ABSTRACT
As we came to draw up our plans for the 1998 survey, all indications were that the ‘traditional’ system had unravelled even further since 1990.2 Official statistics showed that union density fell from 39 per cent of employees in 1990 to 30 per cent in 1997, and the coverage of major national agreements fell over the same period from 35 per cent of employees to 21 per cent.3 Case study evidence pointed to growing interest in direct employee participation and management practices originating in the United States and Japan. And, whereas unions and others in the labour movement had once actively opposed using regulatory channels to establish minimum employment standards-seen to be potentially corrosive in a system of free collective bargaining-union policy at the peak level now called for minimum wages and a floor of rights for all employees. In short, the issues at the forefront of academic and policy debates in the late 1990s were very different from those 20 years earlier. British employment relations might still be ‘muddling through’ (Edwards et al., 1992) but to where, and to what effect?
