Employee Relations: An International Journal

Joyce, Paul; Woods, Adrian

1984 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055028

Joint consultation has had a checkered history during the last 50 years. Both in the Second World War and in the late 1940s, consultative committees were widespread in manufacturing companies. Many observers of the industrial relations scene at that time based their great optimism for post war industrial relations in Britain on the efficacy of joint consultation. Subsequently, joint consultation came to be regarded as a failure and as in a state of decline due to the growth of workplace bargaining. In the course of the last three or four years, the results of several surveys have been published which cast light on current arrangements and have led to claims of a renaissance in joint consultation.

Kelly, Michael P.; Martin, Graeme; Pemble, Robert J.

1984 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055029

This article is concerned with a description of the way in which a small group of Civil Service trade unionists attempted to participate in the 1981 pay campaign by the British Civil Service trade unions. The problems faced by the group are analysed and the group members' experiences of their activity explored.

Oram, S.A.J.

1984 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055030

A general lack of agreement on the meaning of the term industrial relations has been acknowledged for some time. Moreover, although ideology is seen as a powerful influence on the behaviour of industrial relations practitioners, that is, those working or studying in the field, a general imprecision surrounds the current terminology. This article examines briefly the more wellknown understandings of what is meant by industrial relations and compares these with the views of some managers expressed in a recent research study. It proceeds to analyse ideologies normally referred to in the field of industrial relations. From this analysis, an alternative approach and framework is proposed for considering industrial relations ideology.

Cooper, Cary L.

1984 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055031

By the start of the 1980s, over 42 per cent of the total workforce in the UK were women, with 52 per cent of all women between the ages of 16 and 60 working either parttime or fulltime, the highest proportion of working women of any country in the EEC. Over 60 per cent of these women worked in three service industries clerical and related education, health and welfare, and catering, cleaning and other personal services, with clerical workers by far the biggest grouping. Women are not only concentrated in the lowstatus industries, but at the bottom levels of these. For example, whereas women represent just under 75 per cent of all clerical and related workers, they account for only 19 per cent of office managers. Indeed, a recent report of the UK government's Manpower Services Commission MSC shows that in the UK only 20 per cent of all managers are women and if we exclude those women managers who work in clerical offices, wholesaleretail concerns and in hotels and catering, the figure drops to 10 per cent, with only eight per cent in general management posts.