The Contraction of Collective Bargaining in Britain

Abstract

Collective bargaining has been transformed since the Donovan Commission reported. Their prescription for reform has been fulfilled by both the decline in multi-employer agreements arid the greater control exercised by the singleemployer agreements thut have displaced them. It has, however, been confounded by the substantial contraction in the coverage of collective agreements, the narrowing in the scope of bargaining, the decline in the depth of union involvement and the erosion of uriiorrs' organizationalsecurity. In so fur us this has been cuused by the recent reversul ofgovernment policy towards collective bargaining, it cannot be ussumed to be permanent.Properly conducted, collective bargaining is the most effective means of giving workers the right to representation in decisions affecting their working lives, a right which is or should be the prerogative of every worker in a democratic society. While therefore the first task in the reform of British industrial relations is to bring greater order into collective bargaining in the company and plant, the second is to extend the coverage of collective bargaining and the organisation of workers on which it depends. (Donovan 1968, para. 212)

British Manufacturing Organization and Workplace Industrial Relations: Some Attributes of the New Flexible Firm

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The Incompatibility of Decentralized Bargaining and Equal Employment Opportunity in Australia

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Peering into the Black Hole: The Downside of the New Employment Relations in the UK

“…However we should not get too carried away by this. Brown (1993), using WIRS data, estimated that the proportion of the UK work-force covered by collective agreements had fallen from 72 per cent in 1973 to 64 per cent in 1984 and to 47 per cent in 1990, and it has certainly declined further since then. The well documented decline in trade union membership in the UK also continues, albeit at a slowing rate.…”