Consultation and the Right to Manage, 1980–1984
| Date | 01 July 1987 |
| Published date | 01 July 1987 |
| Author | Philip Bassett |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1987.tb00715.x |
British Journal
of
Industrial Relations
25:2
July
1987
0007-1080
$3.00
Consultation and the Right to
Manage, 1980-1 984
Philip
Bassett
*
‘The picture
of
joint consultative committees painted by some writers
of
a
largely passive, management-dominated talking shop is hardly apt’.
So
write
Neil Millward and Mark Stevens
of
consultation in British industrial
relations, based on the findings
of
the second Workplace Industrial
Relations Survey. The findings on consultation in the first survey, looking at
1980 data, were judged by industrial relations commentators to be
remarkable; or as the new report says, more coolly: ‘One of the findings
of
the 1980 survey that aroused considerable interest and comment was that
joint consultative committees had become more common in the period up to
1980 and specifically between 1975 and 1980’. That interest and comment
was aroused mainly because those looking at the first WIRS report were
doing
so
in the hard times
of
1984, when
it
was published: implicitly, it
reflected incredulity that in such a harsh climate, with management in the
ascendant, any employer should feel the
need
to consult with his workforce.
Since the WIRS
2
information was culled precisely in those hard times, it
should answer the question that they asked about the 1980 data: will
consultation survive the recession?
Unequivocally, as Table
1
shows, the answer is yes. The WIRS
2
evidence
seems
to
suggest that the recession has had little impact
on
the general
British industrial relations pattern, as proposed by MacInnes (1985) and
gives further support to his contention that the thesis proposed by McCarthy
(1967)
-
that consultation would decline in the face
of
union organisation
-
may be doubtful. The coverage of consultation committees is
still
extensive,
steady at
34
per cent. Things are different in the private sector, where the
coverage
of
committees has fallen (principally, Millward and Stevens argue
persuasively,
not
because of any abandonment of consultative machinery,
but for structural reasons rooted in the different sectoral impact
of
the
recession). That’s wholly in line, though, with one
of
the dominant themes
WIRS
2
graphically and repeatedly illustrates, in one
of
its most useful and
telling overall conclusions: the sharp divergance of industrial relations
practice between the private sector, especially in manufacturing, and the
overall picture. Clearly, in industrial relations terms, the private sector
is
another country
-
they do things differently there.
*Labour Editor,
The
Financial
Times
To continue reading
Request your trial