The document discusses different forms of employee voice in industrial relations, including self-management, employee involvement, and employee representation via trade unions. It argues that while union membership has declined, collective representation through trade unions remains important for regulating social and economic interests in the workplace. Union-management partnership strategies that involve cooperation and problem-solving have potential benefits, though critics argue they can be fragile. The document concludes that effective representative employee voice should be supported by public policy and contemporary human resource management.

1. EMPLOYEE VOICE AND
THE REGULATION OF
INDUSTRIAL
RELATIONS
Stewart Johnstone
Newcastle University Business School

2. Key points
• Collective employee
representation & trade
unions may be
unfashionable but are as
important as ever as a
form of employee voice
• Union-management
partnership strategies
continue to have more
potential than critics
suggest, especially
compared to the
alternatives

3. The industrial relations perspective and
employee voice
• The regulation of the wage-effort bargain
• “The employment relationship, the institutions
or rules involved in its governance and their
significance for a wide range of economic,
political and social outcomes” (Sisson, 2008).
• Voice a longstanding IR concern
• Language, practices and motives have changed

4. Employee voice: key issues &
debates
• How much ‘say’ should employees have in the
running of organisations?
• What is the rationale for voice?
• What is the scope of voice?
• What are the most desirable forms of voice?
• How can we evaluate whether these forms
‘work’?
• What works ‘best’?
• How can voice be improved?

5. Main forms of voice
Examples Assumptions Challenges
Self-management
Co-operatives
Workers
Control
Radical: alternative to
private firms run for
shareholders
Limited support?
Unfashionable?
Employee
involvement
Profit-sharing;
teamworking;
empowerment;
TQM; engagement
Unitarist: aligning
interests; improving
organisational
performance
Employer-led; Tokenistic;
Fads; Ephemeral; Voice
Optional; Imbalance of
power
Employee
Representation
Trade unions, NER?
Pluralist: regulating &
balancing social,
political & economic
interests
Political; Contentious;
Trade union decline;
Union
suppression/avoidance
Unfashionable?

6. The future of employee
representation
• Union decline especially in private sector
• ‘Hollowing out’ where union presence remains
• Low take up & questionable effectiveness of NER
• For Unitarists, this is not a problem
• But for Pluralists, a worrying trend for workers,
workplaces & societies
• Union revitalisation a priority – but how can this
best be achieved?

7. The pluralist partnership option
• Key challenge is effective regulation of
(sometimes) competing interests and tensions
• Employer-sponsored EI alone is not enough!
• Value of effective collective representation
• Scope for cooperation & constructive dialogue
• ‘Problem-solving’ ‘Mutual gains’ (Kochan and
Osterman, 1994) to ‘grow the size of the pie’
• Compatible with other HRM strategies & goals

8. Partnership & co-operation
• Evidence that partnership can deliver gains
• Quantitative and qualitative evidence of benefits
of partnership with unions, and of combining
direct and indirect voice (Johnstone et.al, 2011;
Johnstone, 2014; 2015; 2016)
• For unions: An opportunity (missed?)
• For employers and governments: Unions as
‘lubricant not irritant’ (McCarthy, 1967)
• For workers: Compatible with ‘What workers
want’ from representation (Boxall et.al, 2007)

9. The partnership critique
• Fundamentally contradictory (Kelly; Danford
various dates)
• Possible but rare and very fragile in lightly
regulated LMEs (Dobbins and Dundon, Simms,
Heery various dates)
• Disconnected capitalism: even well-intentioned
employers cannot keep their promises
(Thompson, 2003; 2011)

10. The organising alternative
• Organising: “collective interests of workers&
collective action”
• Limited success without employer support (Simms,
2015)
• “Spiral of mutually hostile activity” (Simms and Heery,
2010).
• Limited appeal to workers (Heery and Simms, 2008)
–Never members
–Apathy
–Individualistic values
–Poor image
–Lack of support for ‘adversarial’ strategies

11. Conclusion
• Evidence suggests partnership can work with appropriate supports in
LMEs (AU, IE, NZ, UK, US etc.)
• Unions as constructive organisations that regulate & even lubricate
workplace relations & make a positive contribution to society
• Partnership is not:
– Easy
– A panacea
– Unitarist
– Universally applicable
– Mutually exclusive
• Need more ambitious regulation of representative voice?
[Institutions?]
• But also actor attitudes, skills & relationships [Culture?]
• Effective representative voice as important as ever and should
be central to public policy & contemporary HRM

12. References
• Freeman, R. B., Boxall, P. F., & Haynes, P. (Eds.). (2007). What workers say: Employee voice in the Anglo-
American workplace. Cornell University Press.
• Kelly, J. (1996) Union militancy and social partnership in Ackers, P. Smith, C. and Smith, P. (Eds) The New
Workplace and Trade Unionism, London: Routledge, 77-109.
• Heery, E. And Simms, M. (2008) Constrains on union organising in the United Kingdom, Industrial Relations
Journal, 39(10, 24-24.
• Heery, E. And Simms, M. (2010) Employer responses to union organising: patterns and effects, Human Resource
Management Journal, 20(1), 3-22.
• Johnstone, S., Wilkinson, A., & Ackers, P. (2011). Applying Budd’s model to partnership. Economic and Industrial
Democracy, 32:2, 307-328.
• Johnstone, S. (2014) Wilkinson, A. Donaghey, J. Dundon, T. and Freeman, R. (Eds) Workplace partnership in
Handbook of Research on Employee Voice, Elgar, Cheltenham.
• Johnstone S. (2015) The case for workplace partnership in Johnstone, S. and Ackers, P. (2015) Finding a Voice at
Work: New Perspectives on Employment Relations, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
• Kochan, T. A. and Osterman, P. (1994). The mutual gains enterprise: Forging a winning partnership among labor,
management, and government. Harvard Business Press.
• McCarthy, W.E.J. The role of shop stewards in British industrial relations. In Royal
• Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations Research Paper No. 1. London: HM Stationery Office,
1967.
• Simms, M. Holgate, J and Heery, M. (2013) Union voices: tensions in UK organising, ILR/Cornell Paperbacks, New
York.
• Sisson, K. (2008) Industrial relations and the employment relationship, Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations.
• Thompson, P. (2003). Disconnected capitalism: or why employers can't keep their side of the bargain. Work,
employment and society, 17(2), 359-378.
• Thompson, P. (2011). The trouble with HRM. Human Resource Management Journal, 21(4), 355-367.