Employee Relations: An International Journal

Edwards, P.K.

1985 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055047

Recent trends in industrial relations do not include a systematic attack on union organisation, according to evidence gathered during a survey of British manufacturing plants base size 250 fulltime employees from the food, drink and tobacco, chemical, electrical engineering, textiles, paper printing and publishing sectors. Industrial relations remain important to senior managers as well as personnel managers. The apparent rise in a consultative approach suggests a move away from industrial relations in the traditional sense of bargaining with unions. Though labour relations remain important, this is in the wider sense of managing labour and securing workers' compliance with managerial aims. First part of a twopart article.

Sullivan, Terry

1985 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055048

A key to raising productivity may be to stimulate product market competition, and this will need a complementary policy of relatively low unit labour costs best achieved through managers developing their social skills, abilities, knowledge and understanding of how the labour market works. Change could be assessed by a small internal project team, whose task is to outline both technical implementation, and industrial relations and managerial consequences of the new methods. Any inertia preventing productivity being raised must be identified and defeated. Initial responsibility lies with management, this method being perhaps the best to secure workforce cooperation to raise Britain from being a low income, low productivity nation.

Valencia, Michael

1985 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055049

As a result of industrial change it can be predicted that there will be a developing interest in redundancy advisorycounselling schemes though a few have been initiated, they have been primarily for executives. The description of two projects, in which counselling was used by shopfloor workers, argues the need for providing such assistance at all levels of the workforce, to make the process less painful and to reduce longterm bitterness. An interesting development would be the involvement of public sector institutions colleges, local authority departments in industry, providing expertise and recruiting and managing teams of counsellors, whether on a longterm basis, or shortterm to meet emergencies e.g. major closures.

McMonnies, Dave

1985 Employee Relations: An International Journal

doi: 10.1108/eb055050

Established ideas of British workers cannot be altered simply by presenting them with the facts about cooperatives, particularly when some of these facts appear to strip away hardearned privileges. The suggestion that cooperative formation should only be pursued when there is a suitable workforce is one solution, though this is to guarantee that cooperatives will never grow into a sizeable sector of our economy. The case of the Scott Bader takeover of Synthetic Resins Limited in Liverpool 1982 illustrates clearly a clash between the cooperative ideal and the conventionally managed, traditionally unionised British norm. The confrontation of trade unions and cooperatives in such circumstances, in the absence of guidelines, will see ensuing conflict positive results from such conflict are unlikely as both sides will be talking a different language.