Portsmouth Business School

Thesis summary

The focal point of my research is an analysis of how trade union rights have been weakened in recent decades through a combination of legislative controls and HRM management techniques. This has been significantly underpinned by judicial interventions since the 1960s, which have used characterisations of trade unions and industrial action that were developed during the nineteenth century. Essentially common law concepts and principles have been used to depict industrial action in the worst possible light and to castigate the traditional system of giving trade union rights through statutory immunities as privileges to break the law. I have called this process the legal mystification of industrial relations.

My research is based on a critical legal perspective which argues that there is an inherent imbalance of power between capital and labour that operates to the benefit of the former. Effective trade unions rights are indispensable if this imbalance of power is to be redressed to any significant extent.

This research has used a combination of historical, comparative legal and socio-legal methodologies. The latter has involved four empirical studies concerned with trade union behaviour, the impact of HRM techniques - in particular trade union derecognition and the introduction of personal contracts and the effectiveness at workplace level of individual and collective rights to representation and consultation.

My central contentions have been that the British system of immunities should be replaced with a system of positive rights, and this system should constitute a synthesis of individual rights, rights to collective consultation and collective bargaining and rights to trade unions and their members to organise and participate in effective industrial action.

This research has formed part of my entry to the 1996, 2001 and 2008 Research Assessment Exercises and has sought to influence policy-making through my involvement with the Institute of Employment Rights.