Partnership and the Politics of Trade Union Policy Formation in the UK: The Case of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union

Abstract

The central objective of the chapter is to challenge what we consider to be the binaristic nature of recent debates around social partnership in the UK, particularly the argument that trade unions have clear strategic choices facing them in terms of ‘moderation’ or ‘militancy’ (see Ackers, 2002; Kelly, 1996, 1998). As Roche and Geary (2002) note, this debate can be broken down into two camps: advocates and critics. The former, such as Ackers and Payne (1998), argue that partnership offers trade unions an historical oppor-tunity to come ‘out of the cold’, play a leading role in corporate decision-making processes and gain ‘broader social legitimacy’. At a tactical level, this presupposes that trade unions have no choice but to engage with the partnership agenda because ‘both management and government, and indirectly customers, are highly intolerant of union behaviour that does not “add value” to the organisation’ (see Ackers et al., 2004). This line of analysis is disputed by a wide range of critics (Kelly, 1996, 2001, 2004; Martinez Lucio and Stuart, 2004; Richardson et al., 2004; Stuart and Martinez Lucio, 2002; Wray, 2004).¹ They question the degree of independence afforded trade unions within the (essentially managerial) partnership agenda, the absence of institutional preconditions for effective delivery of partnership and ultimately the extent of mutual gains derived from engagement with partnership. To date, however, most analysis has considered the effects of