A Final Appraisal of ‘Bridlington’? An Evaluation of TUC Disputes Committee Decisions 1974–1991
: This paper reviews decisions of TUC Disputes Committees from 1974 to 1991. It considers whether the rather different conclusions of studies of earlier periods are still valid and assesses the effectiveness of ‘Bridlington’ in resolving disputes over new issues, in particular ‘single-union deals’. It concludes that there is still a role for a voluntary disputes resolution mechanism of this kind, although recent experience has shown that it has its [imitations. TUC-affiliated unions will therefore lose a useful mechanism for promoting the efficient use of their resources if the 1993 change in the law leads to Bridlington being abandoned.
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 voluntary policy with respect to mergers among affiliated unions over the period 1960-83. Univariate analysis is applied to microdata to investigate the effectiveness of voluntary policy on mergers with respect both to the implementation and to the achievement of the underlying objectives of the policy. The results of the tests clearly show the achievement of the implementation of the policy in terms of when and how mergers occurred and the achievement of the policy objective of rationalizing the structure of affiliated unions; the results of the tests about the achievement of the policy objective of reducing competition for 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.
Final Offer Arbitration: Better Theory Than Practice
Summary 
The theory of final offer arbitration promises more than its actual performance delivers, based on admittedly limited experience. There is no showing that fewer negotiations reach impasse than would occur under conventional arbitration. There is evidence, however, that final offer arbitration does tend to produce awards less equitable than warranted by the positions and strengths of the parties, particularly when there are multiple issues at impasse and when arbitrators may select only one overall package or another. This tendency is built-in to the process, since the whole point of final offer arbitration is deterrence, with little or no concern for getting a good settlement through arbitration. 
 
“Bad” awards cannot fail to generate irritation and to have a corrosive effect on responsible contract administration. It is possible that such awards, and their effects, will be accepted as the necessary price of a final offer selection system. What seems more likely, however, is that the system will be modified along the lines of those in Eugene and Michigan. Those modifications can be expected to have two effects. First, they will make it more likely that the parties will be able to reach their own agreement by encouraging mediation and further negotiations, even after arbitration has been invoked. Second, they will increase the possibility of an acceptable arbitrated settlement by allowing the arbitrator greater flexibility in making an award. By doing these things, however, the deterrent effect of final offer selection will be substantially weakened, and what will be left will be a useful form of mediation-arbitration but not a substitute for the strike which contains an equivalent incentive to negotiate.