ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the results of developments in the engineering industry, which has often been seen as an archetypal case of mechanization and deskilling in response to foreign competition. It focuses on employer strategies at the level of the enterprise and of the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF), an attempt is made to show that despite their apparently decisive victory in a lock-out fought explicitly over managerial prerogatives. The chapter argues that the limits of employer labour strategies can primarily be explained by the constraints and incentives stemming from the fragmented structure of firms and markets in the late Victorian and Edwardian economy. It suggests that far from promoting an increase in managerial authority in the workplace during these years, such employer strategies provided the basis for a far-reaching diffusion of job control practices to new sections of the labour force, which to this day constitutes one of the salient features of British industrial relations.