{"title":"After the 1910 Eight-Week Lockout: ‘Flächentarifvertrag’ in the German Construction Industry","authors":"J. Janssen","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2020.41.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2020.41.3","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The greatest industrial dispute before the First World War in Germany, a national lockout in the construction industry, lasting eight weeks and involving up to 245,000 workers, ended with a defeat of the German Construction Employers’ Federation - Deutscher Arbeitgeberbund für das Baugewerbe - on 18 June 1910 after a tripartite process of arbitration. This industrial dispute about a new national framework contract - Flächentarifvertrag - on collective employment relations and bargaining in the construction industry heralded a new stage in labour-capital relations. It led to a substantial unification and concentration of workers’ organizations and divided the employer’s organization, benefiting, on the one hand, the sectoral labour unions to the detriment of local unions, and, on the other, the joint-stock corporations to the detriment of smaller, individually owned companies.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"41 1","pages":"65-84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44685104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cash Wages, the Truck Acts, and the 1960 Payment of Wages Act","authors":"C. Frank","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2020.41.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2020.41.4","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000From the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, there was an ongoing tussle between British employers and the Trades Union Congress (TUC) over whether to repeal the (1831-96) Truck Acts which established the right of manual workers to be paid in cash (‘coin of the realm’) and regulated employers’ ability to fine them or take deductions from their wages. Many employers advocated repeal, insisting that truck legislation was ill-suited to the modern economy, interfered with freedom to contract, and impeded more efficient forms of paying wages. Organized labour, through the TUC, countered that these laws protected workers from arbitrary deductions and prevented employers from imposing unpopular methods of paying wages (such as by cheque or bank transfer). This dispute resulted in the minor reform of the 1960 Payment of Wages Act.\u0000The (1959-61) Karmel Committee, which studied the contemporary operation of the Truck Acts, recommended repeal, though keeping some protection, but there was disagreement about who should be covered and what should be protected. The TUC, near the apex of its power, had proved the efficacy of the law and, given the inability to reach consensus, the government eventually dropped the subject for a generation.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"41 1","pages":"85-108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44144085","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Bullock Committee, Industrial Democracy, and the Trade Unions: The Revolution that Never Was","authors":"J. Edmonds","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2020.41.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2020.41.10","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The report of the Bullock Committee on Industrial Democracy aimed to transform British industrial relations by instituting worker directors on the board of large companies. This transformation never took place. A minority report by the three committee members representing business interests opposed putting workers’ representatives on the board. The aftermath was even more disappointing: the Labour government’s White Paper diluted several of Bullock’s recommendations but before legislation could be tabled, in May 1979, the incoming Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher declared that the Bullock recommendations would never be enacted.\u0000The goal of industrial democracy is to reduce the autocratic power of management and give all employees greater control of their working lives. Given the weakness of trade unions today, it is time to look again at statutory works councils in Germany and representation of a minority of worker directors on the board, both elected by all employees. This would give workers and their unions information about the state of the company and about management intentions.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"41 1","pages":"213-228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45909379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"After the Long Boom: The Reconfiguration of Work and Labour in the Public Sector","authors":"Bob Carter","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2020.41.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2020.41.6","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This response to Huw Beynon’s paper, ‘After the Long Boom: Living with Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century’ in HSIR 40 (2019), offers a parallel analysis of the fortunes of labour in the public sector. Among Beynon’s central observations, drawing on Karl Marx and Harry Braverman, was the continued reproduction of ‘unskilled’ and degraded labour. A parallel process, de-professionalizing occupations through the separation of conception and execution, has been a feature of the almost continual restructuring of state and local authority organizations and their work practices since the 1960s. This has accelerated in the era of governments committed to neoliberal values and policies. Despite public-sector trade unions having been largely conservative and defensive in their values and practice, a number of factors, both structural and conjunctural, have compelled them to face this new reality and make them the most likely organizations to challenge the expanding reach of neoliberalism. Recognizing these factors provides a possible remedy to the implied pessimism that follows the largely private-sector focus of Beynon’s contribution.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"41 1","pages":"137-168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45795763","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Time, Tea Breaks, and the Frontier of Control in UK Workplaces","authors":"Martin Upchurch","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2020.41.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2020.41.2","url":null,"abstract":"One of the by-products of the intensification and re-organization of work over the last four decades has been a squeeze and sometimes elimination of paid rest breaks for lunch, tea (or coffee), and individual ‘comfort’ breaks. This paper explores the history of such breaks, covering whims, fads and changes in management ideologies and practices as they apply to time discipline, as well as patterns of resistance seen through the lens of the ‘frontier of control’. More recent developments have seen a partial return to the ‘paid break’, running against the dominant trend of cutbacks in such breaks or conversion from paid to unpaid breaks.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"41 1","pages":"37-64"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47888647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Latecomers to Trade-Union Democracy: The Emergence, Growth, and Role of Union Stewards in the National Union of Public Employees","authors":"R. Fryer, S. Williams","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2019.40.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.5","url":null,"abstract":"This paper situates the emergence of union stewards in the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) within the union’s history and an analysis of workplace representation and its implications for ...","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48949851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Moral Economy and Industrial Politics in the UK from the 1960s to the 1980s","authors":"J. Phillips","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2019.40.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.8","url":null,"abstract":"The 'moral economy perspective' has enriched a number of recent analyses in the history of industrial relations. Focusing on perceptions of fairness helps to explain the reasoning and activism of workers and trade-unionists engaged in industrial politics, movements and protests. A moral economy framework seems particularly apt where activists were animated by a sense of the established order being disturbed and dismantled by employers and policy-makers. Working-class and trade-union responses to the loss of industrial employment from the 1960s to the 1980s were often articulated in terms of collective injustice. Examination of these responses has been influenced by the works of E. P. Thompson and Karl Polanyi. Seeing the erosion of manual employment and changing working-class organization through the twin frameworks of deindustrialization and the moral economy is more productive than older and arguably dead-end narratives of economic decline and trade-union defeat.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41608245","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Right-Wing Pressure Groups and the Anti-Union ‘Movement’ in Britain: Aims of Industry, Neoliberalism, and Industrial Relations Reform, 1942–1997","authors":"S. Mustchin","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2019.40.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.3","url":null,"abstract":"In the second half of the twentieth century, right-wing pressure groups in Britain linked to corporate interests and the Conservative Party made a significant contribution to ideological critiques that framed trade unions as overly powerful and politicized, while also engaging in more practical interventions to influence specific policies, legislation, and wider forms of anti-union activity. This article analyses these pressure groups, focusing on Aims of Industry, established in 1942 by industrialists with Conservative Party affiliations to oppose state intervention in the wider economy. From the 1970s it increasingly focused on industrial relations reform, militancy and 'subversion' in industry. A wide range of firms made donations to Aims. It played a pivotal role in connecting wider networks of right-wing pressure groups. The impact on Conservative policy, in opposition and government, is assessed","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42345945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Thatcher and Major Governments and the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, c. 1985–1992","authors":"S. Daniels","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2019.40.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2019.40.6","url":null,"abstract":"Often now forgotten, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers (UDM) is a breakaway organization formed after the 1984–85 miners’ strike, based primarily in Nottinghamshire. Formed in opposition to the policy and conduct of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) during the strike, newly available archival material has revealed that it received considerable support from the Conservative government, which sought to discourage ‘extremist’ trade unions such as the NUM and to promote ‘moderate’ unions. This article explores that relationship, demonstrating how the UDM was encouraged and rewarded for fitting the Thatcherite model of a ‘moderate’ trade union, and analyses its subsequent decline once that support was removed. Using the framework of Claus Offe and Helmut Wiesenthal, and Walther Muller-Jentsch, it assesses the extent to which the UDM was a ‘hybrid’ organization, displaying features of both an independent and company union","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70518373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}