in this change process evolve. This article offers insight into this changing contract and its impact on the business environment.     

The analysis of impasse procedures in public sector negotiations

Why is it that some school districts are able to reach settlement by themselves while others require outside help? Some differences may be ability to pay, union strength, identity as a leader or follower district, political climate, and the sophistication and experience of union and board in bargaining.     

The role of internal agents in starting salary negotiations

We introduce the concept that internal organizational agents who negotiate starting salary packages with job applicants may not always act in the organization's best interests. To gain an understanding of what motivates the internal agent toward assuming a particular role, we use expectancy theory, agency theory and concepts from the negotiations literature. We describe the roles that agents may assume, identify factors that impact agents' motivation, and formulate propositions to help identify which role an agent is likely to enact in starting salary negotiations. We form propositions as to how these roles are likely to impact final negotiation outcomes of probability of hiring, salary size, and applicant satisfaction and discuss strategies for ensuring agents are motivated to enact a role that meets organizational objectives.     

Arbitration systems and negotiations

We consider a model of bargaining by concessions where agents can terminate negotiations by accepting the settlement of an arbitrator. The impact of pragmatic arbitrators—that enforce concessions that precede their appointment—is compared with that of arbitrators that act on principle—ignoring prior concessions. We show that while the impact of arbitration always depends on how costly that intervention is relative to direct negotiation, the range of scenarios for which it has an impact, and the precise effect of such impact, does change depending on the behavior—pragmatic or on principle—of the arbitrator. Moreover the requirement of mutual consent to appoint the arbitrator matters only when he is pragmatic. Efficiency and equilibrium are not aligned since agents sometimes reach negotiated agreements when an arbitrated settlement is more efficient and vice versa. What system of arbitration has the best performance depends on the arbitration and negotiation costs, and each can be optimal for plausible environments.      

The changing union and bargaining landscape: union concentration and collective bargaining trends

Unions in Western Europe have tended to merge in larger organisations, straddling across traditional bargaining demarcations. Despite the trend towards union concentration, cross‐national differences remain in the degree of fragmentation and the balance across private and public sectors. In the past years, wage moderation was common to nearly all bargaining systems, partly as a result of coordinated incomes policies or pattern‐setting wage settlements. Tripartite concertation has proven more difficult because of increased dissatisfaction with modest pay increases and insufficient employment effects.     

The unemployed and trade union membership

During the 1980s it has been the unions’ policy to organise and represent the unemployed. This article analyses why members have or have not retained their membership on becoming unemployed. A main finding is that unions are not perceived as catering for the unemployed. Union influence over the member's future employment may nevertheless encourage retention.     

The making of women trade union leaders

A trade union's constitution is intended to produce its leaders in a democratic and even-handed manner, but the reality for women is one of inequality. They remain almost invisible in senior positions in British unions. The social processes by which women do or do not progress in a union's career structure are investigated through a case study of SOGAT ‘82.     

The determinants of Australian trade union membership

This paper investigates the determinants of trade union membership in Australia using the Engle and Granger (1987) theory of co-integrated economic variables. Applying the theory of co-integration yields a model of union membership which can be interpreted as distinguishing between long-run and ‘business cycle’ determinants of union membership. The principal long-run determinant of union membership is found to be the level of employment disaggregated by industry classification. Business cycle variables—the real wage and the change in unemployment—are also shown to influence movements in union density. These findings are consistent with recent studies which have attributed the decline in union membership in Australia since the early 1980s to the changing composition of employment and movements in the rate of unemployment.     

The merit of a Canada-US monetary union

Institutions of a monetary union are described. The union leaves unchanged countries’ international competitiveness and national real incomes. Static gains arise from lower interest rates in Canada and Mexico because national monetary and exchange rate instability are eliminated. There will be lower costs of foreign exchange transactions. Dynamic gains arise in the form of greater labor market discipline, better signals about developing comparative advantage and higher economic growth. Traditional criteria for the optimality of monetary union are considered irrelevant because they rely on economic characteristics, which are endogenous to the monetary system in operation.     

Transforming union women: the role of women trade union officials in union renewal

The article investigates the nature of the increasing involvement of women in the decision-making structures of the fifth largest UK union through a study of senior women union officials. It is argued that senior union women, operating within a feminist paradigm, balance both transformational and status quo objectives in working towards union survival and renewal.     

Multilateral negotiations and formation of coalitions

This paper analyses properties of games modeling multilateral negotiations leading to the formation of coalitions in an environment with widespread externalities. The payoff generated by each coalition is determined by an exogenous partition function (the parameter space). We show that in almost all games, except in a set of measure zero of the parameter space, the Markov perfect equilibrium value of coalitions and the state transition probability that describe the path of coalition formation is locally unique and stable. Therefore, comparative statics analysis are well-defined and can be performed using standard calculus tools. Global uniqueness does not hold in general, but the number of equilibria is finite and odd. In addition, a sufficient condition for global uniqueness is derived, and using this sufficient condition we show that there is a globally unique equilibrium in three-player superadditive games.     

The shaky legal foundations of European monetary union

A paper currency is underpinned by the power of a state to define and control the issue of legal tender. In legal theory, EMU will centralise this power. But in practice, the legal structure might not be strong enough to enforce currency issue rules against a member state in conditions of crisis. Instability could result if investors move euro balances out of a state's banking system to avoid perceived risk.     

The trade union response to new technology

While there is ambivalence towards the new technology within the trade union movement, the general belief is that - provided its introduction is controlled by collective bargaining and sympathetic government action - it will lead to increased leisure and higher living standards. The author suggests that the ‘silicon dream’ is more likely to become a nightmare.     

The trade union campaign against water privatisation

Here the author maintains that union campaigns against privatisation should not be judged in terms of their inability to prevent privatisation taking place. In this context, he assesses the effectiveness of the trade union campaign against water privatisation, concluding that it will make future privatisation initiatives more difficult to carry through.