by Andrew Ellson
Despite the threat of a mass walk out by public sector workers in the run up to the general election the number of days lost to strike action in the UK continues to decline. Andrew Ellson looks at recent ESRC research that studies the characteristics of improved industrial relations in recent years.
The prospect of a pre-election strike by more than a million local government workers moved closer today after the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) Union said that it would ballot its 300,000 members on industrial action over plans to raise the civil service retirement age to 65 and replace the final salary pension scheme with a package based on the average earnings.
The decision follows similar moves by Unison, the Transport and General Workers Union and Amicus, which between them have 900,000 members working in local government.
The timing of the potential strike, which would occur in the run up to the widely expected May 6 general election, has been chosen to cause the maximum amount of disruption and therefore political embarrassment to the Labour government. Local authorities, jobcentres, benefits agencies, museums, driving test centres and libraries would all grind to a halt.
But co-ordinated walkouts of this nature are increasingly rare, according to William Brown, a professor of economics at Cambridge University and author of ESRC research into the basis and characteristics employer/trade union relations.
...most employer/union relationships have progressed, not just to a co-operative level but to a mutually beneficial level.
Professor Brown places employer/union associations into four categories; 'robust' and 'shallow' formal or informal relationships. The relationship between the civil service unions and management falls into the formal category because of the existence of collective bargaining. The fact that negotiations have broken down over pension reform with the unions' threatening to strike, illustrates the 'shallowness' of this particular relationship.
But in his research Professor Brown found that most employer/union relationships have progressed, not just to a co-operative level but to a mutually beneficial level.
During his research, which included more than 50 interviews with managers and trade union officials from a wide variety of industry sectors, Professor Brown found that there was genuine agreement over the benefits of co-operative arrangements. Union involvement in workplace change programmes was identified as the key benefit but other advantages included a reduced likelihood of management implementing ideas that would damage morale and a shortening of the length of time needed to complete pay negotiations.
But as the case of the threatened strike action over pension reform demonstrates, there was also agreement that in most cases the unions have little or no real influence over remuneration and benefit negotiations.
...in most cases the unions have little or no real influence over remuneration and benefit negotiations.
Professor Brown's research also discovered that Union stewards often felt that their views on issues differed to those of their members to varying degrees. In his investigations into pay negotiations Professor Brown found that stewards would often be fully apprised of confidential financial information that led them to taking a more moderate stance than their membership expected.
With society experiencing major demographic changes and the government suffering a pension burden with serious consequences for the public finances Professor Brown's findings suggest the public sector unions' top officials will have a really tough job fulfilling the expectations of their millions of members.