ABSTRACT
Pay is one of the central concerns of all who work and of those that employ and manage them, as well as being a topic of considerable interest for trade unionists and policy-makers. Liberating the determination of pay from the perceived rigidities of collective bargaining-and increasing the use of performance-based pay-became increasingly articulated as explicit policy aims of Conservative governments during the 1980s (Kessler and Bayliss, 1998:222-4). At the same time, ‘pay flexibility’ joined the labour market lexicon, while ‘wage-push’ inflation and leap-frogging pay settlements’ diminished as sources of concern. Many aspects of pay continued to be widely debated in the 1990s, including the decentralization of bargaining, the complexity of bargaining arrangements, the impact of unions on pay levels and inequalities, and the merits of various payment systems.
