Since 1990 there has been a series of union amalgamations among Britain's public-sector unions. This study examines three amalgamations and one aborted amalgamation. Each was initiated by union leaders reacting to government-sponsored reforms of the public sector, and all involved unions with either defensive or consolidatory merger motivations. The complex negotiations are presented as resolving issues of political, democratic and administrative concerns. It is argued that the balance of power on critical constitutional issues lay with the leaders of the consolidatory unions, particularly the dominant activist groups within such unions. As a consequence, success in amalgamation negotiations lay in satisfying such group's interests in sustaining the existing political ethos and democratic system, while securing agreement on the desired administrative reforms.
Union mergers in Britain are dominated numerically by transfers of engagements from minor unions to major unions. Just five major or acquiring unions were responsible for absorbing 79% of all transfers to TUC affiliated unions between 1978 and 1994. This study establishes the extent of this domination, examines the characteristics of the five unions' aggressive merger policies and considers the consequences of the findings for theories of union mergers. Willman (1996: 336) noted in examining unions' propensity to merge and merger success that more unions seek mergers than actually achieve them. Success is concentrated among a minority of unions and often comes years after the negotiations begin.The minority of unions referred to above include a small number of relatively large unions expert at negotiating and concluding incoming transfers of much smaller unions. These 'absorptions' (Chaison, 1996: 5) were particularly encouraged in Britain by the Trade Union (Amalgamations etc.) Act 1964. This simplified the previous merger process by enabling a union to transfer engagements to another union by securing a simple majority of those voting in favour of the proposed transfer. In contrast amalgamations are more complex in terms of both the negotiations and the resulting agreement. They frequently involve unions of a similar size and status, and all the amalgamating unions are required to secure a simple majority of those voting in favour of the new union. This article is mainly concerned with transfers.The transfers examined below constituted a very significant part of what Waddington (1995) referred to as a continuing merger wave, originating in 1946. As discussed elsewhere (Undy 1996;Waddington, 1997), somewhat differing explanations of the primary causes of the recent merger wave (Waddington, ibid.) or merger movement (Undy, ibid.) are on offer. In brief, the merger wave hypothesis tends to stress exter-
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