The employment contract: From collective procedures to individual rights

The article analyses the institutional basis and form of the employment contract in Britain using the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey. It assesses the extent to which collective bargaining still regulates pay and non-pay aspects of employment. While collective procedures have declined in importance, there has been an increase in legal governance of the employment relationship. Logistic regression analysis establishes that both contractual formalization and legal compliance are greater in larger organizations and where trade unions are present. Trade union activity is also associated with superior fringe benefits. Collective bargaining thus appears to facilitate both access to and improvement on statutory rights.