Introduction

The issues of employment, labour market structures, training and industrial relations have been critical ones for the Labour Party throughout the whole of this century. They have been pivotal areas cementing the links between the trade unions and the Party, they have secured broader workingclass support through employment rights reform and have determined the general economic strategy adopted – be it Keynesian or neo-Keynesian. However, the shifts in Labour Party thinking since its last period in government in relation to these issues do appear to be fundamental and hence capable of unscrambling that trade union relationship, lessening working-class support and providing an alternative vision of the future from that of macro demand management. The main changes are exemplified in the 1996 Labour Party publication Building prosperity: Flexibility, efficiency and fairness at work and repeated in the recently published Employment Relations Bill (January 1999). Assessing what actual changes have been inaugurated since coming to power in the raft of proposals and reforms Labour has enacted will give some idea of the direction in which the government is going.

In general it appears that the Labour government has gone for a minimalist approach in relation to employee rights at work, to the regulation of business and to the involvement of trade unions in deciding and implementing policies. Deregulation will stay. Competitive flexibility continues to be a central plank. Many of the trade union laws will be kept firmly in place. On the latter Tony Blair said in the Foreword to the White Paper Fairness at work:

Such statements seem to give credence to the numerous critics (Gray, 1998; Coates and Barratt Brown, 1996; Davey, 1998) who point to a continuity with the previous government and the adoption by New Labour of key elements of the Thatcherite programme. However, this is not the whole picture. In addition to these affirmations there appears to be some discontinuities of policy especially in the area of job creation, training and Europe.