The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) gained public prominence in the 1970s through its campaigns for low-paid workers in the public sector. Stephen Williams and Bob Fryer’s Leadership and Democracy, the second volume of the history of NUPE (1928–1993), is described by the authors as a ‘top-down national history’, but rarely goes very far ‘down’. Dave Lyddon in his review essay (HSIR 38) provides his own commentary, including the roles of women in the union and that of appointed full-time officers. This comment, by an appointed full-time officer, fills some gaps in the history of NUPE provided by the above authors by examining activities at a local level. It covers: innovations in recruiting and retaining members; how the introduction of bonus schemes helped promote the appointment of union stewards; the impact of the reorganization of local government and the National Health Service in 1974; and a comparison of the responses of members to industrial action in the early part of the 1970s and in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1979.
{"title":"A Contribution to the History of the National Union of Public Employees: A View from Cumbria, 1969–1979","authors":"D. Rowbottom","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.8","url":null,"abstract":"The National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) gained public prominence in the 1970s through its campaigns for low-paid workers in the public sector. Stephen Williams and Bob Fryer’s Leadership and Democracy, the second volume of the history of NUPE (1928–1993), is described by the authors as a ‘top-down national history’, but rarely goes very far ‘down’. Dave Lyddon in his review essay (HSIR 38) provides his own commentary, including the roles of women in the union and that of appointed full-time officers. \u0000 \u0000This comment, by an appointed full-time officer, fills some gaps in the history of NUPE provided by the above authors by examining activities at a local level. It covers: innovations in recruiting and retaining members; how the introduction of bonus schemes helped promote the appointment of union stewards; the impact of the reorganization of local government and the National Health Service in 1974; and a comparison of the responses of members to industrial action in the early part of the 1970s and in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1979.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49135108","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}
Welcoming Lyddon's review and much of its argument, this response addresses six specific criticisms of our account: that it is based overmuch on a chronological history of an individual union at the expense of a comparative study; that it is too much 'top down'; that it provides too little information on the working lives of NUPE members; that the union's peculiar status as a 'breakaway' is given insufficient attention, as is the position of women; that our approach sidelines the contribution of lay activists; and that the analysis would have strengthened by more ‘context’. In line with John Saville's recommendation, we adopted a chronological perspective which could then serve as a 'foundation' for further analysis and revision. This also provides members and activists with a memorial of their union and their role in it. Our account draws on a wide range of evidence, including material from the 'NUPE Research Project' conducted in the mid-1970s. Of particular interest was the emerging dialectic between the union's appointed full-time officials and lay activists. We document what we term 'sponsored democracy’, its contextual conditions and the challenges to the power of full-time officers. In NUPE's case, this entailed the (then) unprecedented step of promoting women's involvement in the union’s decision-making bodies, including the provision of 'reserved' seats. Some full-time officers, both national and local, also promoted the role of union stewards, not least in the context of the government’s imposition of restrictive pay policies and pubic-expenditure cuts. Finally, in the absence of any discussion by Lyddon, we reprise NUPE’s role in leading the campaign for a statutory national minimum wage
{"title":"Remembering and Honouring NUPE: A Response to Dave Lyddon’s Review Essay on Leadership and Democracy","authors":"R. Fryer, S. Williams","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.7","url":null,"abstract":"Welcoming Lyddon's review and much of its argument, this response addresses six specific criticisms of our account: that it is based overmuch on a chronological history of an individual union at the expense of a comparative study; that it is too much 'top down'; that it provides too little information on the working lives of NUPE members; that the union's peculiar status as a 'breakaway' is given insufficient attention, as is the position of women; that our approach sidelines the contribution of lay activists; and that the analysis would have strengthened by more ‘context’. \u0000 \u0000In line with John Saville's recommendation, we adopted a chronological perspective which could then serve as a 'foundation' for further analysis and revision. This also provides members and activists with a memorial of their union and their role in it. Our account draws on a wide range of evidence, including material from the 'NUPE Research Project' conducted in the mid-1970s. Of particular interest was the emerging dialectic between the union's appointed full-time officials and lay activists. We document what we term 'sponsored democracy’, its contextual conditions and the challenges to the power of full-time officers. In NUPE's case, this entailed the (then) unprecedented step of promoting women's involvement in the union’s decision-making bodies, including the provision of 'reserved' seats. Some full-time officers, both national and local, also promoted the role of union stewards, not least in the context of the government’s imposition of restrictive pay policies and pubic-expenditure cuts. Finally, in the absence of any discussion by Lyddon, we reprise NUPE’s role in leading the campaign for a statutory national minimum wage","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42971952","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":"Book Reviews","authors":"P. O’Leary, Sheila C. Blackburn, C. Crouch","doi":"10.3828/hsir.2018.39.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/hsir.2018.39.9","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/hsir.2018.39.9","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46411438","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}
This study of the Caterpillar earthmoving-equipment factory at Uddingston in Lanarkshire from its opening in 1956 to closure in 1987 contributes to debates about workforce resistance to deindustrialization. The analysis demonstrates how workers and communities asserted rights to ‘ownership’ of a valued local resource. Built on the site of a former mining village and the largest single industrial unit in Scotland during the 1960s, the factory was established with regional financial assistance. Policy-makers tacitly offered a viable future with more sustainable employment than coal mining. This promise was violated, first by the firm’s anti-union production regime which the workers overturned with a successful strike in the winter of 1960-61; and second, when the closure was announced in 1987. Workers challenged the company’s right to dispose freely of the factory and its equipment which had been developed with public money and their efforts. A 103-day occupation from January to April 1987 was led by a factory trade-union organization embedded in an extensive social infrastructure, with powerful familial ties. Moral economy claims of communal ownership of the factory were asserted by the occupiers in the face of corporate power and private property rights. Though unsuccessful the occupation represented an important attempt to resist the acceleration of deindustrialization in the 1980s.
{"title":"Who Owns a Factory?: Caterpillar Tractors in Uddingston, 1956–1987","authors":"Ewan Gibbs, J. Phillips","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.4","url":null,"abstract":"This study of the Caterpillar earthmoving-equipment factory at Uddingston in Lanarkshire from its opening in 1956 to closure in 1987 contributes to debates about workforce resistance to deindustrialization. The analysis demonstrates how workers and communities asserted rights to ‘ownership’ of a valued local resource. Built on the site of a former mining village and the largest single industrial unit in Scotland during the 1960s, the factory was established with regional financial assistance. Policy-makers tacitly offered a viable future with more sustainable employment than coal mining. This promise was violated, first by the firm’s anti-union production regime which the workers overturned with a successful strike in the winter of 1960-61; and second, when the closure was announced in 1987. Workers challenged the company’s right to dispose freely of the factory and its equipment which had been developed with public money and their efforts. A 103-day occupation from January to April 1987 was led by a factory trade-union organization embedded in an extensive social infrastructure, with powerful familial ties. Moral economy claims of communal ownership of the factory were asserted by the occupiers in the face of corporate power and private property rights. Though unsuccessful the occupation represented an important attempt to resist the acceleration of deindustrialization in the 1980s.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44773522","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}
Trade-unionists have always accepted that picketing involving violence against people or property is unlawful but some jurists and politicians have sought to go further, contending that there is no such thing as lawful picketing. As a result of the decision of the Court of Appeal in J. Lyons & Sons v. Wilkins it became difficult to conceive of any form of picketing which could be both effective and lawful. This article offers a nuanced reading of Lyons and its place in the industrial conflict of the late nineteenth century, analysing divisions and ambiguities in the case law as it developed in response to employers’ recourse to the courts when confronted by peaceful and effective picketing. There was no linear relationship: judicial responses were mediated by a spectrum of factors, including the facts of particular cases, the values of individual judges and common law traditions of hostility to interference with free trade. Lyons is best understood as the conjunction of two groups or forces hostile to the unions. The first was alliances of employers, which sought to counteract the New Unionism by means of aggressive strikebreaking, ‘free labour’, and resort to the courts. The second was a deeply held view among some judges, which long predated the New Unionism, that virtually all trade-union activity, and certainly all picketing, constituted an unacceptable restriction of personal freedom
{"title":"Lyons v. Wilkins and the Right to Peacefully Persuade","authors":"A. Williamson","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.2","url":null,"abstract":"Trade-unionists have always accepted that picketing involving violence against people or property is unlawful but some jurists and politicians have sought to go further, contending that there is no such thing as lawful picketing. As a result of the decision of the Court of Appeal in J. Lyons & Sons v. Wilkins it became difficult to conceive of any form of picketing which could be both effective and lawful. \u0000 \u0000This article offers a nuanced reading of Lyons and its place in the industrial conflict of the late nineteenth century, analysing divisions and ambiguities in the case law as it developed in response to employers’ recourse to the courts when confronted by peaceful and effective picketing. There was no linear relationship: judicial responses were mediated by a spectrum of factors, including the facts of particular cases, the values of individual judges and common law traditions of hostility to interference with free trade. Lyons is best understood as the conjunction of two groups or forces hostile to the unions. The first was alliances of employers, which sought to counteract the New Unionism by means of aggressive strikebreaking, ‘free labour’, and resort to the courts. The second was a deeply held view among some judges, which long predated the New Unionism, that virtually all trade-union activity, and certainly all picketing, constituted an unacceptable restriction of personal freedom","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48705267","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}
This article examines the evolution of managerial trade-unionism in the British coal industry, focusing on the development of the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) from 1947 until 1994. It explores the organization’s identity from its formation as a conservative staff association to its emergence as a distinct trade union, analysing its policy towards industrial action and strike cover, affiliation to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), colliery closures, and the privatization of the coal industry. It examines BACM’s relationship with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), the National Coal Board (NCB) and subsequently the British Coal Corporation (BCC). This is considered within the wider context of managerial identity in the coal industry and discussions over the growth of managerial (and white-collar) trade unions in post-war Britain.
{"title":"‘Run with the fox and hunt with the hounds’: Managerial Trade-Unionism and the British Association of Colliery Management, 1947–1994","authors":"Andrew Perchard, K. Gildart","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2018.39.3","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the evolution of managerial trade-unionism in the British coal industry, focusing on the development of the British Association of Colliery Management (BACM) from 1947 until 1994. It explores the organization’s identity from its formation as a conservative staff association to its emergence as a distinct trade union, analysing its policy towards industrial action and strike cover, affiliation to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), colliery closures, and the privatization of the coal industry. It examines BACM’s relationship with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS), the National Coal Board (NCB) and subsequently the British Coal Corporation (BCC). This is considered within the wider context of managerial identity in the coal industry and discussions over the growth of managerial (and white-collar) trade unions in post-war Britain.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41802151","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}
This paper, written in 1977, analyses historical differences in the social aspects of industrialization in Britain and Germany. These are seen as relevant to an understanding of industrial relations in these countries and as to why the particular forms taken by developments of ‘industrial democracy’ in the two countries will continue to differ in significant ways. Deep-rooted institutions, values, traditions, and dispositions to act in certain ways rather than others, affect the wish and capacity to alter direction. This is relevant to the discussion within the European Community about legislation in employee participation. The European Community Commission argues that industrial and commercial growth; cross-frontier movements of companies, capital, and employees; and economic and monetary union require organized convergence towards ‘a common structural foundation’ throughout the Community. A structure of employee participation is seen as one important element of this convergence. But given the divergent historical legacies of the member-states, how far the Commission’s thrust towards uniform economic and social structures is likely to succeed is problematical.
{"title":"Corporatism and Industrial Democracy: The Social Origins of Present Forms and Methods in Britain and Germany (1977)","authors":"A. Fox","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.8","url":null,"abstract":"This paper, written in 1977, analyses historical differences in the social aspects of industrialization in Britain and Germany. These are seen as relevant to an understanding of industrial relations in these countries and as to why the particular forms taken by developments of ‘industrial democracy’ in the two countries will continue to differ in significant ways. Deep-rooted institutions, values, traditions, and dispositions to act in certain ways rather than others, affect the wish and capacity to alter direction. This is relevant to the discussion within the European Community about legislation in employee participation. The European Community Commission argues that industrial and commercial growth; cross-frontier movements of companies, capital, and employees; and economic and monetary union require organized convergence towards ‘a common structural foundation’ throughout the Community. A structure of employee participation is seen as one important element of this convergence. But given the divergent historical legacies of the member-states, how far the Commission’s thrust towards uniform economic and social structures is likely to succeed is problematical.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.8","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45339932","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}
Rookes v. Barnard [1964], extending and applying the tort of intimidation to industrial disputes, is the most momentous decision on trade unions and trade disputes since the Taff Vale case [1901]. It is a frontal attack on the right to strike. For those who have to give notice to terminate their contract of employment – most workers after the Contracts of Employment Act 1963 – the threat of damages will hang over them, and over any union officers who act in concert with them. Any firm of suppliers or of customers of a firm, which lose a contract with that firm owing to a threat of strike against it in breach of the required notice, will also be able to claim for damages. Moreover, the ‘labour injunction’ is being revived. The repressive tendencies of the courts, which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had to be repeatedly counteracted by Parliament, are on the point of being revived. A new statute is required to overrule Rookes.
{"title":"Rookes v. Barnard — and After (1964)","authors":"O. Kahn-Freund","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.4","url":null,"abstract":"Rookes v. Barnard [1964], extending and applying the tort of intimidation to industrial disputes, is the most momentous decision on trade unions and trade disputes since the Taff Vale case [1901]. It is a frontal attack on the right to strike. For those who have to give notice to terminate their contract of employment – most workers after the Contracts of Employment Act 1963 – the threat of damages will hang over them, and over any union officers who act in concert with them. Any firm of suppliers or of customers of a firm, which lose a contract with that firm owing to a threat of strike against it in breach of the required notice, will also be able to claim for damages. Moreover, the ‘labour injunction’ is being revived. The repressive tendencies of the courts, which in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had to be repeatedly counteracted by Parliament, are on the point of being revived. A new statute is required to overrule Rookes.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41520571","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":"Introduction to Alan Fox, ‘corporatism and industrial democracy’","authors":"W. Brown","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.7","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48183011","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}
By the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) 1906, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 for Douglas Rookes that Alfred Barnard, John Fistal and Reginald Silverthorne had used unlawful means in threatening to strike to secure Rookes’s removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) after his resignation from the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD), because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation which was unprotected by the TDA’s statutory immunities. Rookes illustrated the relevance of Laski’s view that in labour law the common law is ‘a law behind the law’. It was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked the TDA’s tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities, and which in turn strengthened calls for statutory restriction and regulation of industrial action.
{"title":"The Law behind the Law: Rookes v. Barnard [1964], the Common Law and the Right to Strike","authors":"Paul M. Smith","doi":"10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.2","url":null,"abstract":"By the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act (TDA) 1906, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 for Douglas Rookes that Alfred Barnard, John Fistal and Reginald Silverthorne had used unlawful means in threatening to strike to secure Rookes’s removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC) after his resignation from the Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD), because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation which was unprotected by the TDA’s statutory immunities. Rookes illustrated the relevance of Laski’s view that in labour law the common law is ‘a law behind the law’. It was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked the TDA’s tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities, and which in turn strengthened calls for statutory restriction and regulation of industrial action.","PeriodicalId":36746,"journal":{"name":"Historical Studies in Industrial Relations","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-09-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/HSIR.2017.38.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46496221","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}
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