“It's good to talk”? the reform of joint consultation in British Telecom

Here the authors describe a series of changes to the structure and process of joint consultation introduced at British Telecom (BT) in the early 1990s. It describes and analyses the reasons for these changes and accounts for the largely hostile response from BT trade unions. The key claim is that management have refashioned joint consultation to better control and limit union activity in the firm and that the changes form part of a wider policy of union marginalisation at BT.