Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 March 2020
The recent change of government brings to an end a sustained attempt to transform British industrial relations by legislative action. This article explores the consequences. It explains the cumulative effect of the legal changes since 1979, including the growing influence of the European Community, and examines the economic and social results. While legal intervention has had an impact on the institutions of industrial relations, most notably in reducing the power of organised labour, this cannot be isolated from wider structural changes in labour and product markets. A review of research on economic outcomes suggests an uneven and tenuous link between institutional change and economic performance.
The authors wish to thank Maria Hudson and Cliff Pratten, with whom they are currently engaged in fieldwork on the individualisation of employment contracts. Thanks also to members of the CLARE Group for helpful comments, and to Greg Bamber, Bill Callaghan, Bernard Ebbinghaus, Anthony Ferner, Simon Goldstone, Mark Hall, Bob Hepple, Richard Hyman, Bente Ingebrigtsen, Steve Jefferys, Ian McAndrew, Paul Marginson, John Monks, Graham Osborne, Jim Scoville, Priya Sharma, Steen Sheuer, Tony Smith, Bob Simpson, Mike Terry, and Paul Willman for miscellaneous help.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.