Strikes

Sid Kessler and Fred Bayliss

Chapter Chapter 11 in Contemporary British Industrial Relations, 1992, pp 207-234 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The litmus test of the Conservative government’s objective of curbing the power of trade unions was strikes. Over-powerful unions were, in the eyes of the Conservative Party, too ready to use strikes to get their way — ‘strikes are too often a weapon of first rather than last resort’ (Conservative Party manifesto, 1979). In the Party’s demonology stood the miners’ strike of 1974 which had challenged, and some would say brought down, a Conservative government. Moreover, the general election of 1979 which the Party had won with a majority over all other parties in the House of Commons had taken place in the shadow of the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and extensive strikes among public-service workers. Strikes had become for the Conservative Party the symbol of the abuse of their power by trade unions.

Keywords: Trade Union; Industrial Relation; Essential Service; Secondary Action; Union Official (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-1-349-22027-4_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9781349220274

DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-22027-4_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().