Collective Employee Representation and the Impact of Law: Initial Response to the Employment Relations Act 1999.

Using data gathered primarily during interviews with managers and trade union officials, this article examines how trade unions and employers have reacted to the introduction of the statutory procedure for union recognition in the Employment Relations Act 1999 (ERA). Findings indicate that the ERA and the drift of EU influence have had a substantial effect in shifting the balance of employer attitudes towards greater approval of trade unions and have accelerated the rate at which employers are redesigning their relationships with unions. Although employers are tending to restrict unions' influence over traditional issues such as pay-setting, they are increasingly seeking their assistance in implementing difficult organisational changes. The article explores the impact of such changes on trade union activity and collective representation more broadly.Collective bargaining, employee representation, trade union recognition labour legislation

British industrial relations pluralism in the era of neoliberalism

This article provides a broad overview of the pluralist tradition in UK industrial relations scholarship, identifying its defining characteristics and mapping its evolution in recent decades. It deals in turn with the following: the appreciation of the relative interests of workers and employers that lies at the heart of the pluralist frame of reference, the research agenda that flows from this understanding, pluralist conceptions of context and agency within industrial relations, the standards that pluralists habitually use when assessing the employment relationship, the targets and modes of critique that pluralists direct against intellectual opponents, and the prescriptions that pluralists offer for industrial relations reform. Throughout the article there is a focus on change within the pluralist tradition and the manner in which it has adapted to the hegemony of neoliberalism in the realms of both ideas and policy

'Promoting cooperative and productive workplace relations': exploring the Fair Work Commission's new role

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) has recently been amended to confer a new function on the Fair Work Commission (FWC), that of ‘promoting cooperative and productive workplace relations and preventing disputes’. We review the background to this change, including the decision under the original Fair Work regime to confer this function on the Fair Work Ombudsman, as well as the more recent shift in approach that has occurred under the FWC’s current President, Justice Iain Ross. Now that the change has been formalised, we also explore some of its potential implications for the FWC, in light of the role the institution and its predecessors have historically played in regulating workplace relations.Andrew Stewart, Mark Bray, Johanna Macneil, and Sarah Oxenbridg

Trade union organising among low-wage service workers Lessons from America and New Zealand

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:9349.2269(160) / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo