Locating the 2000 Statutory Recognition Procedure

Until 2000, save for a very brief period in the 1970s (discussed below), there was no statutory system of trade union recognition. Trade unions had rights to represent their members only in so far as an employer was prepared to concede it. This notion of an employer veto over rights to representation is very different from that which applies in most of the Member States of the European Union.1 In these states the legitimacy of trade unions is acknowledged; either because it is enshrined in the state’s constitution or is embedded in primary legislation which recognises trade unions as key social actors and which therefore grants an automatic right to recognition. The idea that an employer in Italy, Germany or France would have the power to veto the rights of trade unions to represent their members in the workplace is unthinkable, and social dialogue is conducted through the recognised social partners — the trade unions and their counterpart employer organisations. In these countries the employer has no say over the right of a union to represent its members and workers more generally. This apparent weakness in the UK model seems to be at odds with the power and the position which trade unions in the UK have traditionally been viewed as exercising; at least until relatively recently a majority of workers were union members or as a minimum worked under terms and conditions that had been negotiated by a trade union with their employer.