Have labour-management partnership agreements been successful?

Abstract

The aim of the labour-management partnership prevailing in some European countries, such as the United Kingdom, is to enhance cooperation between employers and trade unions to get a win-win outcome, sifting away from adversarialism to relations imbedded with reciprocity, trust, cooperation and mutuality. Although labour-management cooperation has been promoted, a wide range of disputes have been generated because some people believe that partnership agreements undermine the unionism more deeply and these agreements prioritize employer benefits without equal gains for employees. This article explains the reasons behind the negative evaluations of partnership. It starts with the unachieved outcomes of partnership, pointing out the unfulfilled promises and unbalanced adoption and survival rates. The second part puts emphasis on the unsuccessful reasons from both ends of the parties. The final section proposes some critics about how to measure the ‘success’ in partnership agreements and sums up the main conclusions.