The troubled relationship between shop floor bargaining and the state occupies a central place in current debates about the nature of politics in capitalist societies. Yet empirical studies of this relationship have focused primarily upon macro-economic problems and labour legislation, rather than state involvement in industrial relations at the workplace itself. The seven essays in this volume undermine established interpretations of the state as a defender of managerial prerogatives in the workplace, and stress instead the ambiguous and contradictory results of state intervention in particular historical circumstances. In the British case, detailed studies of ship building during the First World War, dock decasualisation and the unionisation of the motor industry, show that the state has at key moments enhanced the autonomy of shop floor organisation. Comparative studies of New Deal America, postwar Italy and the British and American aerospace industries confirm this finding in an international context, and provide contrasting points of reference for the British case.
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First published in 1985, this multi-author volume discusses the contentious issue of the relationship between shop floor bargaining and the state.
Acknowledgments;
1. Shop floor bargaining and the state: a contradictory
relationship Jonathan Zeitlin;
2. Dilution, trade unionism and the state in
Britain during the First World War Alastair Reid;
3. Public policy and port
labour reform: the dock decasualisation issue, 191050 Noel Whiteside;
4.
Government, employers and shop floor organisation in the British motor
industry, 193969 Steven Tolliday;
5. The snares of liberalism? Politicians,
bureaucrats, and the shaping of federal labour relations policy in the United
States, ca. 191547 Howell Harris;
6. Politics, law and shop floor bargaining
in postwar Italy Giovanni Contini;
7. Controlling production on the shop
floor: the role of state administration and regulation in the British and
American aerospace industries Bryn Jones; Index.
