Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations

Citation

Clare Mumford (2016), "Finding a Voice at Work? New Perspectives on Employment Relations", Personnel Review, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 450-452. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-12-2015-0329

Voice, as the editors of this new book acknowledge, is a much debated term. One of the first tasks in reading the book therefore was to work out exactly how the term was being used. The editors open their introductory Chapter 1 with the question: “How much “say” should employees have in the running of business organizations and what form should this “voice” take?”, thus suggesting a broad-brush approach to the term that is also reflected in the book’s title. However, quite quickly the really interesting reference point becomes more specific: the decline of trade union membership and collective bargaining, centred on the UK and the European Union (EU). One of the key thematic questions that emerges upon reading is: what happens next for unions? Do they disappear as structures for representative participation, or somehow regain vigour and relevance? The changing role for trade unions emerges therefore as the underlying focus for the debate to which this book contributes in a significant way.

The book’s 13 chapters are written by different authors, and cover both conceptual and empirical material. After the editors’ introductory chapter, the discussions are arranged in four parts, which I describe in turn below.

Part 1 covers “Key Concepts” and includes three chapters. Heery’s chapter uses Fox’s 1966 “frames of reference” as the analytical reference point to discuss how competing unitary, pluralistic or critical interpretations of the employment relationship lead to different conceptualisations and evaluations of worker participation. Guest’s chapter teases out the relationship between voice and the currently fashionable concept of employee engagement. Greene’s chapter considers voice in relation to diversity – the “what”, “who” and “how” of employee voice – and explores how appropriate voice mechanisms for diversity might be developed.

Part 2 is entitled “Union Voice – Competing Strategies”, and contains three chapters which cover possible futures for trade unionism. Acker’s chapter suggests that one means of regeneration may be to concentrate on occupational identity rather than radical associations with socialist political ideologies. Simms’ and Johnstone’s chapters are interesting to read together, since they both cover partnership approaches in the private sector. Simms offers an analysis of why partnership approaches may not work as a way of renewing and strengthening union voice due to the phenomenon of financialized “disconnected capitalism”, while Johnstone provides a more optimistic reading of the potential for partnership and explores the conditions under which this approach might work.

The third part, “European Models and Varieties of Capitalism”, focuses on issues connected to the nation state, devolved government and the EU. Samuel and Bacon discuss the potential for voice in social partnerships during political devolution in Scotland and Wales, using a comparative illustration of National Health Service health care governance. Gold and Artus describe the national system of employee participation in Germany, and compare work council and union structures and processes. Timming and Whittall’s chapter takes stock of the impact of the EU Directive that established European Work Councils as a vehicle for statutory employee voice. The theme of trans-border influences and international solidarity that they introduce is picked up in the next chapter by Dobbins and Dundon in relation to the implementation of the EU’s Information and Consultation Directive in the liberal market economy of the UK.

Part 4, Looking Ahead, contains two chapters. Hyman’s chapter provides an analysis which “imagines” trade union responses to the post-industrial democratic era, in which financialization and globalization have wreaked democratic havoc at a national scale. Finally Kaufman builds a predictive model of voice in the USA which brings together organizational behaviour/HRM approaches (including non-union voice) with labour relations approaches to voice.

While Parts 2 and 3 work well, overall I found myself wanting Parts 1 and 4 to be expanded, to provide some additional socio-economic analysis to the excellent political structural detail. I would have loved to have read more on how voice and worker participation might be re-imagined in the twenty-first century in relation to shifting employment practices and new forms of disconnected, individualized, “precariat” (Standing, 2011) working relationships – such as zero-hour contracts in the UK, or outsourcing, or global supply chains (aspects that are alluded to in particular in Hyman’s chapter). Passing references in chapters such as Greene’s, to the implications of non-standard working practices for participation, and to the potential for social media and new technologies to expand voice opportunities, could have merited further elaboration within Part 4. What the book underplays therefore are, first, alternative, non-union (and both more unitary and more radical) forms of voice and participation – forms which could have illustrated helpfully the discussion in Heery’s chapter – and, second, emergent new forms of employment relations in which future debates about employee voice might need to be reshaped. Instead, the book’s discussion remains predominantly on the conventional political structures and processes of union involvement, rather than on reformulating more philosophically challenging questions about voice per se.

Having expressed this personal disappointment about the book’s coverage, it nevertheless does provide an excellent update on existing union relations in the UK and some thoughts on where these might be headed. The analysis is detailed and clear, and there are nice thematic links and relationships between the chapters. The competing unitary/pluralist, organizing/partnership analytic perspectives are developed to good effect through the chapters, as is the discussion about voice in relation to Hall and Soskice’s “varieties of capitalism”. This overlap across the chapters, and the different viewpoints expressed in them, is useful for stimulating thought. The writing style should be relatively easy for students to digest, and certainly some of the chapters would be ideal for undergraduate teaching material. On this basis, the book would be an excellent library resource for those researching, teaching or learning about employment relations and voice.