Opting Out of Pay Devolution? The Prospects for Local Pay Bargaining in UK Public Services

Throughout the 1980s, government ministers strongly advocated the decentralization of pay determination in the public services. Despite this exhortation, by the end of the decade rates of pay and salary structures were rarely determined at workplace level. This paper explores the resilience of national pay determination and considers whether it will survive the radical restructuring of public services initiated in the last few years. The analysis focuses mainly on the health and education services, arguing that distinctive organizational, occupational and political characteristics of the services still constrain the devolution of pay bargaining. In the face of tight budgets and the recent introduction of pay restraint, service managers have sought to make paybill savings through unilateral changes in work organization rather than through devolved collective bargaining.