BARGAINING STRUCTURE

UNITED KINGDOM
BARGAINING STRUCTURE

The more stable or permanent features that distinguish the bargaining process in any particular
system. Usually bargaining structure is considered to have five major features: bargaining
agent, bargaining form, bargaining level, bargaining scope, and bargaining unit .

Bargaining Agent: The union or unions recognised by an employer for collective bargaining in
respect of a particular bargaining unit (see below). Bargaining Form: Refers to whether
agreements are formal or informal, written or unwritten. Informal, unwritten agreements are
often referred to as custom and practice . Although there has been a move towards greater
formality and written agreements in the area of terms and conditions in the last two decades,
agreements over the pace and organisation of work are still often unwritten and informal.
Bargaining Level: Refers to the points within a system t which bargaining between unions and
employers or their representatives takes place. Within a single company, such bargaining may
take place at one or more of the following levels: at shop floor level, covering groups of workers
in that plant; at plant or factory level, covering all workers or certain categories of workers; and
in multi- plant companies, at divisional or corporate level, again covering all workers or certain
categories of workers. All these are collectively defined as forms of single-employer
bargaining (see below). Above that, in the private sector, bargaining often also takes place at the
level of the industry or industrial sector, so- called multi-employer bargaining (see below),
between Employers' Associations and confederations of trade unions . This latter form is often
conducted through bodies variously named National Joint Industrial Councils, Joint Industrial
Councils, or National Joint Committees. While many workers in the private sector have their
wages and conditions affected by two or more levels of bargaining, single-employer bargaining,
most especially at the plant, division, or corporate level, has emerged in the last two decades as
the most significant, with multi-employer bargaining correspondingly declining in importance.
There is rarely any co-ordination between single- and multi-employer bargaining. In the public
sector , most bargaining takes place at a national level for each of the major public enterprises, so
this is a form of single-employer bargaining. In recent years most public enterprises have
introduced some local bargaining, but in these cases it is usually still administered from the
centre.

Bargaining Scope: Refers to the range of issues over which bargaining takes place.
Traditionally in Britain, bargaining scope has been restricted to issues of terms and conditions
of employment and, in some cases, to the organisation and intensity of work. Broader strategic
issues, sometimes the subject of a form of bargaining in other European countries, have rarely
been covered by bargaining in Britain, although they sometimes are covered by forms of
consultation . See single union agreement .
Bargaining Unit: Refers to the group or category of workers covered by a particular agreement.
Thus, for example, within one bargaining level, such as the company, there may be a number of
units, such as craft workers, white-collar workers, etc, who may be the subject of different
agreements. The bargaining unit may be as large as an entire company workforce, for example in
discussions over pension arrangements, or as small as a group of skilled craft workers.

Sole Bargaining Rights: See sole bargaining agent , below.

Company Bargaining: Collective bargaining between a single employer and one or more trade
unions in respect of all workers or groups of workers in that company. In single-plant companies
plant bargaining and company bargaining are synonymous; in multi-plant companies the term
applies when it covers bargaining that applies at least to certain grades of workers in all or
several of its plants. Company (and plant) bargaining was advocated by the Donovan
Commission (1968) as a preferable level of bargaining to that which took place on the shop floor
between low-level managers and small groups of workers and shop stewards . Since the late
1960s there has been an increase in company and plant level bargaining at the expense of low-
level shop floor bargaining .

Multi-Employer Bargaining: See collective agreement: industry-wide agreement . Bargaining,

usually at national or industrial level, between groups of employers united in an employers'
association and trade unions .

Multi-Plant Bargaining: Bargaining which covers workers in more than one plant or factory in
a company which has more than one plant in the United Kingdom. Several such companies
practise a mixture of multi- and single-plant bargaining, for example bargaining on a multi-plant
basis for blue-collar workers and on a single-plant basis for white-collar staff.

Plant Bargaining: Bargaining that occurs within an individual plant or factory. This ranges from
informal shop floor bargaining covering only small groups of workers through to formal plant
agreements covering all or most workers in a plant. The Donovan Commission advocated the
formalisation of plant bargaining and since the late 1960s plant bargaining has indeed become
more formal and codified. It is a very widespread level of bargaining in manufacturing industry.

Shop Floor Bargaining: Bargaining which takes place on the shop floor , between individual
workers or small groups and their representatives ( shop stewards ), and low-level management.
In the 1960s bargaining at this level, often associated with the operation of piecework schemes,
was identified by the Donovan Commission as lying at the heart of the so-called informal
system of British industrial relations . Such bargaining, characterised as fragmented,
autonomous and informal, was seen as causing problems for employers, unions and governments
alike, since it operated outside their ability to monitor and influence what was happening. In
many cases shop floor bargaining was undertaken by people who, according to the formal
structures of their organisations, had no specified authority to enter into agreements. Throughout
the 1970s much attention was paid to strategies to reduce the volume of shop floor bargaining.
These included changes in payment systems, often from piecework to measured daywork , and
the development of procedure agreements (see collective agreement ) specifying appropriate
organisational levels for the handling of disputes and grievances.
Single Employer Bargaining: Collective bargaining between a single employer and one or
more trade unions . This may include both plant bargaining and company bargaining . It has
been growing in importance for twenty years or more, and is now the most important form of
bargaining for 48 per cent. of employees covered by collective bargaining.

Sole Bargaining Agent: A union recognised as the only bargaining representative in respect of a
particular group of workers has sole bargaining rights and is the sole bargaining agent (see
above). The terms, however, are not commonly used in Britain although they had some currency
during the period of the Industrial Relations Act 1971, which introduced a statutory procedure
whereby unions could apply for recognition and the Commission on Industrial Relations could
make recommendations as to the identity of the sole bargaining agent for a bargaining unit. The
statutory procedure and the Commission on Industrial Relations are now both defunct.

In the past where a union gained recognition from an employer it was protected from " poaching
" by other unions through the Bridlington Agreement of the TUC. Recent legal changes
concerning union membership rights have, however, undermined these procedures. Where the
union is a sole bargaining agent recognised in respect of all the workers in the establishment
whose terms and conditions are to be determined through collective bargaining the agreement
may be called a " single union deal ".