Employee Relations: An International Journal

Gillies, Jim; Marsh, Arthur

1982 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb054989

Since the reemergence of picketing as a popular form of protest among strikers in the mid1960s, there has been a considerable outcry from the public, press and parliamentarians about the tactics sometimes employed. This protest grew as the nation experienced first the winter of discontent embracing the National Health Service strike at the end of 1978 and the road haulage dispute in January 1979, and later national stoppages, both involving picketing, in the engineering and steel industries. There was, it seems, much to complain about there were too many incidents to add to those earlier sensations of the new picketing eraRoberts Arundel in 196667, the Fine Tubes saga of 1970, the Shrewsbury flying pickets and the mass miners' blockade of the Saltley coke depot in 1972 and the long running and acrimonious Grunwick affair of 1976.

Dobson, John R.

1982 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb054990

The emergence in the postwar period of industrial relations as a rapidly growing field of study was a consequence of the subject becoming increasingly defined as a problem. During the 1950s and 60s the increasing level of strike activity, especially unofficial and unconstitutional strikes, attracted widespread attention. Low labour productivity and wage inflation were also widely seen as important industrial relations problems. These problems attracted the attention of academics from a wide variety of disciplines who developed the study of industrial relations in a way which largely reflected this preoccupation with problems.

Winterton, Ruth; Winterton, Jonathan

1982 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb054991

Whitecollar trade unionism has aroused considerable interest among students of industrial relations, but relatively little attention has been paid to staff associations, which Crompton noted perform similar functions to trade unions and to which whitecollar workers are partial. At present, whitecollar and partly whitecollar unions account for roughly half of the unions in Britain and some 35 per cent of the membership. The density of whitecollar membership has increased to 40 per cent over 50 per cent if staff and professional associations are included, compared with 53 per cent for manual workers. Whitecollar workers are traditionally thought to be less disposed to join trade unions and, as Bain et al note, when white collar workers do unionize, they are believed to carry with them certain aspects of the status ideology which affects the behaviour of their unions. Blackburn and Prandy offer a theoretical framework which may be used to compare the unionateness of whitecollar and manual forms of employee representation. Most whitecollar unions satisfy the criteria of unionateness, but a large proportion of staff associations fail on the question of independence from employers for the purposes of negotiation. In the first four years of his appointment, the Certification Officer refused certificates of independence to fiftyone organisations, all of them staff associations.

Beaumont, P.B.

1982 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb054992

A recent OECD report on labour disputes noted that there has been a considerable increase in strike activity in the public sector of a number of member countries in recent times. Moreover, it was noted that strikes have started to occur in the traditionally quiet parts of the public sector in various countries. There is little need to stress this point in the last few years as the strikes that are attracting attention throughout the world are virtually all in the public sector witness, for example, the air traffic controllers' dispute in the United States, the campaign of selective industrial action by civil servants in Britain and the postal and telecommunications disputes in Australia in mid1981.