Automatic Certification or Mandatory Representation Votes? How the Choice of Union Recognition Procedure Affects Union Certification Success

Union recognition procedures are about to be reformed in the UK. Current legislative reform proposes automatic certification. Business prefers mandatory representation votes. Will the choice of union recognition procedure affect certification success? This paper provides empirical evidence on the impact of the choice of recognition procedure on certification success. Cross-section time-series analysis of nine Canadian jurisdictions over nineteen years is used to identify the effect of mandatory votes/ automatic certification on certification success. The results indicate that mandatory votes reduce certification success rates by 6 to 9 percentage points below what they would have been under automatic certification. This result is robust and significant at the 99 per cent level.