Competition and the Retreat from Collective Bargaining

William Brown, Alex Bryson and John Forth

Cambridge Working Papers in Economics from Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge

Abstract: For most of the twentieth century, collective bargaining provided the terms on which labour was commonly employed in Britain. However, the quarter century since 1980 has seen the collapse of collectivism as the main way of regulating employment. Our argument is that the tacit settlement between organized labour and employers was undermined by increasing product market competition. The paper first provides an overview of the changing map of collective bargaining, focusing on the private sector. It then moves on to ask why the retreat took place, and to explore the part played by product market competition and, in particular, by the profitability of different industries. The paper concludes with an analysis of the consequences of privatisation.

Keywords: collective bargaining; trade unions; competition; privatisation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D40 J30 J50 L33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2008-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (32)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cam:camdae:0831

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