Union autonomy in context: An international comparison

This is the second of two linked articles on the question of union autonomy; the first appeared in the previous issue of this journal. It considers state control and approach to union autonomy in the wider context of state controls on unions' bargaining activities including industrial action. Two questions are posed: whether there is any “balance” between state respect for union autonomy and state confidence that union collective bargaining activities take place within a legally prescribed framework; and how the state in the UK was able to shift so rapidly from the traditional, voluntary approach and the incipient neo-corporatism of the 1970s, to the detailed and onerous regulation of union internal and external activities in the 1980s and 1990s

Union autonomy, a terminal case in the UK? A comparison with the approach in other European countries and the USA

Since 1979, the Conservative government in the UK has introduced wide-ranging and detailed regulations for the conduct of union internal affairs; a number of other Western industrialized countries have not done so (or have not done so to the same extent) but have continued their tradition of relying on unions themselves to establish democratic procedures. Alternative views of the role of the state in industrial relations underlie these differences. A second, linked article, appearing in Employee Relations (Vol. 15 No. 4), examines state approaches to union autonomy in the context of attitudes towards other controls on union activities and attempts to explain the successive shifts in British policy in the UK since the 1960s