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THE DEMOCRATIC ASPECTS OF TRADE UNION
RECOGNITION
The long ascendancy of pluralism and ‘collective laissez-faire’ as a guiding
ideology of British labour law was emphatically shattered by the New Right
ideology of Thatcher and Major. When New Labour was finally returned to
power in 1997, it did not, however, attempt to resurrect the pre-Thatcher
preference for pluralist non-intervention in collective industrial relations. Instead,
it purported to follow a ‘Third Way’. A centrepiece of this new approach was the
statutory recognition provision, introduced in Schedule A1 Trade Union and
Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992. By breaking with the tradition of
voluntarism in respect of recognition of trade unions, New Labour sought to
provide a model of collective labour law which combined legal support with
control through juridification. A closer study of both the history of approaches to
recognition and the current provisions opens up fundamental questions as to the
nature of this new model and the ones it aimed to replace.
This book uses political philosophy to elucidate the character of those
historical approaches and the nature of the ‘Third Way’ itself in relation to
statutory union recognition. In particular, it traces the progressive eclipse of civic
republican values in labour law, in preference for a liberal political philosophy.
The book articulates and defends a civic republican philosophy in terms of
freedom as non-domination, the intrinsic value of democratic participation
through deliberative democracy, and community. This can be contrasted with the
rights-based individualism and State neutrality characteristic of the liberal
approach. Despite the promise of civic community in the ‘Third Way’ rhetoric,
this book demonstrates that the reality of New Labour’s experiment in union
recognition was an emphatic reassertion of liberalism in the sphere of workers’
collective rights. This is the first monograph to offer a sustained critical analysis
of legal approaches to trade union recognition. It will be of particular interest to
labour lawyers, but also a wider audience of scholars in political philosophy and
industrial relations.
The Democratic Aspects
of Trade Union
Recognition
Alan Bogg
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© Alan Bogg 2009
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identified as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data Available
ISBN: 978-1-84113-790-2
Typeset by Columns Design Ltd, Reading
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
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