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Pay and Industrial Relations in the UK Public Sector
Author(s) -
Bailey Rachel
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
labour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.403
H-Index - 34
eISSN - 1467-9914
pISSN - 1121-7081
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9914.1989.tb00155.x
Subject(s) - public sector , industrial relations , private sector , section (typography) , thatcherism , secondary sector of the economy , control (management) , economics , business , public economics , political science , economy , economic growth , management , law , politics , advertising
A decade of Thatcherism has produced a range of measures that directly and indirectly have had a significant impact on industrial relations institutions and outcomes. Economic growth in the private sector has been attributed in part to the development of a new era of industrial relations, one in which former patterns of job control, pay determination, strikes, and union membership have altered significantly and probably permanently. It was unlikely that the public sector would remain immune from such changes, particularly given the notoriety that industrial relations in this sector achieved during the 1970s. This paper will examine the main developments in public sector industrial relations over the last two decades, concentrating on pay, and its associated outcomes, and on the performance of the institutions through which pay is determined. Throughout, the emphasis will be on assessing how far the changes that have occurred have tackled the perceived problems of the 1970s, or met the new requirements of the 1980s. By way of introduction, section 1 summarises the main features of the UK public sector which relate to pay. Data on pay outcomes for the period 1970‐88 for the main occupational groups are provided in Section 11. A description of the evolution of pay determination machinery is given in Section 111, which concludes with a brief look at one indicator of the success or failure of these institutional arrangements, namely strikes. The fourth section deals with the criteria by which pay has been determined over the last twenty years, noting the interaction between these and the institutional arrangements. Finally, we look briefly at one other outcome, productivity, as one indicator of how well public sector industrial relations are geared to improving organizational performance.