Rethinking Industrial Relations

Mobilisation, Collectivism and Long Waves

John Kelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415186735
• eBook ISBN: 9781134663286
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This original book is a wide-ranging, radical and highly innovative critique of the prevailing orthodoxies within industrial relations and human resource management. It covers:

• central problems in industrial relations
• the mobilization theory of collective action
• the growth of non-union workplaces and the prospects and desirability of a new labour-management social partnership
• an historical account of worker collectivism, organization and militancy and state or employer counter mobilization
• a critique of postmodernism and accounts of the end of the labour movement

Containing a detailed examination of the evolution of industrial relations, it argues that the area is often under-theorized and influenced by the policy agenda of the state or employers, and will prove informative reading for students of industrial relations.

1

INTRODUCTION

In 1954 Britain's 700,000 coal miners accounted for approximately three-quarters of all recorded strikes. In 1974 a national strike by the Coal Board's 300,000 miners helped to bring down a government. By 1994 the coal mining industry had been reduced to a rump of sixteen pits and about 10,000 miners. According to some commentators, the late twentieth-century workforce is in the throes of a dramatic transformation, from the traditional, class-conscious collectivism of the industrial manual worker to the self-interested individualism of the skilled, mobile and career-centred white-collar worker (Bassett and Cave 1993; Brown 1990). Consequently they argue that trade unions must abandon traditional collectivist principles and practices if they are to have any future. Others take the view that unions and collective bargaining can survive only if these institutions adapt themselves to product market pressures and contribute to the competitive success of firms (e.g. Kochan and Osterman 1994). The adversarial collective bargaining of the past must give way to a more cooperative, ‘social partnership’ between labour and capital. In the fashionable jargon of management, unions must justify their existence by showing they can ‘add value’ to the corporation. Common to both these viewpoints is the idea that late twentieth-century industrial relations are passing through an historic transition in which new values, practices and institutions will steadily and surely displace the old (Brown 1990; Lash and Urry 1987).

The principal aim of this book is to show that these fashionable and beguiling notions are seriously flawed and deeply misleading. I do this first of all by setting out a theoretical framework - mobilization theory - that allows us to analyse the processes by which workers acquire a collective definition of their interests in response to employer-generated injustice. It is then possible to show that worker collectivism is an effective and situationally specific response to injustice, not an irrelevant anachronism. By drawing on long wave theory it can be shown that the fluctuating fortunes of national labour movements follow predictable patterns that are closely synchronized with the rhythms of the capitalist economy Contrary to postmodernist claims that the classical labour movement is in terminal decline, long wave theory suggests that it is more likely to be on the threshold of resurgence.

The structure of the book is as follows. In Chapter 2 I examine the evolution of the field of industrial relations up to the present in order to establish its strengths and weaknesses and to construct a detailed definition of central research problems based around interests, power and conflict, I try to show that a number of attributes of the field, and in particular its theoretical underdevelopment, continue to hamper our capacity to think usefully about these problems. In Chapter 3 I explore micro-level industrial relations and use the work of Charles Tilly (1978) and Doug McAdam (1988) to develop a more satisfactory account of ‘collectivism’. Tilly's mobilization theory divides the concept into five components - interest definition, organization, mobilization, opportunity, and action -thereby permitting a far more sophisticated and precise analysis of what has happened to the different facets of collectivism over time. McAdam has developed mobilization theory into a framework that explores the origins of collectivism in perceptions of injustice and then maps out the conditions under which members of subordinate groups will respond individually or collectively, if at all. The theory is then used in Chapter 4 to shed fresh light on a range of major and contemporary industrial relations issues: the growth of non-union workplaces; the alleged decline of worker collectivism; the nature of power in industrial relations; the growth of state and employer authoritarianism and repression; and the prospects and desirability of a new labour-management social partnership. The core argument of this section is that the decline of some traditional forms of collective institution should lead us to develop a more rigorous theory of collectivism instead of embracing the fashionable chimeras of individualism or of non-union forms of worker representation. After demonstrating some of the virtues of mobilization theory I then consider one of the most widely-cited theoretical alternatives, Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action (1971) (Chapter 5). I argue that Olson's individualist premises cannot account satisfactorily for the emergence (or decline) of collective organization and I show that his analysis of the role of coercion in the growth and functioning of trade unionism is inadequate and misleading.

The focus then shifts from micro- to macro- and in particular to issues of historical change where I address the argument that we are living through an epochal shift in industrial relations marked by a decline in worker collectivism, organization and militancy. In Chapter 6 I draw on long wave theory to construct an historical account of alternating periods of worker mobilization and state and employer counter-mobilization linked to Kondratieff long waves (upswings and downswings) in the economy. The transition periods between upswing and downswing are marked by unusually intense and wide-ranging class struggles resulting in ‘ruptures’ to the established patterns of class relations. Long downswings are characterized by the restructuring of productive forces, class relations and the composition of the working class so that viewed in proper historical perspective apparent declines in worker ‘collectivism’ are a familiar and explicable feature of advanced capitalist economies. Chapter 7 turns to the literature on postmodernism which is probably the most comprehensive expression of the theme of epochal change, embracing as it does trends in politics, culture and the economy (including the arguments about ‘lean production’ and post-Fordism). I critically review the major arguments from the standpoint of long wave theory and find many of them wanting. The final chapter (Chapter 8) summarizes the themes of the book and draws out their implications for the evolution of the field of industrial relations.

2

THE FIELD OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

In the present chapter I indicate what seem to be the central intellectual problems in contemporary industrial relations. The specification has a threefold purpose. First, and by contrast with some of the HRM literature, it allows us to construct a set of research priorities that do not align the field of industrial relations with the economic and political priorities of employers and the state. Second, it constitutes a benchmark against which we can review the progress of the field of industrial relations in recent decades. Any review of a field of inquiry can deploy purely ‘internal’ criteria, e.g. are its concepts well-defined? Is there a significant body of theory? Is there a well-established stock of empirical knowledge? But it is equally legitimate to construct a set of intellectual problems or puzzles and use progress towards their solution as an evaluative criterion. Finally, the same problems that are used as benchmarks in the evaluation of existing approaches can also be used in the construction and evaluation of alternative approaches.

According to Blyton and Turnbull (1994) the subject matter of industrial relations is ‘the creation of an economic surplus, the co-existence of conflict and cooperation, the indeterminate nature of the exchange relationship, and the asymmetry of power’ (1994: 31).

A focus on interests and power, conflict and cooperation in the employment relationship allows us to identify four central and enduring problems in the field. First, how do workers come to define their interests in collective or individual terms) This is a central problem for several reasons. There is such a wide and diverse range of employee interests that can be pursued through the employment relationship, e.g. job security, higher wages, training, equal opportunities and career progression, that we need to find some way of categorizing and conceptualizing these interests if we are to explain their variation. Whereas employers are necessarily and primarily concerned with profitability, because of market competition, there is no corresponding mechanism amongst workers that can assign equivalent priority to any one of their many interests (Offe and Wiesenthal 1985: 179). Since workers occupy a subordinate position in the employment relationship, their collective definitions of interest are subject to repeated challenges by employers as they try to redefine and realign worker interests with corporate goals. In the context of the post-1979 period, these attempts have given rise to the frequently heard claim that worker collectivism is in decline. How should we conceptualize worker collectivism in order to think usefully about this issue? Are we now witnessing a unique sea-change in collectivism or does the last two decades of the twentieth century represent a familiar period of cyclical, labour movement decline that will soon give way to union resurgence?

The second central problem concerns power: what are the most useful ways of conceptualizing the power and power resources of workers, employers and states? Power is perhaps one of the most widely used concepts in the field of industrial relations but at the same time, as we shall see, one of the least well understood. There is an extensive literature on power outside industrial relations but remarkably little of it has penetrated the field even in debates on the post-1979 decline of trade unions. A number of academics have argued that we are witnessing a ‘transformation’ of existing systems of industrial relations on the untheorized assumption that we are unlikely to see a significant recovery of union power in the future (Kochan et al. 1986). But why should this be the case? If union power in the postwar period was underpinned by state commitment to full employment, why should there not be such a policy in the future? Just as there is lack of theoretical clarity about worker interests, so too (at least in the field of industrial relations) there is a surprising lack of work on the interests pursued by capitalist states. It is surprising in view of the prominent role of state intervention in capitalist economies throughout the postwar period. Finally, how should we conceptualize the relationship between worker and employer interests? This question has become especially important in the recent period of economic recession as growing numbers of employers have sought to recast relations with their workforces in more ‘cooperative’ and less adversarial ways. This search for a ‘mutual gains enterprise’ has even been presented by some authors as a new paradigm that can save the field of industrial relations from threatened oblivion in the face of union decline (Kaufman 1993; Kochan and Osterman 1994). The issue of worker-employer relations has also assumed a new importance because of the argument that advanced capitalist economies may be in transition to a ‘new industrial relations’ following the demise of ‘adversarial collective bargaining’ (e.g. Bassett 1986; Kaufman 1993; Kochan et al. 1986). Too often such arguments have been couched in ahistorical terms without sufficient attempt to locate contemporary changes in historical perspective.

The present chapter begins with these central problems and seeks to establish the gaps and weaknesses in our understanding of them. In the second half of the chapter I will review the field from a different angle in order to try and illuminate some of the reasons that lie behind our inadequate understanding. Both sections of the chapter will then lead into a discussion of an alternative approach in Chapter 3.

Workers’ interests

In 1968 Flanders wrote a famous attack on Perry Anderson's influential essay about the limits and possibilities of trade union action. Anderson (1967) had inter alia restated the classical Leninist view that through trade union organization and action workers would develop only a ‘trade union consciousness’, the conviction that it was necessary to organize collectively and fight the capitalists. Since their real interests lay in a revolutionary assault on the capitalist system the role of the Leninist party was to import such consciousness to workers from the outside. Flanders took great exception to these propositions, claiming that workers knew perfectly well what trade unions were for and did not need to be told by outsiders, a view derived from his long-standing and deep-rooted anti-communism (Flanders 1968a; Kelly forthcoming). What is interesting about Flanders’ work is that whilst he wrote at great length and often with some rigour about the nature of collective bargaining, his views of workers’ interests were very ill-defined. In common with fellow members of the Oxford school such as Hugh Clegg, what passed for analysis of workers’ interests and their compatibility (or otherwise) with those of the employers, was a mixture of casual empiricism and woolly platitudes. Unions, he said, aimed to protect workers’ ‘security, status and self-respect; in short their dignity as human beings’ (Flanders 1968a: 42) and to provide them with ‘stability of earnings ... a continually rising standard of living ... a greater influence on managerial decisions’ (Flanders 1965: 112).

Clegg (1979) did not analyse the employment relationship as such but began his famous textbook by declaring that industrial relations was the study of job regulation (1979: 1). Presumably therefore the ‘interests’ of workers were reflected in the contents of the collective agreements that formed the output of collective bargaining, such as pay, overtime rates, holidays etc. (ibid.: 1–2). So long as industrial relations could be defined (in effect) as the study of collective bargaining then it was obviously convenient, if intellectually lazy, to accept ‘workers’ interests’ as more or less coterminous with their bargaining demands. But reductions in bargaining coverage and scope and employer attempts to commit workers to corporate goals of profitability and competitiveness have fatally undermined this pragmatic solution to what is, in fact, an acute theoretical problem. Contemporary industrial relations textbooks are not much better because despite the exposition of unitary, pluralist, radical (and sometimes human resource management) approaches to the subject, careful reading of the relevant chapters reveals once again the casual empiricism that comes into play when workers’ interests in the employment relationship are the topic of discussion. There are scattered references to wages, terms and conditions, occasionally to status or influence, but rigorous analytical treatment of this crucial topic is quite simply non-existent.¹

There are however several valuable sources of literature about workers’ interests, the first being the sociologically-inspired workplace case studies which flourished for about ten years in Britain from the early 1970s and many of which quickly became established as classics. They comprise Lane and Roberts (1971) on the Pilkington's strike, Beynon's (1973, second edn 1984) study of Ford Halewood, Hill (1976) on the dockers, Nichols and Armstrong (1976) and Nichols and Beynon (1977) on the quiescent workforce at ICI, Batstone et al. (1977, 1978) on steward organization in Massey Ferguson, Armstrong et al (1981) on legitimacy in manufacturing plants, Pollert (1981) on women workers and finally Edwards and Scullion's (1982) account of conflict and control in seven workplaces.² The studies were rich in narrative accounts of events and actions and of the arguments that took place amongst stewards and members about the company, their jobs, the union and strikes. They graphically conveyed a tangible sense of shopfloor industrial relations in a variety of settings: militant vehicle assembly plants in Liverpool and Coventry, a quiescent chemicals plant in the North East, and a previously quiet manufacturing plant in St Helens exploding into an unexpected six-week strike. Non-participant observation was the preferred research method and direct quotes from stewards and other workers the favoured mode of data presentation.

The value of these studies lay in their descriptions of the social processes necessary for understanding some of the central problems of industrial relations. They contained data on the social interactions amongst stewards and members in which the former attempted to define or redefine the interests of workers in particular claims or issues, e.g. the wage parity claim in Beynon (1984) or the annual wage claim in Batstone et al. (1978). Other studies tried to account for the absence of collectivist sentiments amongst manual workers or the problems in translating collective definitions of interests into collective organization and action, e.g. Nichols and Beynon (1977) and Pollert (1981). Finally a number of studies examined some of the factors that could impinge on workers’ own power resources at the workplace, such as the systems of management control of the labour process (Edwards and Scullion 1982) or the degree of legitimacy enjoyed by managerial rule (Armstrong et al. 1981; and see Brown and Wright 1994 for similar points about power).

The social processes involved in interest definition or mobilization cannot be simply ‘described’, in a purely empirical way (Hyman 1994a: 170) since any description necessarily entails some concepts and categories however inchoate and rudimentary. Not surprisingly even the most sophisticated cases made explicit use of both: Batstone et al. utilized Lukes’ (1974) three-dimensional concept of power and the concept of a ‘system of argument’, as well as the categories of ‘leader’ and ‘populist’ shop steward to distinguish different approaches to worker mobilization. Armstrong et al (1981) focused on the legitimacy of the employer's authority and distinguished types of argument that eroded or sustained that legitimacy. Edwards and Scullion (1982) examined different modes of control of the labour process and their implications for worker behaviour and mobilization.

These studies represented the intellectual high-water mark of a brief period of fertile and hi...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The field of industrial relations
• 3 Mobilization theory
• 4 Mobilization and industrial relations
• 5 Olsonian theory and collective action: a critique
• 6 Long waves in industrial relations: mobilization and counter-mobilization in historical perspective
• 7 Postmodernism and the end of the labour movement: a critique
• 8 Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Name index
• Subject index