Using nationally representative workplace surveys we examine the relationship between unionization and workplace financial performance in Britain and France. We find that union bargaining is detrimental to workplace performance in both countries. However, in Britain the effect is confined to the declining proportion of unionized workplaces where there is active collective bargaining. In the French case, the effect is confined to the minority of cases where unions have high density and where unions have a reputation for militancy.

We analyse the continued decline of trade unions and examine the possible implications for workers, employers, and unions themselves.

In this chapter we explore how employees' experiences of, and attitudes to, work have changed over more than a quarter century. In an earlier evaluation, published in the mid-1990s, Bryson and McKay concluded that the quality of working life had deteriorated between the early 1980s and early 1990s: a period which not only encompassed the economic and policy upheavals noted above, but also the deep recession of 1990/91.