THE DURABILITY OF ‘DOUBLE-BREASTING’ VOICE IN A MULTINATIONAL ORGANISATION TONY DUNDON
Introduction Employee participation has retained a central role in HRM over the last two decades. It can be seen as a key component of best-practice HRM and highcommitment management leading to improved organisational performance. At the same time there has been a decline in union channels of participation and an increase in NER. The mix of dual union and nonunion voice has also received widespread attention from scholars and researchers. Some view NERs as a form of union-avoidance, that is, a mechanism intent on by-passing unions and removing any demand among employees for a trade union to represent their interests. On the other hand, arguments abound that NERs may function as a complement to union channels that may coexist in tandem. This case study reports on double-breasting in one large multinational organisation, adapted from Cullinane et al. (2012). The company and its context BritCo is a former public utility that was initially privatised in Britain in the 1980s. It is now a multinational organisation with operations in over 170 countries. The case described here is the story of how BritCo entered the Irish market and proceeded to implement a double-breasting strategy for employee participation. BritCo entered the market in the Republic of Ireland through a process of commercial acquisition, which included the purchase of a non-unionised firm. Once established in the market place, BritCo management decided the company should operate on an all-island basis.
This meant merging its operation in Northern Ireland (NI) (highly unionised, centralised and part of the UK management structure) with those in the south (exclusively non-unionised, decentralised and based on newer acquired operations).
The decision to structure BritCo on an all-island basis was not without its difficulties. To begin with, BritCo (NI) has a deep history of collective representation and was a former state monopoly. There are two recognised trade unions in BritCo (NI) with over 90 per cent density, primarily operating through a UK industrial relations system with collective negotiations conducted centrally in London. In contrast, BritCo in the republic is non-union and relations are locally rather than centrally based. The merger of BritCo across the island of Ireland resulted in negative repercussions as some functions moved from the south to the north. Significantly, redundancy caused problems as terms and conditions were much lower in the south than those that had been collectively negotiated for staff in the north. Indeed, no compulsory redundancy agreement exists for unionised staff from BritCo (NI); a legacy that remained post-nationalisation. Because of what appeared to be superior employment conditions for BritCo (NI) employees, a trade union organising campaign was instigated by some workers in BritCo in the south. Unlike UK law, there is no comparable statutory trade union legislation in the Republic of Ireland. In response to the union recognition campaign in the Republic of Ireland, management instigated a double-breasting strategy with union representation in BritCo (NI) and exclusively nonunion participation channels for BritCo in the republic.
Worker participation in BritCo Northern Ireland In Northern Ireland BritCo has a long history and tradition of collective participation through centralised negotiation and joint consultation and two separate trade unions are recognised for these purposes. At the same time, the company has several other direct forms of employee involvement, including staff/team briefings, weekly newsletters from management, regular use of the company’s intranet for communications and an annual company-wide survey. These direct employee participation techniques have increased at BritCo NI in recent years, with the CEO supportive of direct and transparent management communications. The newsletter, for example, provides staff with information on new business developments and how the company is performing. In addition, the intranet provides employees with direct access to a wide range of human resource policies (e.g. pension information and other company procedures, such as discipline). Two recent employee engagement initiatives are also noteworthy. One is a weekly public ‘phone call’ in which all employees can listen in ‘live’ to the CEO talking about business developments. Employees can respond or just listen. Another engagement initiative is an annual ‘engagement survey’, which asks a series of questions about employee satisfaction and commitment on a company-wide basis. The results can then be compared between regions and different business units.
In addition to the above are other indirect collective forms of participation, which have a much longer and deeper history across Northern Ireland operations. There is a company joint consultative committee (JCC), which includes the CEO, several functional heads (such as the HR, IT, Finance, Engineering Directors), local line managers and shop stewards, along with the full-time union official for each of the two unions. At these JCC meetings financial matters and company strategy, as appropriate to NI operations, are considered. Union officials or stewards do not have any input in terms of setting the agenda for the JCC, and typically do not know what issues will be discussed in advance of the annual meeting. However, union reps can and often do raise matters under ‘any other business’.
Other collective mechanisms that occur on a more regular basis include bi-monthly meetings between union stewards and senior managers to discuss any emergent issues of concern to employees. Running alongside the formal JCC and bi-monthly meetings is ‘informal union–management dialogue’, which tends to occur on a more regular albeit ad hoc basis. Issues pertaining to matters such as discipline, sickness or employee grievance representation will often be discussed informally or ‘off the record’ between union reps and managers before matters are progressed through the formal participation mechanisms. While BritCo NI utilises both direct and indirect channels of employee participation at its NI operations, relations have not always been easy or smooth. Indeed, management say they have had to ‘redefine’ the union role so it can add value to the company (as well as its members). Newer roles have included how to deal with changes to work patterns in order to be more flexibly responsible to customer demands. Yet employees report a high degree of trust in management because they know that their union officials can and do call management to account when necessary. Employee voice at BritCo in the Republic of Ireland As in the north, employee participation at BritCo in the republic includes both ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ mechanisms for workers to have a say.
For the most part, direct employee participation converges across both BritCo NI and BritCo in the republic (e.g. company intranet, newsletters, etc.). Regarding indirect employee voice, however, things are very different in the republic with NER mechanisms used instead of union channels. These include, primarily, what is known as ‘BritCo Vocal’: a non-union employee forum covering the whole of the Republic of Ireland. In addition, there is a ‘Southern Works Committee’ (SWC), which is a collective employee council for Dublin-based engineers to deal with issues particular to that work group and location. The NER arrangements at BritCo Republic had been established a couple of years ago in response to European information and consultation regulations. The NER system became inactive because of a lack in managerial support combined with little employee interest. However, the forum was relaunched as BritCo Vocal in response to a union recognition campaign at BritCo in the Republic of Ireland. Employee reps were ‘elected’ when they were previously ‘selected’ by management. Within this, electoral constituencies exist for different business units so the forum represents all occupational groups. Furthermore, employee reps have an input into issues and agenda items, and afforded the opportunity to report back to their employee constituents (using email, intranet messaging and notice boards). The separate SWC emerged at the behest of management because of that group of engineers dominating the agenda of BritCo Vocal, and because management wanted to isolate what they saw as a potentially militant and union supportive group of workers. In short, the SWC marginalised union sympathisers from the rest of the non-union workforce across Britco in the south. While the existence of formal NER structures is important, it is necessary to assess the scope and depth of such employee participation in terms of the matters available for consultation.
Perhaps the most immediate and significant issue was that of inferior redundancy conditions for employees in the republic compared to those offered to workers in Northern Ireland. The discrepancy may be explained by long-established union agreement in the north that was not available to employees in the south. In response, management used the BritCo Vocal forum to review the situation and allow non-union employee reps considerable scope in redrafting the redundancy arrangements. The outcome was a revised policy handbook that incorporated key elements of the Northern Ireland redundancy scheme in the republic. While managers and employees were initially satisfied with BritCo Vocal, and the amount of say employee reps had in changing policy and practice, over time things started to feel very different. Employee reps on the Vocal committee felt that once management attempted to resolve an issue, interest waned. In particular, management appeared to offer greater support and enthusiasm for the Vocal forum when the union organising campaign was at its peak.
Consequently, some employee reps lost interest and dropped out of participating in BritCo Vocal forum meetings when management support waned. The way the SWC operated in practice was very similar. While it was initially active and dealt with concerns about performance management and the use of company vehicles for specific engineers at the Dublin South facility, activity diminished after about two years and when the union-organising campaign failed to secure recognition rights for workers in the republic, employee reps felt that issues had declined in importance and management allowed minor, or what they called ‘tea and toilet roll issues’, to be dealt with at SWC meetings. Summary: the durability of doublebreasting employee participation Employee participation in large, complex and multinational and global organisations such as BritCo are far from straightforward. The strategy for employees to have a say across the different sites and jurisdictions of BritCo Northern Ireland and BritCo Republic has been uneven and at times contradictory. With a new CEO and a belief in a culture of engagement and voice, direct employee mechanisms started to have a stronger and deeper hold. Yet, at the same time, union channels of voice were supported and tolerated in the north, but actively discouraged in the republic. To some extent this was because management could get away with such a strategy because of different employee participation regulations. Indeed, there is no comparative union recognition legislation in the south to that in the north. Likewise, both Irish and UK governments adopted a minimalist interpretation of European regulations for employee information and consultation that effectively downgraded collective voice in favour of direct involvement channels. Doublebreasting employee participation at BritCo suited a managerial agenda of seeking to redefine (diminish) the trade union role for participation. How durable and extensive such a double-breasting strategy will be in the long run is of course a matter of some debate.
Questions
1 In the BritCo case, to what extent would you say that NER forms of employee representation are deep or shallow?
2 Does a strategy of double-breasting (union and non-union) participation serve managerial or worker interests?
3 Imagine you have been asked for your professional advice and opinion from the BritCo Ireland Board of Directors. They would like you to make a short presentation about the feasibility of a strategy of doublebreasting voice in which one or two plants are unionised, and other sites have exclusive non-union employee participation mechanisms. What would you include in the presentation and why?
4 Given what has been described at BritCo, should trade unions be worried about the introduction of employee information and consultation regulations?
5 What implications are there from the BritCo case for the meaning of employee participation?
