British Trade Unionism 1979-89: Change, Continuity and Contradictions

John Kelly
Additional contact information
John Kelly: Dept. of Industrial Relations London School of Economics

Work, Employment & Society, 1990, vol. 4, issue 5, 29-65

Abstract: The paper begins by briefly documenting many of the changes that have occurred in the 1980s in union membership, occupational structure, strikes, etc. and sets out to compare two interpretations: (i) that these represent a secular transformation towards a new industrial relations, (ii) that they constitute a largely cyclical phenomenon. Whilst there are clearly elements of both modes of change, it is argued that in terms of core elements of industrial relations - the power, interests and relations between the parties - the cyclical hypothesis is much nearer the truth. The paper uses Batstone's (1988) model of power resources to analyse the impact of changes and trends in labour markets, product markets, employer and union strategies, production systems and worker attitudes. In some cases, e.g. worker attitudes, there has been little basic change; in others, e.g. production systems, the effects have been variable; in others again, e.g. state and employer strategies, the effects have sometimes been the opposite of those intended. The paper ends by looking at several explanations for these results.

Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wes.sagepub.com/content/4/5/29.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:4:y:1990:i:5:p:29-65

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().