4. Researching the New Industrial Relations
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055081 |
| Pages | 23-30 |
| Date | 01 May 1986 |
| Published date | 01 May 1986 |
| Author | Stephen Wood |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
4.
Researching the New
Industrial Relations
by Stephen Wood
The New Industrial Relations[1]
Commentators on the recent industrial relations scene who are prone to stress its novel
features focus particularly on the increasing use of co-operative strategies by
management, concession bargaining in the US, and attempts to link wages more
directly to the profitability of firms or plants. Allied to these developments are the
assumed decline of the role of the shop
steward,
the breakdown of previous methods of
collective bargaining, such as pattern bargaining in the US, and a shift from Taylorist
work systems to more flexible and less divided arrangements. Whether these changes
add up simply to a move to more co-operative labour-management relations or rather to
a largely union-free environment is a matter of
debate.
But for them to amount to a new
industrial relations would entail a fundamental change in the role of collective bar-
gaining in the economy.
Regardless of one's judgment about the novelty, permanence or extent of the "new"
industrial relations, it is possible to agree on the key features of the current situation to
which writers are referring. The scenario has a number of components:
(1) a decline in union membership, both absolute and relative to the total labour
force;
(2) a declining role for bargaining and a corresponding decrease in its scope;
(3) the increasing importance of human resource management;
(4) the increasing importance of "high-tech" industries and greenfield sites, and an
increasing need for
a
"responsible flexible" worker;
(5) the conscious attempt to avoid and undermine unions by firms through location
policies and sophisticated paternalism, and
(6) the attempt to link pay more directly to the economic performance of the plant or
firm through gain-saving schemes, profit-sharing and fragmented bargaining.
It is perhaps in the US that there has been most talk of a new industrial relations.
Journalists have perhaps gone furthest
—
Business
Week,
for
example,
often talking of
a quiet revolution in industrial relations which will end the adversarial relationship,
perceived by many seriously to threaten the competitiveness of US industry. Amongst
academics, perhaps not surprisingly, it is those who advocate more integrative and less
conflictual relationships who have been most vociferous in pronouncing the novelty of
the changes. Walton[2] sees "these profound differences as reflecting the choice
between a strategy based on imposing control and a strategy based on eliciting
commitment". Some trade union leaders, particularly in the US, have been endorsing
this kind of approach, the most prominent being the AFL-CIO's report[3]. The most we
could say with any degree of confidence about the current situation is that, in both the
US and UK, managements are seeking to move from an adversarial labour-relations
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