When William Broadhead, secretary of the Sheffield Grinders Union and landlord of the George Inn, put gunpowder in a house of some ‘scab’ workers in October 1866, the resultant blast had more far-reaching implications than could have been supposed in the wildest imagination. The Royal Commission on Trade Unions the following year marked the first of many formal inquiries into trade unions and industrial relations concerned to bring about reform. The terms of reference were far from auspicious for the growing trade union movement, being to inquire into ‘any recent acts of intimidation, outrage or wrong alleged to have been promoted, encouraged or connived at by such Trade Union or other associations’ (Marsh and Evans, 1973: 281). Largely through the advocacy of Fredric Harrison, the trade union nominee on the Commission, the findings were much more favourable to the unions than could have been expected and ‘resulted in a remarkable change in the public attitude to trade unionism’ (Pelling, 1963: 69). The question posed by the influential minority report has been asked and re-asked throughout the years since, and especially when ‘outrages’ of one sort or another occur, be they outbursts of unofficial strikes or major confrontations with government.
The proponents of structural reform emphasise that the creation of a formal system of industrial relations in the workplace or at company level is the most effective way to achieve good industrial relations. The benefits seem so extensive that surely all men and women of goodwill in industry would be bound to adopt and seek to maintain a system of this sort? Why then do we still encounter difficulties characterised by workplace disorder? Is it because of the British ‘indifference to the notion of highly structured institutions’, as Marsh has suggested (1973: 163). Or is it that the experience of day-to-day industrial relations, of coping, if only just, has led the parties to assume ‘that there is nothing to manage or administer since all is improvisation; that it is impossible, and even undesirable, to extract … any coherent strain of policy, or even any programme, of developing relationships between workers and management’ (ibid: 171)? Or is it that what the structural reformers were really concerned with was a radical change in attitudes and in the quality of inter-party and inter- personal relationships which were somehow assumed to flow from the adoption of new structures?
In Chapt. 1 the conventional structural approach to good industrial relations was considered, with the formalisation of rules and rule-making institutions at establishment or company level seen as an essential prerequisite for reform. Contrasted with this ideal was the sort of fragmented, largely unstructured disorder prevalent in many engineering establishments at the time of Donovan. By implication a simple scale could be constructed indicating the degree of formalisation which would be synonymous with different types of industrial relations along the good-bad dimension (Fig. 3.1).
The CIR described industrial relations in three plants of the company as ‘unorthodox’ largely because, unlike any other CIR company, poor industrial relations was not associated with high strike-proneness. In place of strikes, however, there was ‘a continuous atmosphere of social turbulence’. This was largely explained by the company’s readiness to concede in the face of threats and claims in order to maintain production to satisfy customer needs. The combination of bitter inter-union rivalry, chaotic wage- payment systems, managerial inability to control and schedule production, and a plethora of section-based negotiations handled by the convenors combined to develop an industrial relations system which the CIR considered to be ‘in a dangerous state — not because of anything that has happened in the past but because of things which might happen in the future if things remain unaltered. It is to the credit of all concerned that the potentially explosive situation whereby three shop stewards’ convenors are negotiating, almost continuously with the industrial relations manager, or his deputy, or both, or with the chief rate fixer, often under the threat of a stoppage, has been contained so far.’
The Electric Traction Co. fits fairly closely to the popular image of an American multinational with its emphasis on control systems, budgetary and performance targets and constant pressure to maximise efficient working time. This is partly corporate style: ‘the pursuit of excellence’, passed down from New York; and partly a conscious need to maintain control over unit costs while pressing for high-quality standards in order to survive in the highly competitive world-wide market of agricultural machinery. Corporate style and the competitive market place have always been major influences on the conduct of industrial relations in this company. A further factor was the way in which the company developed in the postwar years. The three production plants (the UK head office is in London) opened one after the other over a period of seventeen years as demand grew. The first plant — the No. 1 Works — opened just after the war in a northern industrial town (referred to as Brother ton) and now employs approximately 2250 manual workers, including 400 in the foundry. Unionisation grew gradually in the 1950s but the company refused to give full recognition.
International Enterprises, an American-owned multinational company, is one of the world’s major suppliers of domestic appliances. The case history concerns one of the company’s plants in Britain manufacturing washing machines and tumble driers, where some 3,500 manual workers are employed. The factory complex is located in what used to be termed a depressed area where structural unemployment has remained high ever since the decline of the coal and steel industries. The town is fairly isolated and, as is often the case, a strong almost introvert community feeling exists which is reflected in the long tradition of unionism and Labour Party politics. About one in seven of the working population are employed at Enterprises. The fortunes of the company and the town are irrevocably intertwined.
Telephone exchange switchgear has gone through major design changes in the last two decades from largely mechanical ‘step-by-step’ methods to fully electronic systems utilising micro-circuits. Between these two systems, as a transitional phase in switchgear design, electro-mechanical systems were developed and manufactured to Post Office specifications. This ‘crossbar’ system, involving extensive wiring assembly work often undertaken by women, began in the 1960s, reached a peak of demand in the early years of the 1970s, and rapidly declined with the heavy cuts in Post Office orders in the second half of the decade and a general move to electronic systems. This case history concerns the development of industrial relations in one of the two factories in the High Tension Cable Co.’s massive empire (an American multinational with a wholly owned UK subsidiary) where crossbar systems were manufactured. The plant, with around 500 manual workers, was based in the Lowlands of Scotland.
In the case histories it often seemed that solutions to growing conflict between management and labour only came to be considered and seriously discussed when, for a variety of reasons, the conflict escalated into a crisis. The parties were forced to take action jointly by the extremity of the circumstances in which they were now caught. Kochan and Dyer have hypothesised that ‘unions and employers will only be stimulated to initiate a search to embark on joint change efforts when under great pressure to do so, i.e. when a felt hurt is experienced’ (1976: 64). This hypothesis has been strongly confirmed by this research, but why might this be so and what brings about the ‘felt hurt’ or the pressure to change?
