Trade Unions and Family-Friendly Policies in Britain

This paper uses linked data on over 1,500 workplaces and 20,000 individuals from the 1998 British Workplace Employee Relations Survey to analyze the relationship between labor unions and the availability of six employer-provided family-friendly policies. Unions appear to help with workfamily issues by increasing the availability of parental leave and job sharing options through a combination of negotiating for additional benefits and providing better information about existing policies. There is also a negative association between union membership and the availability of working at home options and, for parents of young children, child care subsidies. The authors acknowledge the Department of Trade and Industry, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, and the Policy Studies Institute as the originators of the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey data, and the Data Archive at the University of Essex as the distributor of the data. None of these organizations bear any responsibility for the authors’ analysis and interpretation of the data. This paper was partially completed whilst Karen Mumford was a visitor at the Economics Program, RSSS, Australian National University. Their hospitality is gratefully acknowledged. 1 In the United States, Great Britain, and many other countries, work-family concerns are an important public policy issue and trade unions have been suggested as a potential vehicle for improving the workplace provision of family-friendly policies (Bailyn, Drago, and Kochan, 2001; Cowell, 1993; Gerstel and Clawson, 2000; Grundy, Bell, and Firestein, 1999). While unions can lobby for legislative changes and help employees exercise existing legal rights, the focal role of U.S. and British unions is to negotiate specific workplace terms and conditions of employment. This paper uses the British Workplace Employee Relations Survey 1998 (WERS98) to analyze the extent to which unions are associated with the availability of workplace family-friendly policies. The research concentrating on unions and work-family concerns is not extensive. Gerstel and Clawson (2000) document diverse union leader views on a range of work-family issues and explore why some unions have been more successful than others in negotiating family-responsive benefits. Budd and Brey (2000) analyze the impact of unions on the effectiveness of the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act. Much of the remaining work on unions and work-life balance are advocacy and educational pieces such as Grundy, Bell, and Firestein (1999) and Schwartz (1996). Several studies analyze the relationship between organizational characteristics and employerprovided family-friendly benefits (Bardoel et al., 1999; Deitch and Huffman, 2001; Forth et al., 1997; Glass and Fujimoto, 1995; Guthrie and Ross, 1999; Kelly and Dobbin, 1999; Osterman, 1995). The results for unionization are mixed. In studies of U.S. organizations, Guthrie and Ross (1999) and Kelly and Dobbin (1999) do not estimate significant effects of labor unions on maternity leave programs while Deitch and Huffman (2001) and Osterman (1995) similarly find no relationship between unionization and a broader array of family-friendly benefits. In contrast, in a sample of pregnant women, Glass and Fujimoto (1995) conclude that union status is one of the strongest 2 predictors of family-friendly benefits – though not always in a positive direction. Bardoel et al. (1999) find that unions are positively associated with leave options, but not other family-friendly policies such as flexible work options or child care in Australia. In none of this research, however, is unionism the focus of the analysis. The present research uses the WERS98 to estimate the relationship between trade unions in Great Britain and the presence of six employer-provided family-friendly policies: parental leave, paid leave, subsidized child care, flexible working time, working at home, and job sharing. Unlike the previous empirical research, we are able to analyze both establishment and individual measures of family-friendly policies and we are able to exploit information on the characteristics of more than 20,000 individual employees matched to information about their workplaces. In addition to extending the important work-life balance literature, this research also contributes to our understanding of what unions do (Freeman and Medoff, 1984). Freeman (1981), Freeman and Medoff (1984), and others have documented that individuals represented by a trade union are more likely to receive traditional fringe benefits such as health insurance and retirement plans. As the nature of employer-provider benefits becomes more diverse, it is instructive to analyze whether the earlier results of unions increasing the likelihood of fringe benefits coverage continues to be accurate. Family-Friendly Practices In the postwar period, work policies and benefits were often shaped by the norms of the “ideal” worker who worked full-time and left unpaid household work to someone else (Williams, 2000). Consequently, family-friendly corporate policies can be divided into two categories (Bailyn,