The influence of ‘soft’ fair work regulation on union recovery : a case of re-recognition in the Scottish voluntary social care sector
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Date
13/05/2022Metadata
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Abstract
This longitudinal case study contributes to debates concerning how 'soft' and 'hard' forms of regulation can interact to contribute to the advancement of worker rights. More specifically, the article explores the contribution of Scotland's soft fair work (FW) programme and the UK's hard statutory recognition procedure to union re-recognition in a voluntary sector social care provider. In combination, hard and soft regulations are found to have added breadth to the pressures for re-recognition exerted by the union, bringing reputational and financial costs associated with derecognition to the employer. Concerns nevertheless arose regarding the depth of impact from this interaction due to union compromises on key issues in the final recognition agreement. Due to the specific public service context of the study, doubts are also expressed regarding the potential for unions in other hard to organise sectors to achieve similar outcomes.
Citation
Cunningham , I , James , P & Baluch , A 2022 , ' The influence of ‘soft’ fair work regulation on union recovery : a case of re-recognition in the Scottish voluntary social care sector ' , Industrial Relations Journal , vol. 53 , no. 3 , pp. 261-277 . https://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12362
Publication
Industrial Relations Journal
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0019-8692Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Industrial Relations Journal published by Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
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