Privatisation and industrial relations in British shipbuilding

The causes of the 1993 strike by 1300 workers at Yarrow Shipbuilders are examined. A managerial offensive, which included a restructuring of the labour process, was instigated by the Thatcher government's privatisation of the shipbuilding industry. Drawing on shop stewards' committee minute books, particular emphasis is given to the trade union response to management's confrontationalist approach.     

Industrial relations and the European Community*

The affairs of the European Community reached a major crossroads at the December 1991 summit in Maastricht. This article reviews the attempts of the Community to match the development of the internal market with a social dimension.     

British and French shipbuilding: the industrial relations of decline

The merchant shipbuilding industry in Western Europe has been unable to withstand the pressure of overwhelming international competition. This article examines and contrasts the varying consequences of decline for the British and French industries.     

Human resource management and industrial relations in European companies

The paper explores the different patterns of labour relations in European companies. It is based on comparative research carried out in fifteen companies in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain. ^{1 1}This paper is based on a comparative research study conducted in 1991 in fififteen industrial companies in Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain and Spain. The research team consisted of Paolo Perulli and Ida Regalia (Italy), Alain Lipietz (France), Bruno Cattero (Germany), Paul Marignson (Great Britain) and Fausto Miguelez (Spain). In each country, three case studies were made of companies in thse chemical, food-procesing and engineering industries. Interviews were conducted with the company management as well as with workers' representatives and trade unionists. Of course, this methodology does not allow us to gen eralize our findings, even less to compare national or sectoral patterns. What it does allow us to do, however, is, first, to sugest hypotheses on common trends and major differnces by using the cases studied as anecdotal evidence; second, it allows us to show how apparently similar patterns of personnel management and of labour relations display different features im different cases; third, it enables us to see whether some of these features are systematically asociateed with other variables. View all notesIn each country, three companies in the chemical, food-processing and engineering industries have been studied, through interviews with the company management as well as with workers' representatives.

The starting point is the observation that employers' policies of Jabour relations are today more differentiated than in the recent past: while many employers tend to involve unions in the re-organization of work, have frequent meetings with them and grant them full recognition, others pursue more unilateral paths to industrial adjustment and others still adopt a mixed policy of union involvement on some issues or for some categories of workers and of individual bargaining on others.

An analysis of the major differences among the companies studied is then developed by illustrating three types of choices that managers have to make. The first concerns the extension of the involvement of workers' representatives in decisions. The second has to do with the use of direct relationships with individual workers, as an attempt to bypass the unions or simply as a new method to increase the overall information and communication. The third alternative regards the degree of homogeneity in the management of human resources, in which some rules and advantages may apply to either the whole labour force or some professional (and possibly age or gender) groups only.

In the final section, some possible determinants of the differences in employers' strategies of labour regulation between firms and countries are examined. Special attention is paid to two institutional factors: the role of legal rights to information, consultation and negotiation in different national contexts, and the type of workers' representatives which are present in the companies.     

Trends and developments in east central European industrial relations

This article overviews developments in industrial relations in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland since the fall of the communist regimes in 1989, and assesses the extent to which key developments in these countries reflect both change and continuity from the communist period. We explore the four main institutions through which industrial relations have been conducted: trades unions, workers’ councils, employer organisations, and the tripartite arrangements involving representatives of unions and employers with the state.     

Ownership nationality and industrial relations practices in British non-manufacturing industries

This article reports that foreign-owned plants in non-manufacturing in Britain display the same personnel management style as those in manufacturing with a greater commitment of resources to personnel management, more systemic labour deployment and higher pay levels than their British counterparts.     

The study of management in British industrial relations *

In this article the author gives a general overview of the study of management in industrial relations and examines the assumptions underlying the increased attention being given to management by industrial relations specialists.     

European industrial relations in 1999: chronicle of events

This article chronicles industrial relations developments throughout the European Union (EU) during 1999. The information is gleaned from articles published by the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO). The text therefore contains numerical references to records contained in the EIRO database in order to allow the reader easy access to the relevant records. The article is divided into five sections. The first contains an overview of political, economic and legislative events at EU‐level, the second looks at EU‐level developments in employee representation, the third looks at the impact of European economic and monetary union (EMU) on industrial relations and collective bargaining and the fourth and fifth give a more detailed country‐by‐country analysis of main trends in key industrial relations areas—collective bargaining and industrial action; and employment creation, working time and new forms of work.     

European Union enlargement and the foreign direct investment channel of industrial relations transfer

Inward investment by multinational companies represents a vital channel for entrenching the company‐level industrial relations dimension of Europe's social model in the post‐socialist New Member States. Surveying a wide range of existing analysis and evidence, this article concludes that the prospects for diffusion through inward investment are highly contingent. The motive for inward investment, factor composition, host country institutions and the existence of transnational industrial relations structures are all found to be influential contingencies, but not country‐of‐origin or mode of entry.     

Workplace industrial relations in British Rail: change and continuity in the 1980s

This article compares the findings of a recent survey of workplace industrial relations in British Rail with those from one conducted in 1980. It is suggested that the changes observed may be unintended consequences of management policies rather than the planned outcome of explicit industrial relations strategies.     

The emergence of the Euro-company: towards a European industrial relations?

The growth of European-scale companies represents a further centralisation of management organisation in large enterprises. But processes of decentralisation are also evident. Implications of these opposing trends for labour relations are unclear. Taking account of differences between national systems, the article considers two paths that management approaches could follow.     

Microchips and industrial relations

Microelectronics may be precipitating another industrial revolution. Greg Bamber considers relevant public policies in several countries. He identifies the likely issues of conflict and concludes that Britain should set up an Agency for New Technology to spearhead more positive government action, which could help to induce a climate of high trust at the workplace.     

Citizenship and industrial relations

Under the Victorian ideal of laissez-faire, industrial relations are conducted unilaterally by employers unimpeded by employees' rights of citizenship. The four facets of citizenship—civil, political, industrial, and social—impinge in a variety of ways on the employment relationship. Civil citizenship, by barring discrimination on account of race or sex, interferes with maintenance of segregated pools of cheap secondary labor. Political citizenship enfranchises propertyless workers and alters the enactments of legislatures. Industrial citizenship creates the institutional basis for collective bargaining. Social citizenship confers economic benefits and protective regulations not driven directly by market forces. Political ascendancy of laissez-faire advocates undermines rights of citizenship and has a retrograde effect on industrial relations.This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the First Industrial Relations Congress of the Americans in Quebec City to the Study Group on Industrial Relations as a Field and Industrial Relations Theory on August 27, 1988. I thank Jack Barbash for the opportunity to present it there.     

Spatialising industrial relations

In this article, we argue for a deeper and more theoretically informed engagement between the fields of industrial relations and geography. We lay out a number of concepts developed more fully by geographers and show, through four vignettes, how such concepts can add to our understanding of industrial relations practices.     

Organisation strategies and industrial relations

Stuart Timperley discusses two important themes in the management of industrial relations in organisations: firstly, that it is possible, through managerial decisions and actions, to influence industrial relations and, secondly, that a case can be made for such decisions and actions to be implemented.