Re-dividing Labour: Factory Politics and Work Reorganisation in the Current Industrial Transition

Abstract

It is a commonplace assumption that the deepening of the recession and the changed political climate of the 1980s have enabled British manufacturing managements to reorganise both production work and their companies’ industrial relations. Considerable, though eclectic evidence and commentary, suggests that occupational groups and their unionised representation are in the process of re-division as job definitions and terms of employment change and managers exercise rediscovered powers (Hyman and Elger, 1981; Lloyd, 1984(a); Carr, 1984; Mulhearn, 1984). Moreover change, according to some observers, has been facilitated because rank and file militancy has been replaced by ‘new realism in attitudes that recognises the legitimacy of managerial objectives and either supports or accept them (Lowry, 1982; Edmonds, 1984; Elliott, 1981; Lane, 1982).KeywordsCollective BargainingWork RoleIndustrial RelationWork OrganisationUnion RepresentativeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.