Research Note: Trade Unions, Conflict, and the Nature of Work in Residential Service Organizations

Abstract

Conflicts involving trade unions in fourteen small residential service organizations (RSOs)—children's homes, old peoples' homes, and probation hostels—in a western county in England over a 20-month period are studied via a grounded theory methodology. Results indicate that (1) multiple and competing unions stimulate intraworker conflict and complicate labour-management relations; (2) unions representing RSO workers are pragmatic and work-conditions oriented in their collective bargaining activities; and (3) unions' efforts to negotiate the 'nature of work' for their members are based on the 'ideology of service' which pervades British society and views persons dependent on the state for 'basic human needs' as 'deserving' to have those needs met. This 'service ideology' is both exploited by the unions to define workers' jobs and used by management and society to prevent organized RSO workers from employing the 'strike' as a collective bargaining option. Union efforts to negotiate work in RSOs are viewed as dialogues regarding not only workers' rights but the nature and rights of the residents themselves. Additional research is called for on the role of trade unions in organizations in which the 'object' of work consists of fellow human beings.