The Coming of Workplace Information Sharing and Consultation: What It Means for Employee Representation in Britain

Abstract

Britain may be moving away from a negotiation-based system of employee representation and toward a more information- and consultationbased system. Over the last twenty years, information sharing and joint consultation have, with or without unions, proven to hold up better than representation based exclusively on collective bargaining. And, at the beginning of 2002, the European Union adopted a major piece of employment law—the Directive on Information and Consultation. Implementing legislation is required in the United Kingdom within the next few years.This is a real opportunity for a dramatic change in British industrial relations, and for development of a system of Continental-style “works councils.” Equally real, however, is the danger, that the opportunity will be missed is equally real. That is because some trade unions and their members are ambivalent about the principles underlying the Directive, many employers are hostile to such a change, and the government of Tony Blair, which opposed the Directive, is still wary of the measure.Instead of seeing the Directive’s potential to put employee involvement on the kind of new footing suitable for the modern economy, the government may opt for watered-down legislation. That would be another in a long list of missed opportunities to reform British industrial relations.