Third time lucky for statutory union recognition in the UK?

• Date: 01 August 2002
• Author: Paul Willman,Sian Moore,Stephen Wood
• Published date: 01 August 2002
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2338.00231

Industrial Relations Journal 33:3

ISSN 0019-8692

Third time lucky for

statutory union recognition

in the UK?

Stephen Wood, Sian Moore and

Paul Willman

A third statutory trade union recognition procedure was

introduced in the UK in 2000. This paper explores the scope

for increased recognition, employers’ willingness to concede

recognition, unions’ response to the procedure and, finally, the

use of it so far. The paper concludes that, while the procedure

may be sustainable in the long run, its direct impact on union

membership and recognition may be minimal. The indirect

effect, through voluntary recognition will be greater. But any

reversal in union decline will ultimately be dependent upon

successful union recruitment well beyond their conventional

territories.

Introduction

The statutory union recognition procedure, introduced by the UK government in

June 2000, was the third attempt at such a system. The previous two, in the 1970s,

are widely thought to have failed. The first procedure (under the Industrial Relations

Act 1971) was relatively ineffectual because of union opposition; the design of the

second (Employment Protection Act 1975—EPA) reflected union ambiguity towards

legal intervention and ultimately became inoperable because of employer litigation

(Wood, 2000: 125–136).

The 2000 procedure, established under the Employment Relations Act 1999 (ERA),

was designed to overcome many of the perceived weaknesses of the previous two

regimes. In particular, the criteria for awarding recognition and the means for ensur-

ing employer co-operation with the process and union access to the workforce are

❒Stephen Wood is Research Professor, Institute of Work Psychology, University of Sheffield, and

Research Associate, Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), London School of Economics (LSE);

Sian Moore is Research Officer, CEP, LSE; and Paul Willman is Ernest Butten Professor of Manage-

ment Studies, Said Business School, Oxford University.

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Statutory union recognition in the UK 215

tighter. The Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), rather than the Advisory, Concili-

ation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), is formally responsible for operating the pro-

cedure. This allows ACAS to continue its normal conciliation work in the area of

union recognition without its becoming involved in the statutory procedure (as

occurred under the EPA in the 1970s). A recognition order requires that the parties

agree on a method of bargaining, which aims to overcome the problems associated

with determining whether the parties are bargaining in good faith. The sanctions

for non-compliance are ultimately a contempt of court order, punishable by fines

or imprisonment.

These features appear to give the procedure a better chance of surviving longer

than the previous two. Is it to be third time lucky? In this paper, we shall concentrate

on the likely impact of the procedure and not on the strengths and weaknesses of

its legal design. More specifically, we are interested in whether the procedure will

increase union membership and the extent of union recognition, both of which have

declined substantially since the 1970s. For example, the proportion of workplaces

where unions are recognised has fallen from around 65 per cent in the early 1980s

to 42 per cent in 1998, while those with union members declined from 73 per cent

in the early 1980s to 54 per cent in 1998 (Cully et al., 1999: 234–238).

For a statutory procedure to have a major impact, it must lead to changes in the

behaviour of unions and/or employers. It is too early to judge the impact of this

legislation on either party, and the lack of data on their pre-2000 behaviour may

limit the extent to which a conclusive evaluation can ever be made. We therefore

limit ourselves to reporting primary research aimed at assessing (a) the scope for

unions to achieve recognition, and employers’influence on this, (b) the extent to

which unions are adopting a systematic approach towards achieving recognition and

its manifestation in voluntary recognitions, and (c) the usage so far of the statutory

procedure. We first report our data sources before tackling these issues, finally con-

cluding with a discussion of the implications of our research.

The data

In this paper, we draw upon three sets of data, from (a) a sample of employers, (b)

trade union officers, and (c) the CAC.

Employers

We use the results of a survey of employers to explore the scope forunions to achieve

recognition and the employers’role in this. This was undertaken to coincide with

the introduction of the ERA procedure. The survey focused on the extent of union

activity (campaigns and discussions with employers) concerned with gaining union

recognition. Telephone interviews with the most senior director or manager respon-

sible for personnel management in the workplace were conducted between mid-July

and the end of August 2000.

The target survey population was UK private-sector workplaces with 50 or more

employees. The sampling frame was the Dun and Bradstreet UK Marketing Database

of 36,535 UK workplaces in the private sector (excluding mining and quarrying) from

which participants were randomly selected. The study was designed to achieve 400

observations, and the sample was first stratified by industrial activity to create quotas

to ensure that all major industrial groups were included. In reporting the survey

findings, weightings have been applied to restore the original distribution of work-

places by industrial group. The positive response rate of the total number of cases

where the interviewers were able to speak to the appropriate person or their rep-

resentative was 22 per cent.

Just over two-thirds (69 per cent) of workplaces in the weighted sample had no

union recognition for collective bargaining (hereafter referred to as ‘unrecognised

workplaces’), and just under one-third (31 per cent) had union recognition for at

216 Industrial Relations Journal

Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002.