ABSTRACT
Industrial relations policy is the ensemble of ideas, beliefs and goals that underpin and justify the structures of rules by which work and working relationships are governed. This chapter considers how the conflict and cooperation assumptions. The contrasting policy position built on the cooperation assumption can be called control-oriented people management. Democratic governments in the western world abandoned any lingering doubts they might have had about collective industrial relations, placing it at the centre of economic and industrial policy. The political aspect to collective industrial relations is that it brings democracy to the workplace. The need for a governance of work distinct from traditional structures of social control arose as a consequence of modernisation. Almost every trade union movement in Europe has at some point split over the issue of revolution versus reform, while reformist unions vacillate between opportunist bargaining and more normatively-oriented approaches to worker representation.
