ABSTRACT
The cultivation of partnership agreements between trade unions and employers has been one of the most controversial developments in employment relations over recent decades. Over these years, trade unions have been weakened by structural changes in their traditional labor markets where once they were strong and by unsympathetic governments (Brown, 2000; Brown and Oxenbridge, 2003; Kelly, 1996; Purcell, 1993; Terry, 2003). Increasingly unable to extract concessions from employers or the state, unions have to find alternative ways to justify their existence in the eyes of workers, employers, governments and wider society (see Ackers, Smith and Smith, 1996; Bassett and Cave, 1993). Following hard on the heels of ‘new style agreements’, ‘new realism’ and the ‘new agenda’ (see Kelly, 2004), partnership agreements proclaim the forging of closer, more cooperative relationships with employers (see Peetz, 1996). What is striking about many partnership agreements is that they have been developed in mature sectors of economies undergoing restructuring, many of which have been exposed to uncertain operating environments (Heery, 2002; Oxenbridge and Brown, 2002).
