The four pillars of collective bargaining

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/instemplrighj.1.1.0007
• Pages: 7-14
• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018

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A Manifesto for Labour Law

The four pillars of collective bargaining

Collective bargaining has a central and crucial role in the legal programme

proposed in this Manifesto. It is now no longer in doubt that an efficient and

productive economy is critically associated with strong workers’ rights and

high levels of collective bargaining coverage. The beneficial impact of high

levels of coverage of collective bargaining on the economy has been the

focus of much academic and NGO research over the last few years.36 Papers

by the IMF,37 amongst others, refute the naïve neo-liberal dogma that unions

constitute a distortion of a free labour market in which it is beneficial if

wages are driven down to the lowest sustainable level so justifying removal

or restriction of fundamental rights at work.38

Collective bargaining and workplace democracy

Employee ‘voice’ is now a hot academic topic.39 There are many locations for

such ‘voice’. As well as voice at work, these include participation by worker

representatives in the processes of government, with workers’ interests in

some countries being represented in government by a specialist depart-

ment, such as a Ministry of Labour. Worker voice in government may be

enhanced by processes such as ‘social dialogue’, in which trade unions par-

ticipate to identify whether new laws are needed and what forms these laws

will take. This is a process embedded in the EU Treaty, though since 2010, it

has been inactive and in need of restoration.

It is well established that the involvement of workers in decision-making by

their employers (not just confined to their terms and conditions of employ-

ment) is highly beneficial to business.40 But it is also a matter of principle that

workers should have a say in the enterprises for which they work and to

which many of them dedicate so much of their lives. Democracy should not

stop at the gate to the workplace. Yet, the reality is that for the overwhelm-

ing majority of the United Kingdom’s 31 million workers, not only do they

have no say in the business decisions which affect them,41 they have no say

in the fixing of their own terms and conditions of employment.42 Terms and

conditions in the workplace are governed, by and large, by standard term

contracts of employment over which the prospective worker has no say

other than to accept or reject.