Masters, Unions and Men
Work Control in Building and the Rise of Labour 1830–1914

The incidence of industrial conflict and the nature of workplace industrial relations have occupied a central place in public and academic commentary on British society.

Richard Price (Author)

9780521078719, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 11 September 2008

368 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.54 kg

The incidence of industrial conflict and the nature of workplace industrial relations have occupied a central place in public and academic commentary on British society. Debate about the role of the trade unions in the state, the degree of authority that the unions can and should exercise over their members, the desirability of a legal framework for collective agreements, the nature of rank and file militancy and the means and techniques of re-establishing employers' authority over the work in the face of an expanded workers' frontier of control all lie at the heart of the social crisis that marked British society from the end of the 1960s.

1. Freedom, authority and control: the imperatives of general contracting
2. The dynamic of automonous regulation
3. 'No hours: no arbitration.' The crisis of the late sixties and the formalisation of industrial relations
4. From custom to economism: the redefinition of industrial relations
5. Conflict and control: the creation of an industrial relations system
6. The growth of union power
7. Anatomy of crisis: the rank and file and the system.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]