ABSTRACT
The proportion of the British workforce who are members of trade unions has fallen continuously since 1979. By 1998 it was estimated that only 30 per cent of the total workforce was unionised and that in the private sector union membership was confined to a mere fifth of employees (Bland 1999). In parallel with this decline in union membership there has been a long-term, and even sharper, decline in the proportion of the workforce who have their pay determined by collective bargaining. According to Milner (1995), collective pay-setting institutions covered approximately 80 per cent of British workers in the mid-1970s. The most recent estimate of bargaining coverage from the annual Labour Force Survey, however, suggests that now only 35 per cent of employees have their pay set through institutions of this kind (Bland 1999). Given these trends, what is the justification for writing today about the influence of trade unions on reward management? I believe three reasons make this a worthwhile exercise. First, while unions have declined, they maintain a significant presence in the economy and continue to function as mass organisations of employees: the percentage figures for union density and bargaining coverage for 1998 refer to 7.1 and 8 million workers respectively. Second, the introduction of a statutory recognition procedure by the Labour government has presented unions with an opportunity to reverse their decline and raised the prospect for managers of having to deal with unions and negotiate pay in companies where they previously have been absent or marginal. Third, the decline of unions and collective bargaining has been described as 'the counter-revolution of our time' (Phelps Brown 1990) and a systematic review of the union impact on reward provides a means of assessing this enormous social and economic change. By examining what unions do, we can reach a conclusion about whether their decline adds to or subtracts from our national economic life (Freeman and Medoff 1984).
