ABSTRACT
Partnership is a pervasive but imprecise term in contemporary employment relations, the meaning of which wanders from user to user and context to context. The focus of this chapter is on partnership as a strategy for the revitalisation of enterprise-based trade unionism. We are concerned, that is, with the use of partnership agreements by unions to secure or enhance recognition from individual employers and promote the interests of members within the confines of a single employing organisation. Such a strategy is likely to involve trade unions in three kinds of activity. First, identifying substantive interests that complement those of the employer, in order to strike a positive-sum or mutual gains bargain. Second, making use of the resources of the employer to secure union objectives, which might include employer support for the recruitment of new members or subsidy of union activism and workplace organisation. Third, developing a form of trade union organisation that complements the pursuit of partnership with the employer. It is often claimed that the relationships between unions and employers and unions and their members are correlated (Blyton and Turnbull 1998:110) and consequently the development of labour-management partnership may push enterprise trade unionism towards a particular form.
