ABSTRACT

The growing strength of the labour movement gives greater potential for disruption and frictions in the labour market than ever before, and at a time when labour's bargaining power was enhanced as a result of the tight employment situation down to the early 1970s. Gordon in fact maintains that labour market institutions in the UK and the USA, in contrast to those in Germany and Japan, were primarily geared to the resolution of disputes rather than to the achievement of macro-economic efficiency. Motor manufacturing may have been somewhat exceptional so far as the frequency of strike action was concerned, but in several other industries — coal, printing, steel, shipbuilding and the docks — strike activity tended to be endemic and was more than a marginal influence in terms of lost production and progress. The influence of the unions on pay is a big and complex issue on which much has been written in years.