Documents Samuel, Peter 5 results

"This article explores the emergence, operation and outcomes of social partnership in the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland and Wales. Social partnership emerged in the NHS following political devolution in 1998 which transferred powers to left-wing governments in Scotland and Wales. These arrangements helped improve health services, modernize industrial relations and enhance staff terms and conditions. In NHS Scotland, union participation in strategic decisions produced extensive co-operation to dismantle the internal health market, improve services and enhance staff terms and conditions. Union participation in NHS Wales was restricted to discussing workforce issues, and although co-operation increased when Welsh governments gained enhanced legislative powers and dismantled the internal health market, it delivered fewer improvements in service and pay levels. Differences in government political positioning (against public sector marketization) and degree of independence (with devolved administrations granted different legislative powers) help explain the operation and outcomes of social partnership."

"Critics and advocates of union–management partnership agreements offer competing assessments of the potential outcomes for workplace union representation. These include the attenuation of the role of lay activists and intra-union conflict. In this case study of Amicus-MSF at Legal & General partnership involved centralised decision making, membership loss and activist-leadership tensions, but these were temporary. With employer support the local union leadership 'cultivated' a cadre of pro-partnership activists with extended reach into management decision making, increasing membership and strengthening workplace organisation."

'Partnership agreements between employers and trade unions usually establish joint consultation committees for union representatives and managers to discuss workplace issues. According to conventional wisdom dominant employers use consultation under the rubric of partnership to reduce union influence and effectiveness.This article tests this assumption through a longitudinal study of new joint consultation committees introduced as part of partnership agreements in two employer dominant British life and pensions firms. Ineffective consultation in one firm reflected a conflictual industrial relations climate and management seeking retrenchment. In the other firm effective consultation developed notwithstanding employer dominance due to a more cooperative industrial relations climate, a history of cooperative management-union relations and management motives for adaptation. The findings suggest that consultation under partnership agreements enables effective union influence in such circumstances.'

"This article assesses the adoption and survival of labour-management partnership agreements in Britain. In contrast to predictions that British employers will avoid partnership agreements, significantly more agreements have been signed than expected with 248 partnership agreements signed between 1990 and 2007. Partnership agreements covered almost ten percent of all British employees in 2007 and one-third of public sector employees. The majority of agreements are now in the public sector as part of government plans to reform the delivery of public services and in the devolved health services of Scotland and Wales as part of the potentially distinctive social democratic approach adopted by the devolved Governments. In contrast to predictions that, once signed, partnership agreements are unlikely to survive, four-fifths (80 percent) of all agreements survived to the close of 2007. Public sector agreements appear particularly robust. "

"This article assesses the contents of the majority of employer-union partnership agreements signed in Britain from 1990 to 2007. Few agreements contain the expected partnership principles and most express modest overall aims and limited ambition. Typical agreements are substantively hollow with more than one-third containing no substantive provisions; and procedurally biased, with more than four-fifths offering unions greater involvement in employers' decisions. Partnership agreements continue the procedural bias of traditional British collective agreements representing the lowest common denominator of agreement — unions work towards the success of the enterprise in return for involvement in employers' decisions. The implications for New Labour's Third Way approach and the policy of encouraging voluntary partnership agreements to promote fairness at work are considered. "