Annual Review Article 1990

AuthorMichael Terry
Date01 March 1991
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1991.tb00230.x
Published date01 March 1991
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
29:l
March
1991
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Annual Review Article
1990
Michael Terry
*
Abstract
This personal annual review examines recent events, particularly in the trade
unions but also among employers, in the context
of
the changed environment
of
the
last decade. It finds that unions have emerged both strengthened and
weakened from their experiences, but that they have some reasons for
optimism. Employers’ policies remain uncertain, mixing change and stability,
but
perhaps some new patterns towards union recognition are emerging.
Neither unions nor employers have been able to match actions
to
theirgrander
designs. The latest piece
of
labour legislation
-
the Employment Act
1990
-
has
the potential greatly
to
alter both the particular and the general.
1.
Introduction
The
12
months to October
1990
provided the same ration as any comparable
period
of
tantalising but inconclusive clues to the present state
of
industrial
relations. For those who relish the continuities
of
the subject, the prolonged
action by the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions in
support
of
a shorter working week recalled acronyms and institutions
already venerable when Donovan reported. Those keen to trace novel
trends added the concept of single-table bargaining to stand alongside (or to
supercede?) single-union agreements. One dispute
-
that of the ambulance
staff
-
was widely treated as a ‘model’
for
the emergent new unionism:
controlled, disciplined, well argued and widely supported by the general
public.
A
second, no less significant in its implications but largely ignored
outside the specialist press, revealed that the struggle for union recognition
in
the offshore oil industry contains all the classic ingredients
of
‘old-
fashioned’ industrial relations, although muddied by a liberal dose
of
the
effects
of
1980s
legislation. The conduct of the dispute might have been very
different had the latest piece
of
employment law, the Employment Act
1990,
been on the books when the action started; indeed, the new law may yet play
a part in this story.
At least as significant as these specific events, however, was
a
discernible
‘Senior Lecturer
in
Industrial Relations, School
of
Industrial and Business Studies, University
of
Wanvick
98
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
change in mood over the year. Earlier government and employer confidence
about economic, and in particular productivity, miracles was displaced by
renewed concern over rapidly rising unit labour costs, and by the end of the
period, with unemployment rising once again after continuous falls, the
government (with some assistance from the CBI) renewed its pleas for wage
and pay moderation
-
pleas somewhat undermined by the large increases
awarded to senior managers and other
well
paid personnel. The New
Earnings Survey revealed that average gross earnings grew by
9.8
per cent in
the
12
months to April
1990:
over approximately the same period, the pay of
senior executives grew by anything between
10.1
and
15
per cent, with some
truly spectacular individual awards. Forecasts of increases over
10
per cent
during the autumn and winter of
199011
were being widely made. Calls for
pay restraint not only were reminiscent
of
the early
1980s
and earlier
periods, but acted as a forceful reminder that employers and unions still
have their own industrial relations priorities, relatively immune to govern-
ment exhortation, that operate on the basis of dynamics that precede the
Thatcher governments and have in important ways remained unaffected by
the profound changes of the decade. The ACAS
1989
Annual Report
commented that their increasing involvement in the resolution of pay
disputes reflected the mounting difficulties of pay bargaining as inflation
rises; it also seems that
two-
and three-year agreements, increasingly
popular a few years ago, are becoming harder to sustain for the same reason.
For at least the later months of the period under review, the prospect that
Labour might form the next government assumed a probability higher than
at any time since the early
1980s;
this gave a significance to TUC and Labour
Party debates over the reform of industrial relations legislation that led to a
remarkable singleness of purpose.
Finally, for those who appreciate the little ironies, the year witnessed the
addition of a footnote to a big story. In December
1989
the Certification
Officer refused to grant a certificate
of
independence to the Government
Communications Staff Federation, formed after the longstanding unions
had been banned from GCHQ. The Certification Officer, in his decision,
found that the GCSF ‘functioned subject to the approval of the GCHQ
Director’.
This Review will touch on most of these topics in an effort to assess the
state of the art and of the key actors as we move into a new decade.
But
the
starting-point will be that the year was most notable for the changes going
on in trade unions. Many of these had been in train for some time, and many
have some way to go; but in
1989
sufficient came together to justify
beginning here.
2.
Change
in
trade
unions
At the
1989
TUC a new policy document,
Organising
for
the
1990s,
was
accepted. This put perhaps the final seal of approval on issues that had

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