ABSTRACT
The British system of industrial relations was, until the last few years, less legally regulated than any other system of industrial relations in the world. The central feature of the system was that wages, and increasingly salaries, and the main terms of employment for the great majority of employees were settled by agreements made voluntarily by negotiations between employers and trade unions. It was true to say that although the state had come to play a much larger role in protecting the economic and social interests of the worker, it had virtually no influence on the procedures and little more effect on the substantive terms and conditions of employment agreed by employers and unions through the collective bargaining process.
