ABSTRACT
Before union-employer ‘partnership’ deals began to become vogue in Britain in the late 1990s, the letters arm of the Post Office, Royal Mail, instituted its own form of ‘partnership’ with the Union of Communication Workers (UCW) (subsequently the postal side of the Communication Workers Union: CWU), called ‘Strategic Involvement’ (SI) in 1992. Royal Mail (RM) employs around 140,000 workers, making this the largest single partnership agreement in Britain to date. SI was intended to be both a structured relationship through specific joint-meetings and a spirit of working within RM between union and management, operational at all levels within the newly decentralised organisation, but running alongside the framework of collective bargaining. It was welcomed by the UCW national leadership and constituted a counter-part to the newly devolved industrial relations structure of the New Industrial Relations Framework Agreement (NIRFA).
