TRADE-UNION CONGRESS POLICY TOWARDS UNION MERGERS - A STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS, 1960-83

This letter extends Elgar and Simpson's (1994) analysis on the working of the Bridlington Principles to the analysis of the working of TUC v oluntary policy with respect to mergers among affiliated unions over t he period 1960-83. Univariate analysis is applied to microdata to inve stigate the effectiveness of voluntary policy on mergers with respect both to the implementation and to the achievement of the underlying ob jectives of the policy. The results of the tests clearly show the achi evement of the implementation of the policy in terms of when and how m ergers occurred and the achievement of the policy objective of rationa lizing the structure of affiliated unions; the results of the tests ab out the achievement of the policy objective of reducing competition fo r membership among affiliated unions are less conclusive. The results of our analysis on mergers broadly confirm Edgar and Simpson's results about the effectiveness of TUC voluntary policies.