Partnership as union strategy: a preliminary evaluation

Abstract

Two general viewpoints on workplace “partnership” as a union strategy are identified: it is seen as either a potentially effective strategy for restoring union influence, or as fatally flawed. Discusses the determinants of robust union‐management partnership relations in order to assist the evaluation of “partnership unionism” as a union strategy. Outlines a definition of workplace partnership based on practice. Although common elements with earlier attempts to promote or implement union‐management cooperation can be discerned, it is argued that contemporary workplace partnership has distinctive characteristics arising from its specific context. Two cases are used to illustrate the internal dynamics of workplace partnership and the nature of interaction with environmental factors. The necessary components of robust partnership relations are thereby isolated. Partnership is found to be not only compatible with, but dependent upon, stronger workplace organisation. Such an understanding is found to be a possible alternative to accounts that stress union incorporation and demobilisation.