ABSTRACT
The Conservative Party has always been divided in its attitude to trade unions, between co-operation and confrontation and between incomes policy and free bargaining. Most of the Heath Government’s trade-union reforms had been repealed by the Labour Government. Lord Young, who took over as Employment Secretary in September 1985, was more concerned with freeing the supply side of the labour market than with trade-union law. Unit labour costs in manufacturing are nominal earnings and other labour costs divided by productivity and are an indicator of international competitiveness. The Community Programme did little to improve the supply side of the labour market, apart from getting some of it out of the long-term unemployment figures. The Government’s labour-market policies brought about enormous changes in the pattern of employment. The Government was slow off the mark in developing the skills of the labour force in order to narrow the productivity gap between the UK and its competitors.
