Form

A recurring theme in the partnership literature is the extent to which union bargaining rights are reinforced or weakened by partnership agreements and whether their adoption signals a changed role for collective bargaining (eg: Oxenbridge and Brown 2002: 267). The preceding two chapters have analysed, respectively, the structural origins of partnership agreements in the UK life and pensions sector and the motives of management and workplace unions in their adoption or rejection. This chapter is concerned with comparing the form of the partnership agreements at Legal & General and Scottish Widows with the nature of the collective agreements at the two non-partnership cases. ¹ The purpose is to assess the rights accorded to workplace unions under partnership agreements and to evaluate how substantial these arrangements are in terms of collective representation. Put differently, the aim is to demonstrate whether and to what extent partnership agreements differ from traditional collective agreements. At this point, it should be noted that before the advent of partnership agreements in the sector, given the presence in most workplaces of the same national union, the traditional collective agreement was standard across the sector. Consequently, this chapter will compare current arrangements in the two pairs of cases against each other rather than undertake a pre- and post-partnership comparison in the partnership cases alone.