Is Individual Employment Law Displacing the Role of Trade Unions?

Abstract

Trade unions have experienced significant turbulence over the past three decades. In the UK and Ireland, a key change has been a substantial increase in the individual rights-based employment legislation, raising important questions about its impact on trade unions. Based on a survey and interviews with union officials in Ireland, we examine whether individual employment law acts to undermine or enhance the role of trade unions and whether trade union officials use employment law to achieve change in the workplace and to mobilise workers. We find that while unions believe in the superiority of collective bargaining to pursue individual rights, and consider the law as having an individualising effect, they also recognise its benefits in the current environment. Given the legal restrictions on collective action in individual disputes, union officials believe that employment law can be used to support and protect vulnerable groups of workers. The increasing resort to individual employment rights in Ireland is contrasted with an alternative system in Sweden which has a strong collectivist ethos. We conclude that the dilemmas faced by unions regarding the pursuit of rights are symptoms of Ireland's weak statutory framework.