Workplace Mediation and UK Trade Unions: The Missing Link?

Abstract

Dealing with individual union members’ problems at work is one of British trade union representatives’ core activities (van Wanrooy et al. 2013; Charlwood and Angrave 2014). This important but unglamorous work has commanded less attention from scholars in the field of UK employment relations than the collective activities of union officials. Of course, no dispute involving an individual worker can be completely divorced from the context of the employment relationship, and employers’ processes to manage individuals’ disputes (such as grievance procedures and mediation) can be seen as devices to individualize conflict and ‘de-fang’ its potential to invoke collective resistance. In practice, union representatives appreciate that most people join unions for support and help if they have a problem at work and new recruits bring added demands for one-to-one assistance. From this perspective, it can be mutually beneficial to cooperate with employers’ moves to manage workplace conflict more effectively or at least improve the efficiency of their dispute resolution procedures. This chapter discusses the response of UK unions to the adoption of workplace mediation by employers. It draws on the results of a survey of UK trade union representatives, Dealing with Individual Union Members’ Disputes at the Workplace, undertaken by the author in 2014. The findings cast light on UK union representatives’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, workplace mediation – a subject that has not been previously explored in depth. In addition to the survey, the author’s study comprises interviews with national officials from a range of unions that have representation in sectors where workplace mediation is used and case studies of a small number of ‘high user’ unions.