Documents Tailby, Stephanie 10 results

"Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to explore what has happened to the notion and reality of equal pay over the past 50 years, a period in which women have become the majority of trade union members in the UK. It does so in the context of record employment levels based upon women's increased labour market participation albeit reflecting their continued over-representation in part-time employment, locating the narrowed but persistent overall gender pay gap in the broader picture of pay inequality in the UK.



Design/methodology/approach

– The paper considers voluntary and legal responses to inequality and the move away from voluntary solutions in the changed environment for unions. Following others it discusses the potential for collective bargaining to be harnessed to equality in work, a potential only partially realised by unions in a period in which their capacity to sustain collective bargaining was weakened. It looks at the introduction of a statutory route to collective bargaining in 2000, the National Minimum Wage from 1999 and at the Equality Act 2010 as legislative solutions to inequality and in terms of radical and liberal models of equality.



Findings

– The paper suggests that fuller employment based upon women's increased labour market activity have not delivered an upward pressure on wages and has underpinned rather than closed pay gaps and social divisions. Legal measures have been limited in the extent to which they have secured equal pay and wider social equality, whilst state support for collective solutions to equality has waned. Its replacement by a statutory minimum wage initially closed pay gaps, but appears to have run out of steam as employers accommodate minimum hourly rates through the reorganisation of working time.



Social implications

– The paper suggests that statutory minima or even voluntary campaigns to lift hourly wage rates may cut across and even supersede wider existing collective bargaining agreements and as such they can reinforce the attack on collective bargaining structures, supporting arguments that this can reduce representation over pay, but also over a range of other issues at work (Ewing and Hendy, 2013), including equality.



Originality/value

– There are then limitations on a liberal model which is confined to promoting equality at an organisational level in a public sector subject to wider market forces. The fragmentation of bargaining and representation that has resulted will continue if the proposed dismantling of public services goes ahead and its impact upon equality is already suggested in the widening of the gender pay gap in the public sector in 2015."

"The labour processes and employment relations that characterise the working conditions of many professional workers might be expected to generate the high-trust environment required for cooperative, partnership-style management–union relations. However, few studies have focused on partnership in ‘professional' and ‘expert labour' employment sectors. This paper assesses the efficacy of partnership through the lens of manager, union and employee attitudes at three cases studies notable for employing high numbers of staff in the professions and ‘marginal professions'. The analysis focuses on the nature of the cooperative relationship between union representatives and management (categorised as either ‘nurtured' or ‘coerced partnership'), whether unions in these settings are able to expand the range and scope of their influence, and whether professional workers themselves display positive attitudes to cooperative union forms. The study finds that in all three cases the ‘partnership' union is seen by its members as a weak, insubordinate entity in terms of collective influence over management policy though in the two ‘nurturing' cases they see it to be more effective for individual member representation."

"The text is ideal for undergraduates and postgraduates, providing an up-to-date approach for those studying Employee Relations, HRM and related disciplines on a range of courses including BA Business Studies and CIPD professional programmes.

This new edition has been revised to take account of the salient developments currently shaping the subject of employee relations from concrete issues such as changes in legislation, employment practices or facets of trade union structure and membership, to those of a more interpretative nature."

"Young workers are concentrated in low-waged, poorly organized industries. Although poorly unionized, evidence suggests that they are positively predisposed towards unions. Most research on youth and unionization is attitudinal, however, with little evidence on the kinds of problems they face and how they respond. This article contributes findings from a British survey in 2004 of 501 low-paid, unorganized workers and focuses on two groups of young workers: those between 16 and 21 years and those aged between 22 and 29 years. It shows commonalities and contrasts between these age groups in terms of typical workplace, types of problems encountered, responses to them, including collective action, views on trade union support and likelihood to join as a result of grievances. The older group is more active individually and collectively towards resolving problems at work. Yet both youth groups are as keen, or more so, on trade union help, than the wider sample. "

"The complexities of the triangular relationship between employer, worker and agency are explored in two sectors to establish the extent to which the use of agency workers constitutes strategic and rational decisions on the part of employers. Evidence of strategic subcontracting to agencies is evident in the ICT examples, but, as in the healthcare case, organizational outcomes need to be understood with reference to workers' preferences, the agencies' own sophisticated strategies, operational pressures and labour market context. Relationships with agencies were embedded but inherently contingent, reflecting their own dependency on clients or, in the case of healthcare, government."

"This article addresses the role of ‘employee voice' in workplace partnership. Drawing on two organizational case studies from the UK's aerospace sector, it analyses employee experiences of two key dimensions of worker participation in partnership environments: joint consultation and union representation. Specifically, it investigates what consultation and union representation actually mean for employees in the context of different union responses to employer-driven partnership agendas. The article finds predominantly negative patterns of employee experience and attributes this partly to management control strategies and the short-termist dynamic of British manufacturing capital."

" The Taylor Review asserts that ‘certain groups are also more likely to place a greater importance on flexibility such as carers, women, those with disabilities and older workers'. This article draws upon the experiences of workers on non‐standard contracts to explore the notion of worker preference and to expose how the discourse of work–life balance is usurped to provide justification for flexibility in the interest of employers rather than workers, reconstructing labour market segregation."