History Of Industrial Relations Research Articles

Industrial Relations and the Limits of the State: Can a Left Labour Government Resurrect Comprehensive Sectoral Collective Bargaining and Restore Trade Union Power?

AbstractSince 2017 the British Labour Party has proposed mandatory sectoral collective bargaining (SCB) as a comprehensive strategy to rebuild the trade union voice across the entire economy. The intellectual roots lie in the Institute of Employment Rights’ (IER) Manifesto for Labour Law (2016). First, this article explains the core IER approach, questioning its feasibility given current low levels of union membership and bargaining coverage and whether it would produce the stable and productive economy promised. Second, the article develops four social science objections to this state‐driven approach centred on industrial relations history; political sociology; economics; and political philosophy. The conclusion argues that while stronger voluntary trade unions could help, it is neither practicable nor desirable for the state to impose a trade union, single‐channel approach to employee voice. Instead, a ‘mixed economy of voice’ is proposed, perhaps including statutory works councils, which speaks directly to all employees—union and non‐union—and wins broader political, employer and public support.

The Moral Economy and Industrial Politics in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s

The 'moral economy perspective' has enriched a number of recent analyses in the history of industrial relations. Focusing on perceptions of fairness helps to explain the reasoning and activism of workers and trade-unionists engaged in industrial politics, movements and protests. A moral economy framework seems particularly apt where activists were animated by a sense of the established order being disturbed and dismantled by employers and policy-makers. Working-class and trade-union responses to the loss of industrial employment from the 1960s to the 1980s were often articulated in terms of collective injustice. Examination of these responses has been influenced by the works of E. P. Thompson and Karl Polanyi. Seeing the erosion of manual employment and changing working-class organization through the twin frameworks of deindustrialization and the moral economy is more productive than older and arguably dead-end narratives of economic decline and trade-union defeat.

Condescending Saviors: Union Substitution at Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky (TMMK)

“Condescending Saviors” identifies and analyzes multiple factors underlying the ability of Toyota Motor Corporation’s Georgetown, Kentucky plant to stymy unionization of production workers through sophisticated and extensive union substitutionism. Two key factors in this case study of its profoundly pragmatic long-term substitution are the meso-corporatist institutions by which it successfully embedded itself in Kentucky, and, critically, the trajectory of the United Auto Workers from business unionism to narrow enterprise unionism based solely on the interests of the auto companies. A contrast between the Kentucky Building Trades Council’s successful unionization of construction work and the UAW’s organizing failures places the latter in bold relief and argues against the popular reasoning that the UAW was simply the victim of events, the period, or TMMK’s location. It also exposes the insularity that has shielded Toyota’s plants and workers from all objective academic investigation. A final substantive chapter charts the stages of the UAW’s transition to enterprise unionism, decades of erosion of union democracy and concomitant organizing capacity, and thus offers a view of possible alternative developments. The historical and comparative method contextualizes these events within the larger framework of the shifting relationship between capital, labor, and the state in the second half of the twentieth century US. The similarities between the weak class struggle in the US and the defeat of Japanese working-class struggle overshadow any reliance on cultural differences. Thus, “American exceptionalism” and “Japanese uniqueness” are abandoned as frames that deny an important commonality of forces, and the specific working of meso-corporatism in the US. Investigating this puzzle using the arsenal of political science and, necessarily, the methods of the meticulous historian, yielded a new paradigm to better understand trade union decline. Identifying these factors required an in-depth understanding of Japanese and US union history since the nineteenth century; an extensive review of the history of industrial relations practices at Toyota’s earlier joint venture with General Motors in California; and the decades-long process of centralization of control within the UAW and its refusal to enforce the Constitutionally-required prohibition of competition between UAW-represented plants; all of which are further explored in working papers.

Turkish Industrial Relations at the Crossroads: Revisiting the History of Industrial Relations in the Early Post World War Two Period

The 1961 constitutional reform in Turkey recognized the right to strike and granted other rights and freedoms related to the collective actions of labor. Conventional wisdom holds that Turkish trade unions became independent of the state power with class-based interests only after this reform. Across mainstream literature, this is considered, in historical institutionalist terms, as the first critical juncture in Turkey's industrial relations. This paper provides a critical account of the institutional continuity, development, and change that took place in Turkey's industrial relations starting from its establishment as a republic in 1923 until the end of the 1950s, by considering the socioeconomic and legal-political environment during these years. Considering the historical evidence employed, and under historical institutionalism, it is argued that the first critical juncture in the country's industrial relations occurred in 1947, when the ruling cliques permitted the establishment of trade unions. In this paper, it is purported that the consensus reached by the trade unions on the necessity of the right to strike from the mid-1950s onwards initiated a peaceful class struggle between Turkish labor and the state, which gradually steered the industrial relations toward the second critical juncture following the promulgation of the 1961 constitution.

Turkish Industrial Relations at the Crossroads: Revisiting the History of Industrial Relations in the Early Post World War Two Period

AbstractThe 1961 constitutional reform in Turkey recognized the right to strike and granted other rights and freedoms related to the collective actions of labor. Conventional wisdom holds that Turkish trade unions became independent of the state power with class-based interests only after this reform. Across mainstream literature, this is considered, in historical institutionalist terms, as the first critical juncture in Turkey's industrial relations. This paper provides a critical account of the institutional continuity, development, and change that took place in Turkey's industrial relations starting from its establishment as a republic in 1923 until the end of the 1950s, by considering the socioeconomic and legal-political environment during these years. Considering the historical evidence employed, and under historical institutionalism, it is argued that the first critical juncture in the country's industrial relations occurred in 1947, when the ruling cliques permitted the establishment of trade unions. In this paper, it is purported that the consensus reached by the trade unions on the necessity of the right to strike from the mid-1950s onwards initiated a peaceful class struggle between Turkish labor and the state, which gradually steered the industrial relations toward the second critical juncture following the promulgation of the 1961 constitution.

The Political Processes of the Distinctive Multinational Factory Regime and Recent Strikes in Vietnam

The period from the mid-2000s to the early 2010s is noteworthy in the history of industrial relations in Vietnam. On the one hand, the number of strikes increased, reaching its peak in 2011. On the other hand, there were much stronger signs that both the management and the workers were not satisfied with their “factory regime”, as a stable and predictable process to resolve labor disputes was yet to emerge. In addition to the previous economic and political explanations focused on macroeconomic conditions and political institutional arrangements at the national level, this article attempts to ethnographically explore and describe the political-economic conditions of both the workers and the managements on a micro level to answer the following questions: Why do some workers have to resort to uncomfortable and troublesome means such as wildcat strikes despite their better working conditions compared to those of workers in other factories? In contrast, what are the reasons that some factories do not offer their workers particularly favorable working conditions and wages and can still avoid strikes? While answering these questions, this article attempts to address the necessity of recognizing the distinctive political structure and processes in the multinational factory regime and to suggest ways of establishing more stable and productive industrial relations more suitable to the particularity of the factory regime.

Industrial Relations in Queensland Under an LNP Government

<em>The Liberal National Party (‘LNP’) won 78 out of a possible 89 seats in Queensland’s 2012 state election. Facing a budget blowout, the new Government soon used its control of the state’s unicameral parliament to implement a contentious public sector reform agenda. The LNP’s amendments to Queensland’s employment laws struck at the very heart of many of the accepted ‘ground rules’ of industrial relations. Perhaps most signif-icantly, the Government used its parliamentary majority to remove job security commit-ments given to public servants, paving the way for the loss of thousands of jobs. This paper sets out the key industrial relations reforms adopted by the LNP. The authors dis-cuss the Government’s rationale for the changes, and the reaction from Queensland’s trade union movement. The article concludes with some general observations about the changes adopted during the LNP’s term of Government; a period which will undoubtedly be remembered as a controversial part of Queensland’s industrial relations history.</em>

Evaluating Change Management in an Indian Commercial Vehicle Manufacturing Firm

The article endeavours to understand the intellection, implementation and ramifications of change management on workers and managers through changes in the mode of work organisation and on organisational culture. It is a qualitative ethnographic study that tries to communicate the non-linear, partial nature of the change management process and the challenges that underpin its implementation in the Indian context. This paper makes a contribution to the larger intellectual conversation by going beyond the existing literature’s commentary on the impact of lean manufacturing on employees, from merely a cause and effect standpoint. It does this by drawing attention to an indeterminate subjective space that underpins interaction of employee aspiration, and work related viewpoints, corporate image, infrastructural constraints and the mode of work organisation that lean manufacturing seeks to modify. This indeterminate subjective space of organisational interaction between multiple stakeholders determines the outcome of change management. It also brings out the importance of context in impacting senior management’s decision making in its implementation of change management. The main impediments underlying the implementation of change management in the case study firm and India, comprised of limitations of personnel, infrastructure, market compulsions, supply chains and varying management repertoires and individual aspirations. The implementation of lean manufacturing in the case study firm was exacerbated by varying working arrangements prevalent within the same plant and degrees of automation and advancement in the same plant. Corporate and plant level management spoke of empowerment, participative management and long-term developmental objectives. In the same breath, there were more immediate economic and cost reduction imperatives for it to consider such as outsourcing and closing of its production shops. These counteracting measures in conjunction with the difficult Industrial Relations history of the plant made attempts to secure the wholehearted acquiescence of workers difficult. Poor communication and multiple anxieties of various stakeholders about their careers and relevance made the outcome the change management programme partial and unrealised. Finally, the paper has also highlighted the problems inherent in lean manufacturing and added voice to the sobering critique of lean manufacturing.

The Prices and Incomes Accord: Its significance, impact and legacy

This thematic section of the Journal of Industrial Relations commemorates the 30th anniversary of the Prices and Incomes Accord between the Hawke–Keating government and the Australian Council of Trade Unions. The Accord remains a landmark by the standards of Australian industrial relations history and given the international context in which it emerged. It achieved its initial objective of addressing the problem of ‘stagflation’ and helped to facilitate structural reform in the Australian economy. In gaining cooperation from unions and by providing a social wage to cushion workers from the adverse effects of economic and wages policy reform, the Accord represented a more equitable alternative to neoliberal approaches adopted elsewhere. However, negative unintended consequences of the Accord years remain features of the contemporary labour market, which casts some doubt on its legacy.

Tragedy or farce? The repetition of Australian industrial relations history, 1929 and 2007

The national elections of 1929 and 2007 are the only two in Australian history where the government lost office and the prime ministers lost their seats. Both right-wing governments undertook radical industrial relations reform attacking standards of work and shifting the balance of power to employers. Both election campaigns were dominated by industrial relations, and unions' grassroots mobilisation was critical in defeating the governments. The article utilises a diachronic comparative methodology to draw insights into the nature of Australian politics and the relationship between the unions and the Australian Labor Party.

Industrial Relations History in Transnational Perspective: A Review Essay

AbstractInspired by the ‘transnational turn’ in history writing, this essay reviews recent scholarship dealing with industrial relations from a transnational perspective. The essay starts with conceptual reflections on the merits and potential pitfalls of a transnational approach, and suggests that that such an approach should include not only the study of actors, networks and processes at the transnational level (top down perspective), but also that of the impact of transnational factors on industrial relations in specific countries and locations (bottom up perspective). The main part of the essay critically reviews the available scholarship with regard to this two‐pronged agenda and makes suggestions for future research.

Approaches to transnational industrial relations history

Inspired by the “transnational turn” in history writing, this essay reviews recent scholarship dealing with industrial relations from a transnational perspective. The essay starts with conceptual reflections on the merits and potential pitfalls of a transnational approach, and suggests that that such an approach should include not only the study of actors, networks and processes at the transnational level (top down perspective), but also that of the impact of transnational factors on industrial relations in specific countries and locations (bottom up perspective). The main part of the essay critically reviews the available scholarship with regard to this two-pronged agenda and makes suggestions for future research.

Industrial relations in China: A review based on a six‐party model

Abstract.Research on industrial relations and labour in China has been relatively stagnant, partly because the classic tripartite model of industrial relations is unable to explain the facts. This article proposes a six‐party model: following brief reviews of theory and China's industrial relations history, it introduces a new six‐party taxonomy for the analysis of industrial relations in China. The actors, with their “Chinese characteristics”, are the Party‐State, the All‐China Federation of Trade Unions, employers' organizations, grass‐roots unions, employers and employees. This model, the author argues, provides a useful tool for capturing a broader picture of China's evolving industrial relations.

Practitioner Review: Continuity and Change: The Fair Work Act in Aviation

This article begins by discussing the specific industrial relations challenges of the highly competitive aviation industry. It then reflects on the outcome of the recent intense national debate over industrial relations, exploring the consequences of that debate for practice and policy, and discusses some key issues that remain in play. Although the Fair Work Act 2009 may have come about as a reaction to what many perceive as the ‘excesses’ of Work Choices, the new Act does not so much ‘wind back the clock’ as represent a significant new development in Australia’s long and unique industrial relations history. This article will discuss the impact of the changes, to date, made by the Fair Work Act on one organization, including the expansion of the ‘safety net’, and how the new compromise between the role of the ‘collective’ and the role of the ‘individual’ struck by the Act has the potential to fundamentally change the nature and structure of bargaining. We offer these comments as practitioners who have worked under successive industrial relations regimes since the early 1980s.

Old‐time militancy and the economic realities: towards a reassessment of the dockers' experience

ABSTRACTThis article makes the case for a fundamental reassessment of an important stage in the history of industrial relations in the UK port transport sector vis‐à‐vis the regulation of employment and the controversial demise of the National Dock Labour Scheme. It argues that the popular view that state regulation combined with trade union organisation and restrictive working practices in the 1970s and 1980s to undermine the competitiveness of the port transport sector lacks convincing empirical foundations. It notes some implications for wider debates around Britain's variety of capitalism.

Three Transformations of Industrial Relations in Laos

This article provides an account of industrial relations in Laos, in light of the transformation theory from the industrial relations literature. The scope of the article is limited to employment in the formal, wage-earning sector of the civilian economy. The article argues that the history of industrial relations in Laos can be divided into four eras: the French colonial era (1890s to 1947); the Royal Lao Government era (1947—1975); the first decade or so of the Lao People's Democratic Republic following the communist revolution in 1975; and the contemporary reform era under the New Economic Mechanism (1986 to the present). Following the transformation literature, the article argues that these four eras were divided by three transformations: the first of these, from the colonial to Royal Lao Government regime, was incremental or gradual; the second and third were cases of discontinuous change. The first and third of the transformations, to some extent, are `controversial'.

The “Limited Capital-Labor Accord”: May It Rest in Peace?

This essay takes on a major pillar of the social structures of accumulation (SSA) literature: the “limited capital-labor accord.” The accord is shorthand for an industrial relations structure based on job-control, politically conservative unionism, and state-regulated collective bargaining during the period of 1948—1973. Our essay shows how this stylized assumption of industrial relations history has been empirically rejected by labor and business history and industrial relations scholarship since the 1980s.

Re-imagining the Role of Trade Unions after WorkChoices

No system where interests collide can proceed without a means to break deadlocks or redress major asymmetry of market power.--(Gardner 2008: 40) A focus on asymmetry of market power emerges as a central theme within three of the four plenary papers examining the future shape of Australia's federal industrial relations system. Gardner, Hancock and McCallum all affirm the inherent power imbalance existing in the common law employment contract as a continued justification for regulation in the arena of industrial relations. Yet, imbalance of power is not unique to the employment relationship, (2) a factor which has contributed to many commentators seeking a broader regulatory justification for intervention. (3) This approach is not incompatible with recognition of the existence and effect of power imbalance in the context of employment and the role of regulation in correcting power imbalance. It does, however, seek to establish a broader justificatory basis for the regulation of work, a project which may help the discipline of labour law move beyond the contract of employment as the locus of regulation. The rationale behind the impetus to extend the principles underpinning labour regulation clearly emerges in the acknowledgement made in each of the plenary papers of the declining role of trade unions and strike action within the modern federal industrial relations system. If collectivism is in decline, alternate methods of regulating the relationship of employees and employers should be adopted. This discussion will consider two of the central themes emerging from the plenary papers: power imbalance; and the impact of the shift in regulating trade unions as representatives of workers generally in favour of the regulation of trade unions as representatives or agents of individual union members. Gardner suggests that the causes of the declining influence of trade unions in Australia have been misrepresented as social rather than legal. Commenting on the impact of the amendments made to the federal legislation by the Keating Government in 1993 and the Howard Government in 1996, Gardner observes that 'the diminution of collective representation and influence looked like a societal change not a legislatively induced one'. The discussion will consider the ongoing role of trade unions and collective action within the Australian industrial relations framework in light of the history of industrial relations in Australia and the pessimistic assessment of the future of collective representation that emerges within some of the plenary papers. For example, Hancock argues that '[i]t may well be unrealistic to expect the unions to turn around the secular decline in their penetration of the work force'. However I believe this focus on the decline in union density is unhelpful in the Australian context. It is possible to imagine a rejuvenated role for trade unions as representatives of workers generally if we consider the role of unions in Australia within their historical context. In his plenary paper, McCallum reminds us of the origins of employment regulation and the transformation of the master and servant relationship from service to contract at the time of the industrial revolution. McCallum emphasises that the contractual relationship is characterised by command and obedience, wherein the employee submits to the control of the employer in return for payment. The underlying capital and managerial power of the employer is reinforced at common law by the terms of the contractual bargain which require the employee to obey lawful and reasonable commands, upon threat of summary termination. This emphasis on the contractual basis of the individual employment relationship serves to illustrate the inadequacy of the common law to redress the unequal position of an individual employee against the pre-existing capital power of the employer. It is also a useful tool for teaching students who have never studied industrial relations or labour law. …

Strategic Choices and Unintended Consequences: Employer Militancy in Victoria's Meat Industry, 1986-93

Concepts of strategic choice have become widely used in industrial relations, particularly as methods of understanding recent historical changes. While the operation of strategy-choosing relative to implementation has generated debate, there has been little discussion of how strategic choices can generate unintended consequences even where there are no apparent weaknesses in implementation. We discuss these issues in the context of under-explored areas of Australian labour history: the history of industrial relations in Victoria's meat industry and employer activity in the meat industry more generally. Our focus is the creation, by employers, of an intense, industry-wide struggle with the union and, in particular, their choices regarding terrains and methods for that struggle. Using a narrative approach, we explore important unintended consequences that flowed from the interaction of employer-strategising in product and labour markets. These, in turn, generated paradoxical outcomes, given employers' original objectives.

More voice after more exit? Unstable industrial relations in Central Eastern Europe

ABSTRACTThe article examines the industrial relations developments in the post‐communist countries that entered the EU in 2004. Rather than introducing the ‘European Social Model’, EU accession has led to some social tensions, in spite of relatively strong economic growth, because of deregulation, European Monetary Union conditions and the enduring need to compete for foreign investment. EU institutional promotion of social dialogue through the Directive on Information and Consultation of Workers, sector social dialogue committees and the European Employment Strategy has only had limited effects in increasing the ‘voice’ of employees in employment relations. National‐level social dialogue has produced poor results and has even been weakened in Slovenia (where it was originally strong) and, initially, in Slovakia. The lack of ‘voice’ for employees has led to increased ‘exit’ through political populism/abstention and migration. A double paradox emerges. Pro‐labour policies are being developed not by the EU, but rather by its opposite, Euro‐sceptical governments (in Poland and Slovakia), while in the workplaces, employers are forced to concessions not by their employees, but by those who leave and cause labour shortages. However, there is also some evidence of a resurgent ‘voice’ from below, through strikes, organising campaigns, informal collective protests and collective bargaining innovations. Drawing on both theory and history of industrial relations, it is concluded that some preconditions for more stable social compromises including more ‘voice’ are emerging.