Leisure, Insecurity and Union Policy in Britain: A Critical Extension of Bienefeld's Theory of Hours Rounds
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1987.tb00698.x |
| Published date | 01 March 1987 |
| Author | William K. Roche |
| Date | 01 March 1987 |
Leisure, Insecurity and Union Policy in
Britain:
A
Critical Extension of
Bienefeld's Theory of Hours Rounds
William
K.
Roche *
At various points since the industrial revolution institutionalised employ-
ment and collective representation, the ideal
of
work sharing has found
favour among British unions as a means
of
combatting unemployment, and
staving
off
threatened unemployment. In its most general sense work
sharing involves reducing the temporal extent
of
labour market participa-
tion by implementing a variety of measures, such as shorter normal hours,
longer holidays and lower overtime working. During the latter half of the
1970s,
the international recession and attendant crisis in the British labour
market fostered a renewed interest in working time. The purpose
of
this
paper
is
to present a critical assessment of the major attempt to explain the
timing
of
rounds
of
hours reductions in British industrial relations: Manfred
Bienefeld's theory of the causes
of
changes in normal hours.
WORKING TIME CAMPAIGNS AND HOURS ROUNDS IN
THE POST-WAR PERIOD
The paths followed by adjustments to pay and cuts in normal working hours
in Britain are dramatically different. The great majority of employees enjoy
adjustments to their rates of pay at intervals of one to two years. Research
on pay movements in Britain has failed to identify the existence of all-
embracing 'rounds' of pay adjustment: defined in terms
of
the temporal
clustering of pay rises across a wide range of bargaining units, with rates of
increase confined within a narrow range.' Adjustments to the normal or
basic week have differed from pay bargaining with regard to both such
dimensions
of
collective bargaining. First
,
extensive changes in normal
hours are relatively infrequent, occurring, over the post-war period, for
example, at intervals
of
roughly ten to fifteen years. Second, when they have
occurred, they have tended to follow the round pattern quite closely: the
great majority
of
employees, across very diverse bargaining units, receiving
a broadly similar cut in their normal working hours over a period
of
several
*Lecturer in Industrial Relations, University College, Dublin.
millions (individuals)
13-
12-
11-
10-
9-
8-
7-
I"\
\
..I
I
'\
\-
-
7
increases in basic
rates
of
pay
'-A
\
I
r--
\\
r--
/
'\
I
\I
\I
'J
V
A
reductions in
normal hours
1960 1965 1970 1975 1980
Source:
To 1980, Dept. of Employment Gazette, January editions (revised series);
M
Gazette,
April 1981
;
April
1983.
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