Industrial relations in britain

Human resource (HR) management in Britain

• One-third of workplaces with more than 10 employees have a personnel or HR specialist
• The principle responsibilities of British HR managers are concerned with grievance and dispute handling, recruitment and selection, staffing and employee consultation
• More than 60% of private-sector workplaces have a personnel/HR presence on the board of directors, though this varies between sectors and with organisational size
• Membership of the relevant professional organisation, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), has risen nearly tenfold since the 1970s. Internationally, the CIPD is the second biggest organisation of this sort. Only the equivalent US organisation is larger
• There is an increasing focus on the ‘business partner’/strategy role of HR managers. There are threats to their role from the increasing role of line managers, specialist consultants, outsourcing and shared services arrangements

History of collective bargaining in Britain

• Collective bargaining has a long history. By the end of WWI, multi-employer bargaining for manual workers was well established and industry-level negotiations were encouraged by the state
• Before WWII, there were centralised negotiations across entire industries (there were some exceptions); this left little room for workplace bargaining
• A shift occurred after WWII with the rise of single-employer bargaining and by the mid-1970s collective bargaining was decentralised throughout much of the private sector

Changing collective bargaining

• In 1970, collective bargaining covered around 70% of the British workforce. By 2006, coverage had declined to around 27%
• There are variations between sectors, with the public sector having the highest coverage (83%) and the private sector the lowest (14%)
• The shape and character of collective bargaining also varies in relation to the level of bargaining, the size and structure of the unit of employees covered by an agreement and the scope of the subjects determined by collective bargaining
• Little multi-employer bargaining remains. Single unionism and ‘single-table’ bargaining (where all unions negotiate together) has increased since 1990, with single-table bargaining occurring in 60% of workplaces in 2004