Social partnership and workplace regimes in Ireland

Abstract

ABSTRACTWorkplace partnership has attracted considerable attention from the academic community in recent years, especially in Anglo‐Saxon countries. There has also been considerable debate as to the diffusion of workplace partnership in the Republic of Ireland, notwithstanding strong public policy support over the past decade. There is a good degree of consensus in the literature as to the defining features of partnership, and these are used to identify a series of partnership practices and arrangements that provide the basis for an empirical analysis of the prevalence of partnership in workplaces where unions are recognised and workplaces without union recognition. The article draws on survey data collected from a nationally representative sample of 3,553 employees. Both a descriptive analysis and the use of latent class modelling show that partnership arrangements comprising multiple practices and arrangements are of very limited prevalence in workplaces in Ireland. The pattern is revealed as one of many permutations and combinations in workplaces involving the presence and absence of partnership practices and arrangements, with workplaces combining systematic sets of partnership practices covering small proportions of employees. The evidence of limited diffusion, combined with the growing diversity in employment relations arrangements in Ireland, raises doubts concerning the prospects of workplace partnership.