The Survival of National Bargaining in the Electrical Contracting Industry: A Deviant Case?

One seemingly incontestable fact about British industrial relations over the last quarter century is the decentralisation of private sector collective bargaining from multi-employer level to the level of the enterprise, division, or plant. This article explores what is often seen to be a deviant case, namely the electrical contracting industry, where multi-employer national bargaining is claimed to have remained strong. This resilience would seem to be despite the fact that, on a priori grounds, given industrial structure and work organisation, multi-employer bargaining would seem unlikely in this industry. The first part of the paper briefly outlines the wider context of collective bargaining trends in British industry. In the second section, the development of collective bargaining arrangements in electrical contracting is outlined. The third section then investigates recent developments and the degree to which arrangements in the industry have deviated from the rest of the private sector. In the final section explanations are offered and implications are explored. The industry's bargaining arrangements are seen as having some positive outcomes in terms of the regulation of self-employment, employee benefits, and training.