ABSTRACT
The International Labour Office (ILO) Conference of 1926 produced a range of recommendations on the collection and presentation of statistics on industrial disputes. In 1926 the ILO sponsored an attempt to standardize the way in which strike statistics were classified and published. Most of the quantitative work in the industrial relations field has concentrated on strike action and degree of unionization. Throughout the post-war period ILO data on stoppage incidence have covered the ‘industrial sector’ - comprising mining, manufacturing, construction, and transport. Strike activity is necessarily only a partial indicator of industrial conflict, let alone of the wider industrial relations climate within an economy. The British Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, chaired by Lord Donovan, devoted some time to comparing industrial dispute statistics across sixteen countries using ILO data for the mid-1960s. The comprehensive all-industries approach to stoppage comparisons has major advantages for analytical purposes over both the industrial-sector and manufacturing industry data.
