Industrial Relation, History Of

Industrial Relations and Collecti
e Bargaining Blanchflower D G, Freeman R B 1992 Unionism in the United States and other advanced OECD countries. Industrial Relations 31: 56–79 Brown W, Marginson P, Walsh J 1995 Management: Pay determination and CB. In: Edwards P (ed.) Industrial Relations. Blackwell, Oxford, UK, pp. 123–50 Clegg H A 1976 Trade Unionism under Collecti
e Bargaining. Blackwell, Oxford, UK Crouch C 1993 Industrial Relations and European State Traditions. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK Crouch C 1994 Beyond corporatism. In: Hyman R, Ferner A (eds.) New Frontiers in European Industrial Relations. Blackwell, Oxford, UK Dunlop J T 1958 Industrial Relations Systems. Holt, New York Ferner A, Hyman R (eds.) 1998 Changing Industrial Relations in Europe. Blackwell, Malden, MA Flanders A D 1970 Management and Unions. Faber, London Goldthorpe J H (ed.) 1984 Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK Hampson I 1999 Between control and consensus: ‘Globalisation’ and Australia’s enigmatic corporatism. In: Edwards P, Elger T (eds.) The Global Economy, National States and the Regulation of Labour. Mansell, London, pp. 138–59 Hyman R 1989 The Political Economy of Industrial Relations. Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK Katz H C 1993 The decentralization of Collective Bargaining: A literature review. Industrial and Labor Relations Re
iew 47: 3–22 Kaufman B E 1993 Origins and E
olution of the Field of Industrial Relations in the United States. ILR Press, Ithaca, NY Locke R, Kochan T, Piore M (eds.) 1995 Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA Sisson K 1987 The Management of Collecti
e Bargaining. Blackwell, Oxford, UK Therborn G 1992 Lessons from corporatist theorizations. In: Pekkarinen J, Pohjola M, Rowthorn B (eds.) Social Corporatism. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK Traxler F 1996 Collective Bargaining and industrial change. European Sociological Re
iew 12: 271–87 Windmuller J P, Gladstone A (eds) 1984 Employers Associations and Industrial Relations. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK

P. K. Edwards

Industrial Relations, History of In most developed countries, wages and working conditions, forms of employment, bonuses, and allowances are regulated, either by law or by collective agreements. The latter are themselves bordered by juridical or customary rules which define their beginning, process, and results. Their coherence does not merely reflect the logic of the national institutions and of the economy. It takes into account the social actors themselves and the aggregation of their decisions, which constitute industrial relations systems. They vary throughout the course of history. They also differ amongst North America, Japan, and Europe and within Europe itself. But everywhere these systems have been deeply altered or even challenged since the 1980s. 7344

1. The Concept of Industrial Relations The term ‘industrial relations’ was born in the USA. It is the product of both changing relations between companies and wage-earners and of academic attempts to instil some order into the turmoil of social change. 1.1 Commons John R. Commons, an economist at the University of Wisconsin (Madison), produced, during the first third of the twentieth century, the first major interpretation of social relations in ‘American industrial society.’ He argued that US workers were more wage-conscious than class-conscious. If companies became aware of these fundamental tendencies, there was room for contracts between management and trade unions. Conflicts could be avoided, minimized, or solved. Government was welcome to promote economic growth by supporting the contractualization of industrial relations. Commons and his followers stressed the importance of institutions for organizing society. Accordingly, they considered trade unions to be a source of social progress. They privileged collective bargaining as fitted to US exceptionalism and adapted to unionization by trade, not by industry. Commons and his followers were not pure and simple academics. They actively contributed to the liberalization of US social legislation which developed between 1918 and 1940. 1.2

Dunlop

John T. Dunlop, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, working between the 1950s and the 1970s, went further in the same direction. He systematized the idea of systems of industrial relations at local, regional, or national levels. Thus he stressed the interdependence between the key elements of industrial relations: for instance, between the definition of a trade union, its representativity, and the nature of a negotiation. This interdependence is characterized not only by a common juridical doctrine, but also by reciprocal strategies carried out by managers and unions. Moreover, rules in industrial relations need to be interpreted by reference to the policies of unions, companies, and trade associations. Social actors create rules and bind each other by such regulations, at least for a specific period of time. Like Commons and his followers, Dunlop and his colleagues worked as experts for public administrations and played a significant part in the evolution of collective bargaining and of legislation till the first oil crisis. Unlike Commons, they moved from the idea of US exceptionalism to its apparent opposite: a possible universal convergence between the national systems of industrial relations. ‘Industrialism’ would bring about a civilization of

Industrial Relations, History of social relations everywhere by generating stable processes of collective bargaining. Meanwhile, Dunlop recognized the plurality of national and continental systems.

2. Three Models in Europe At the end of the nineteenth century and during the twentieth, Europe developed specific features in its industrial relations systems, which are still in force. Collective bargaining is first and foremost the responsibility of employers’ associations and trade unions by trade or sector, coordinated by confederations. Bargaining at company level came later, is growing, but remains under the aegis of federations. A distinction is made between collective bargaining, which deals mostly with wages and working time, and participation of wage-earners, which includes work conditions, welfare, and the adaptation of a broader collective agreement to a firm; also, more recently, information on the firm’s strategy and its impact on employment. In Germany, participation extends to codetermination, introduced under the Weimar Republic and generalized in the aftermath of World War II, by laws passed in 1951–2. Governments are involved in the national regulation of industrial relations. Intra-European variety may be reduced to three types of patterns. The patterns are quite different on other continents. 2.1 The UK and the Republic of Ireland This is the oldest industrial relations system. Trade unions are closely related to trades and collective bargaining is basically at the level of the firm or the workshop. Conversely, strikes are frequent at this level, yet they do not foster political radicalization. Labour legislation is light. Politics and society tend to privilege the freedom of action of employers and unions.

2.3 The Latin Countries This group covers France, Italy, Spain, Portugal. The keyword here is pluralism: pluralism of conflicts, with a significant percentage of preventive strikes and of wildcat strikes; pluralism of trade unions, with a pole of socialist origin, another of Christian origin, and one which calls itself autonomous or independent; pluralism of political influences among wage-earners. In addition, there is limited authority and even, for many years, pluralism of employers’ organizations themselves. Collective bargaining long proceeded only at the national level (for one branch or for the general economy), except at the end of local strikes. Bargaining at company level became a more regular practice in the mid-1950s or even later. Government regulates a variety of issues, except in Italy.

3. North America and Japan 3.1 North America The US labor movement long featured a pluralism of organisations (in fact till 1955), and employers were as reluctant as elsewhere to negotiate with unions. Things changed with the New Deal. The 1935 Wagner Act, however deeply modified by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, made collective bargaining a right for employees, but a union had to be accredited by the vote of a majority of them as the sole counterpart of management in collective bargaining. Law deemed collective bargaining to progress ‘in good faith,’ i.e., to aim at an agreement. Thanks to the sitdown strikes of the mid-1930s, bargaining spread all over the USA and its contents broadened. The areas of bargaining are now wages, working hours, and work conditions. They may include other matters which have consequences for these elements. The closed-shop clause has been declared illegal. As for Canada, it generally followed the US trends. 3.2 Japan

2.2 Central and Northern Europe This group comprises Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian nations. It is characterized by a trend towards uniqueness in several forms: uniqueness of employers’ associations—powerful, structured, obeyed; uniqueness of trade unions—strong and connected to political power; uniqueness of social conflicts—abiding in written or implicit rules. Collective bargaining is centralized by branch. So are strikes, limited to the period of negotiation. In these countries government intervenes by legislating on industrial relations. However, employers and unions have moved to restrict its interference. The Netherlands and Belgium may be included in this group, although both have a plurality of trade unions.

Up to Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II, collective bargaining was exceptional in Japanese companies and would materialize only at the end of strikes. Practices and legislation changed in the late 1940s, under the influence of Japanese liberals and US occupying forces. Collective bargaining became a constitutional right for wage-earners. A company has to bargain with any union which asks for it, and even with any group of employees which does not constitute a union, provided it can express a common will. The employer must present counterproposals to the demands of the employees and negotiate ‘loyally.’ The contents of collective bargaining are extremely broad. A wave of strikes enabled both the spread of unions and of collective bargaining in postwar Japan. How7345

Industrial Relations, History of ever, radical unions were finally defeated; worker activism and protest gave way to management victory in the 1960s and 1970s. Company unions took the upper hand in pursuit of economic affluence. Collective bargaining became a type of cooperation with management, and often quite an influential one. This evolution laid the foundations for a corporatecentered society. In North America and in Japan, when there is no union in the workplace or no agreement is reached, the rights of the employee may be in fact minimal and management keeps its unilateral powers.

4. Recent Changes 4.1

The End of an Era

Many authors consider the stages reached by national industrial relations systems after World War II to have been parts of social settlements built after the strains of the international economic depression of the 1930s and of the wars of the early 1940s, paving the way for a new era of growth. When growth decelerated in the time of oil crises in the 1970s, when national tariff barriers were lowered, and neoliberal ideas made a spectacular headway in the West, industrial relations systems came under attack. At the same period in a number of countries, though not all, membership of unions started to decline. The breakdown of the population changed from a majority of blue-collar workers to an increasing proportion of white-collar employees, in keeping with a growing proportion of women at work and a shift from industry to services. Unemployment simultaneously rose. 4.2

A Shift in Industrial Relations

On a world scale, trade unions entered an era of concessions to employers in terms of wages. The flexibility of work conditions grew. Mechanisms of social protection weakened. Companies moved to a greater individualization of wages, careers, even contracts, and to a more intense involvement of each employee in the workplace. Integration quite often became their motto. Japan was the last country to undergo this new trend and to try and adjust to the challenge. In many countries militancy and the yearly number of strikes and strikers declined. Yet both large companies and governments stressed the importance of collective bargaining to accompany such farreaching changes and to stabilize the emerging global competitive order. In some countries ways were found to integrate small and medium-sized enterprises in industrial relations systems. Outside the USA the reduction of working time became a target for collective bargaining and legislation. In each country some of the trade unions began to adapt and mod7346

ernize their strategies and structures. Some were able to regain members in new working groups. But altogether their societal position has not yet been stabilized and the balance between individual and collective has been altered in significant aspects, in favor of the former.

5.

Current Debates

5.1 The Impact of New Practices on the Paradigm These changes in industrial relations themselves have caused new debates among scholars about Dunlop’s paradigm. The development of framework agreements, of agreements on discussion methods, of agreements setting a policy and targets rather than rights, in short of agreements which are not contracts, is quite different from the explicit forms and the strict obligations characterizing most of collective bargaining in the USA during the 1950s and the 1960s. Collective actors appear less neatly defined, more unstable, and the representativity of unions is under redefinition in some countries. In short, actors may become more defined by action itself. A number of scholars argue that such developments do not invalidate Dunlop’s paradigm, as it is based on autonomous actors able to create rules and to keep their word. 5.2 Recurrent Critiques Simultaneously older critiques of the paradigm find a greater audience. A number of authors have stressed the importance of unorganized conflict, expressed by absenteeism and turnover. They also stress that the US model of the social conflict as a simple form of adjusting industrial rules may reduce its dimensions and that trade unions are not everywhere limited to the provision of personal services to wage-earners. These authors doubt the possibility of a convergence of national industrial relations systems, despite the development of multinational companies and of continental economic unions. Is it still so easy to say that these systems are functional to industrialization? Are the frontiers of these systems clearly defined, as they indeed produce part of their economic or technological ‘context’ themselves? Are they not less stable than their earliest analysts implied? What are the multiple sources of their dynamics? Therefore, research on industrial relations is coming back on the agenda of social sciences, as well as of organizations and of individuals. See also: Business History; Class: Social; Economic History; Industrial Policy; Industrial Relations and Collective Bargaining; Industrial Sociology; Industrialization, Typologies and History of; Labor Movements, History of; Labor Supply; Labor

Industrial Society\Post-industrial Society: History of the Concept Unions; Trade Unions, Economic Behavior of; Trade Unions: Empirical Analyses; Work, History of; Working Classes, History of

Bibliography Dunlop J T 1970 Industrial Relations Systems, 2nd edn. Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale, IL Giraud O, Lallement M 1997 L’institutionnalisation des relations professionnelles en RFA. Entreprises et Histoire 6(October): 36–47 Gordon A 1998 The Wages of Affluence: Labor and Management in Postwar Japan. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Morin M L 1994 Le Droit des SalarieT s aZ la NeT gociation Collecti
e, Principe GeT neT ral du Droit. Librairie ge! ne! rale de droit et de jurisprudence, Paris Reynaud J D, Eyraud F, Paradeis C, Saglio J (eds.) 1990 Les SysteZ mes de Relations Professionnelles. Examen Critique d’une TheT orie. Editions du CNRS, Lyon, France Slomp H 1995 Between Bargaining and Politics. An Introduction to European Labor Relations. Praeger, Westport, CT

P. Fridenson Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Industrial Society/Post-industrial Society: History of the Concept As the proportion of occupations engaged in manufacturing industry declines, to be replaced by work in those sectors of the economy called generally ‘services,’ social observers have tried to understand the wider changes involved. While much has thereby been learned about the character of society after the decline of industry (i.e., ‘post-industrial society’), continuing extensive change makes it difficult to reach firm conclusions.

1. The Theory of Economic Sectors An awareness that the rise of mechanized manufacturing would have implications for social life going far beyond the production of goods itself had been one of the central ideas stimulating the emergence of sociology as an intellectual discipline during the midnineteenth century. Before the growth of industry, social life had been governed primarily by the routines and social relationships of agriculture and landholding. Industry brought a vast range of new occupations; new concentrations of population changed the character of cities; and relations between the owners of capital and those who worked for them replaced relationships based on land tenure as the basic structure of power and inequality.

Central to the change had been the gradual shift of population from agricultural to industrial work. By the mid-twentieth century, however, it was becoming clear that, in those areas which had industrialized first, particularly Great Britain, this process would peak and be replaced by a new change. A number of observers, notably the British economic geographer Colin Clark (1940), had noted a rise in various occupations which ‘were not concerned with the production of goods.’ They called these ‘service’ occupations and developed a model of three sectors of the economy, which also embodied evolutionary assumptions about the order of change: a primary sector, in which people extracted useful material from nature (agriculture and mining), was succeeded by a secondary one, in which people fashioned the material so extracted into goods (manufacturing and construction activities); which was in turn to be succeeded by a tertiary sector, in which people made use of the goods produced (services). That distinction of three sectors entered common parlance and became one of the main means by which economies were analyzed and change over time predicted. For a number of years the most industrialized countries (UK, USA, and some cases on continental Europe) continued to experience growth of both industrial and services sectors (at the expense of agriculture) but from the 1970s it became clear, first in the USA, then in the whole of Western Europe and later Japan, that employment in the secondary sector had joined the primary in a secular decline and that virtually all net employment growth was coming from the tertiary sector. This led to predictions that, as the proportion of the workforce employed in industry declined, there would be extensive social change across many areas of life, possibly as marked as that involved in industrialization itself. The idea of post-industrial society—not just post-industrial employment—was born.

1.1 Subdi
isions of the Ser
ices Sector At the same time, various economists, geographers, and sociologists were becoming aware of the inadequacy of the tripartite division of sectors. The services sector was not really defined at all by the idea of using the products of industry, but was just a residuum, made up of everything that could not be allocated to the other two sectors. A number of writers attempted further analysis of the activities that were being included in the services sector. Katzovien (1970) suggested distinguishing between services complementary to industry, ‘new’ services such as the welfare state and leisure, and ‘old,’ mainly domestic, services. Singer (1971) made a similar proposal, but replaced the distinction between old and new by one between ‘collective’ and ‘personal’. Most contributions sought 7347

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