One of the key functions of trade unions is to engage with employers or groups of employers to regulate terms and conditions of employment by collective bargaining. In the United Kingdom, the state historically played a key role in promoting and sustaining collective bargaining procedures on a sector-wide basis. There has since been a decentralization of collective bargaining activity to enterprise level, a process encouraged by the state, giving employers more control and flexibility over working conditions. This chapter examines the statutory procedures that were introduced in 1999 to support trade unions seeking to establish collective bargaining arrangements at enterprise level, and considers the statutory rights which exist to support collective bargaining, whether secured by voluntary or statutory means. Addressing specifically employer union-avoidance techniques, the analysis concludes by assessing the marginal impact of the law in practice, and considers proposals for reform.

Because of the virtual demise of firm centered collective bargaining, many labor partisans have rediscovered a form of wage determination originating in the Progressive Era. Sectoral bargaining encompasses an effort to win better conditions in an entire occupation or industry. Instead of a collective bargaining contract, standard-setting laws or codes are enacted, either by the legislature or a state board that sets wages and working conditions once all the stakeholders have had their say. Just as civil rights laws apply to all US workplaces regardless of the attitude of workers or employers, so too would a wage board promulgate a set of work standards that are equally universal, at least within the industry and region over which the board has jurisdiction.