In May 1999, the UK's Trades Union Congress organised a major conference to promote the spread of "partnership" agreements between management and trade unions. Stressing shared responsibility for business efficiency based on employment security and flexible working, these agreements represent, for their advocates, a modernisation of industrial relations. However, some of their critics argue that they reflect and exacerbate trade union weakness. This feature looks at how partnership agreements differ from previous industrial relations practice.
Since the election of the Labour government in May 1997, much has been made of the idea of "partnership" as the new "third way" for UK industrial relations - representing, for its advocates, a modern alternative both to the entrenched adversarialism of traditional collective bargaining and to the unilateral managerialism of the 1980s and 1990s. A government "working document" Competitiveness through partnership with people and a Trades Union Congress (TUC) statement Partners for progress, both published in 1997, set the tone. Since then, the concept has been promoted by organisations such as the Institute of Personnel and Development (UK9811158F) and the Involvement and Participation Association. At a TUC-sponsored conference in May 1999, the partnership principle (although not every detail of the TUC's own agenda) was endorsed by the prime minister, the trade and industry secretary and the director general of the Confederation of British Industry (UK9906108F).
The test of whether this constitutes a serious recasting of British industrial relations is, in the UK's highly decentralised system, to be found through an analysis of the enterprise-level agreements that claim to embody these principles. It is impossible to specify how many partnership agreements there are and the number of employees they cover, though such agreements appear to be of significance in the private service sector (financial services and retail trades in particular) and in the recently-privatised utilities (water and electricity). While there is no universal definition of what constitutes partnership, there are now enough partnership agreements for the central defining features to emerge.
Key characteristics of partnership agreements
Most "partnership" agreements have the improvement of business performance as their central purpose. A characteristic agreement between the Cooperative Bank and the Banking Insurance and Finance Union states that "our partnership is intended to make a significant contribution to the growth of a viable and sustainable business." United Distillers refers to partnership as one of the "drivers for achieving a step change in the company's journey towards world-class manufacturing". In formal partnership agreements, trade unions have explicitly affirmed their commitment to the pursuit of these objectives and to acting jointly with the company to introduce agreed necessary change.
Where unions are recognised and designated as one of the partners to the agreement, their formal role is explicitly recognised and their remit and status often enlarged. An agreement at Scottish Power has designated a central "partnership council" as the "effective vehicle for the representatives of management and trade union representatives to deliver the joint commitment to the continued growth and future success ... as set out ... within the partnership agreement". London and Manchester (Management Services) and the Manufacturing Science Finance (MSF) union have agreed as a general principle to "seek maximum involvement of the union at the earliest time in all company plans and initiatives involving employees". An agreement between Blue Circle Cement and its four recognised trade unions (a pioneering agreement developed through the 1990s - UK9702102F) claims to have greatly enhanced the union role by focusing national bargaining on long-term strategic issues and by enlarging the scope of joint consultation. The Tesco supermarket group provides for staff forums in every store, leading into trade union-based group and regional meetings. More generally, the companies involved in such agreements have often stressed the importance they attach to trade union involvement and, explicitly or implicitly, encouraged employees to join trade unions.
While unions insist that effective partnership can be developed only with representative trade unions, employers' organisations, and the government, argue that effective partnership can be constructed in non-union firms (UK9906108F). Non-union partnership arrangements stress employee involvement through teamworking, briefings and employee surveys, but there is no evidence that the partnership concept itself is contributing significantly to the development of collective systems of employee representation in non-union settings.
At the substantive heart of most partnership agreements lie three related items: flexible working methods, employment security and commercial success. Wordings differ widely, but generally the companies state their desire to maximise employment security, the unions undertake to assist in the introduction of flexible working methods, and both assert their shared view that genuine security can come only from commercial success, for which flexible working and the shared pursuit of best working practice are necessary preconditions. The specification of these ideas varies from broad statements of intent through to detailed agreements covering working methods and the handling of redundancy and redeployment. Some contain explicit commitments not to resort to compulsory redundancy. The commitments on flexibility are often open-ended and wide-ranging. The Scottish Power agreement states that "staff are committed to flexible working practices, undertaking any tasks for which they are competent, including work at or below their own level." Most partnerships stress the importance of training (with an employer commitment to its provision and an employee commitment to accepting training and using new skills as a precondition of any enhanced employment security).
Other frequently-found elements of partnership agreements include:
- commitments to improving communications systems;
- the achievement of single status for all employees through the harmonisation of terms and conditions of employment, most particularly between blue-collar and white-collar staff;
- the development of rewards systems related to company performance (often referred to as "sharing in success"); and
- agreements over pay and other conditions lasting two or three years rather than the more usual one year.
These elements, however, do not distinguish "partnership" from other more conventional agreements.
The emphasis on partnership and on a culture of cooperation raises questions concerning more distributive issues such as the negotiation of pay and conditions and the handling of grievances. Here again practice varies. At Scottish Power the central partnership council has the responsibility for seeking consensual agreement, with recourse to conciliation if needed. This partnership agreement is one of the few to recognise explicitly that strike action may be pursued "as a last resort". Other agreements, such as that at United Distillers, explicitly exclude pay and conditions from the agenda of the joint consultative council, leaving their negotiation to separate joint negotiating committees. Many make no mention at all of these matters. In several cases, it is not easy to see whether "partnership" arrangements are intended to replace, supplement, or run alongside longer-standing procedures of negotiation.
Commentary
It is easy to see partnership as little more than a relabelling of activities that have been part of collective union/management relationships for several years. However, in the changed political environment since the election of the Labour government it potentially has a greater significance. Partnership is the first initiative for many years strongly supported, even led, by the trade unions, which see it as providing an opportunity to reassert their contribution to a healthy economy. This view finds indirect confirmation in the criticisms voiced by some leading employers who fear it may reintroduce trade unionism "by the back door".
The concrete impact on issues such as security and flexibility is hard to assess at this early stage. The non-legal status of collective agreements in the UK means that these new declarations, including employer commitments to employment security, carry no legally-binding force. It is the stated commitment of the partners - in particular the trade unions - to act as the joint managers of agreed change agendas that provides the basis of assessments that these deals will work. The clear role assigned to trade unions as partners in "managerial" processes is what, together with the explicit linkages between flexibility, security and success, gives these agreements their distinctive character and novelty. For their advocates, this role will act to enhance the status and importance of unions and increase the likelihood of managerial recognition. For the critics of UK-style partnership, especially those on the left of political and trade union thinking, this same role, and the concomitant union adoption of commercial success as one of its own objectives, threatens trade unions' ideological and pragmatic independence from management, and hence their ability freely to represent members' interests.
The sectoral distribution of partnership agreements is of interest. In the privatised utilities, with a long public sector history of extensive centralised bargaining, partnership can be seen as a clear managerial effort to define the union role away from its public sector past. In the private services, where collective bargaining and trade unionism have traditionally had a lower profile, it may be seen as marking an opportunity for defining a union role in sectors where workers' bargaining power alone was and remains insufficient to guarantee employer recognition. Partnership arrangements as described here so far appear less common in the public sector, in manufacturing, and in the non-union sector.
Unlike mainland northern European versions of "social partnership", the UK version is underpinned by no legal rights guaranteeing the existence of employee representation. It may therefore be seen as more vulnerable and more contingent on managerial approval. This situation may be changed by the imminent enactment of UK legislation providing trade union rights to employer recognition (UK9903189F) and, in the longer term, by the potential EU-driven extension of information and consultation rights to all employees (EU9812135F). (Michael Terry, IRRU)