Striving for a Procedure that Works: UNION RECOGNITION under Britain’s Employment Relations Act

Abstract

At least five hundred union recognition agreements were signed in Britain during 2001, according to Trades Union Congress (TUC) records. This contrasts starkly with the 1990s, when there were less than one hundred agreements per year. A reversal of fortunes for unions became apparent in 2000 when the TUC recorded around one hundred fifty agreements. This rise of voluntary recognition suggests that the Labor Government’s statutory recognition procedure, introduced in the Employment Relations Act of 2000 (ERA), is stimulating union recognition as unions had hoped.The Labor Government sought to craft a procedure that would “provide for representation and recognition where a majority of the relevant workforce wants it,” and to “encourage the parties to reach voluntary agreements wherever possible.” In light of the failure of two attempts at establishing a statutory procedure in the 1970s, the government also wanted to create a procedure that works—a procedure acceptable to both sides of industry, and capable of withstanding judicial review and employer efforts to undermine union support. The Leverhulme research program on the future of trade unionism in Britain has studied this procedure; the record so far indicates that the procedure is working much as the government had hoped it would, but problems are apparent, particularly those involving employers’ tactics, and the ERA’s effect on union membership will be limited.