Achieving a new equilibrium? The stability of cooperative employer–union relationships

• Author: Sarah Oxenbridge,William Brown
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2338.2004.00322.x
• Published date: 01 September 2004
• Date: 01 September 2004

Achieving a new equilibrium?

The stability of cooperative

employer–union relationships1

Sarah Oxenbridge and William Brown

ABSTRACT

The current popularity of ‘partnership’ in workplace industrial relations raises the

question of the durability of such arrangements. This article investigates the stability

of cooperative employer–union relationships by means of case studies. It analyses per-

ceptions of the experience of negotiation and consultation. Continuing net benefits

are reported both by managers and by union representatives in workplaces where

cooperative relationships are robust. The benefits come primarily from the informal

consultative processes and levels of trust that are engendered. Nonetheless, parties to

the relationship, however robust they were, faced substantial challenges to their efforts

to diffuse and sustain cooperative working. It is concluded that cooperative relation-

ships are likely to be stable where employers wish to maintain an independent

employee voice, especially where workplace union density remains relatively high.

INTRODUCTION

An important feature of recent British industrial relations has been the increasing

number of organisations and workplaces that have, since the mid-1990s, reconstituted

their employer–trade union relationships around the notion of ‘partnership’, or coop-

erative working. Central to this is a shift of emphasis from negotiation to consulta-

tion. Underlying it has been a substantial tightening of competitiveness in sectors

where once collective bargaining was robust. Privatisation and increased international

exposure are among the forces that have led to a diminution of trade union power

and to the rising interest in cooperative working between employers and unions.

The question this article addresses is whether these emerging relationships have the

potential to be stable in the longer run. It does this by exploring, through case studies,

the nature of negotiation and consultation in cooperative working, and the broader

representative role of the union. Collective bargaining has undergone a number of

❒Sarah Oxenbridge, who now works for the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, was at the

time of the research at the Department of Applied Economics, University of Cambridge. William Brown

is Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Politics, University of Cambridge. Correspondence should

be addressed to William Brown, Department of Applied Economics, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge

CB3 9DD, UK; email: william.brown@econ.cam.ac.uk

1This research was carried out as part of the ESRC’s Future of Work Programme.

Industrial Relations Journal 35:5

ISSN 0019-8692

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148,

USA.