IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v48y1995i3p403-419.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

British Unions in Decline: Determinants of the 1980s Fall in Union Recognition

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Disney
  • Amanda Gosling
  • Stephen MacHin

Abstract

This examination of establishment-level data from the Workplace Industrial Relations Surveys of 1980, 1984, and 1990 shows that the proportion of British establishments (that is, workplaces in both the private and public sector) that recognized unions for collective bargaining over pay and working conditions fell by almost 20% between 1980 and 1990. Largely accountable for this decline was a much lower rate of union recognition in establishments founded in the 1980s than in previous years, particularly in the private sector. Citing these findings, as well as recent structural changes in employment in the British labor market (such as the shift from manufacturing to services, from manual to non-manual employment, and from full-time to part-time work) and a government that continues to enact anti-union legislation, the authors foresee no reversal of unions' decline in the 1990s.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Disney & Amanda Gosling & Stephen MacHin, 1995. "British Unions in Decline: Determinants of the 1980s Fall in Union Recognition," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 48(3), pages 403-419, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:48:y:1995:i:3:p:403-419
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/48/3/403.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David G. Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2022. "Union membership and job satisfaction over the life course," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(5), pages 411-429, September.
    2. Machin, Stephen, 1997. "The decline of labour market institutions and the rise in wage inequality in Britain," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 647-657, April.
    3. David G. Blanchflower & Alex Bryson, 2020. "Job Satisfaction Over the Life Course," NBER Working Papers 28206, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Getinet Astatike Haile, 2017. "Union decline in Britain: does gender have anything to do with it?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(1), pages 25-49, February.
    5. Getinet Astatike Haile, 2021. "Men, women and unions," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(3), pages 201-217, May.
    6. Schnabel, Claus, 2002. "Determinants of trade union membership," Discussion Papers 15, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    7. Iga Magda & David Marsden & Simone Moriconi, 2012. "Collective Agreements, Wages, and Firms' Cohorts: Evidence from Central Europe," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 65(3), pages 607-629, July.
    8. Haile, Getinet Astatike, 2012. "Union Decline in Britain: Is Chauvinism Also to Blame?," IZA Discussion Papers 6536, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. J. Ryan Lamare & Patrick Gunnigle & Paul Marginson & Gregor Murray, 2013. "Union Status and Double-Breasting at Multinational Companies in Three Liberal Market Economies," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 66(3), pages 696-722, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:48:y:1995:i:3:p:403-419. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.