This article assesses the contents of the majority of employer-union partnership agreements signed in Britain from 1990 to 2007. Few agreements contain the expected partnership principles and most express modest overall aims and limited ambition. Typical agreements are substantively hollow with...

Drawing on a matched sample of pairs of Union Learning Representatives (ULRs) and managers in 90 workplaces, this article evaluates managers’ views of the impact of ULRs on training and compares these views with those of ULRs themselves. Although managers are less positive than are ULRs about...

Analysing data from the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey we establish the extent to which levels of training activity in Britain are lower in SMEs than in larger firms.The antecedents of training activity within the SME sector are examined in terms of the workplace characteristics that...

In this article we identify four distinct types of union responses to workplace restructuring on the basis of different combinations of ideological orientations and actions in collective bargaining. Four union branches are described, each making one of these different types of response when...

This article assesses the adoption and survival of labour-management partnership agreements in Britain. In contrast to predictions that British employers will avoid partnership agreements, significantly more agreements have been signed than expected with 248 partnership agreements signed between...

This article provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between unionization and the adoption of equal opportunities (EO) policies and practices in British workplaces, using data from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey. The results demonstrate an association between union...

This article reports on a study of shopfloor `coping' behaviour in an engineering company which had launched a major `World Class Manufacturing' (WCM) initiative. The article unpacks the meaning of WCM and shows how its impact varied markedly between different manufacturing cells. More...