Industrial Relations and Collecti
e Bargaining
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Industrial Relations, History of
In most developed countries, wages and working
conditions, forms of employment, bonuses, and allow-
ances are regulated, either by law or by collective
agreements. The latter are themselves bordered by
juridical or customary rules which define their be-
ginning, process, and results. Their coherence does not
merely reflect the logic of the national institutions and
of the economy. It takes into account the social actors
themselves and the aggregation of their decisions,
which constitute industrial relations systems. They
vary throughout the course of history. They also differ
amongst North America, Japan, and Europe and
within Europe itself. But everywhere these systems
have been deeply altered or even challenged since the
1980s.
7344
1. The Concept of Industrial Relations
The term ‘industrial relations’ was born in the USA. It
is the product of both changing relations between
companies and wage-earners and of academic at-
tempts to instil some order into the turmoil of social
change.
1.1 Commons
John R. Commons, an economist at the University of
Wisconsin (Madison), produced, during the first third
of the twentieth century, the first major interpretation
of social relations in ‘American industrial society.’ He
argued that US workers were more wage-conscious
than class-conscious. If companies became aware of
these fundamental tendencies, there was room for
contracts between management and trade unions.
Conflicts could be avoided, minimized, or solved.
Government was welcome to promote economic
growth by supporting the contractualization of indus-
trial relations. Commons and his followers stressed the
importance of institutions for organizing society.
Accordingly, they considered trade unions to be a
source of social progress. They privileged collective
bargaining as fitted to US exceptionalism and adapted
to unionization by trade, not by industry.
Commons and his followers were not pure and
simple academics. They actively contributed to the
liberalization of US social legislation which developed
between 1918 and 1940.
1.2 Dunlop
John T. Dunlop, a sociologist at the University of
Wisconsin, working between the 1950s and the 1970s,
went further in the same direction. He systematized
the idea of systems of industrial relations at local,
regional, or national levels. Thus he stressed the
interdependence between the key elements of indus-
trial relations: for instance, between the definition of a
trade union, its representativity, and the nature of a
negotiation. This interdependence is characterized not
only by a common juridical doctrine, but also by
reciprocal strategies carried out by managers and
unions. Moreover, rules in industrial relations need to
be interpreted by reference to the policies of unions,
companies, and trade associations. Social actors create
rules and bind each other by such regulations, at least
for a specific period of time. Like Commons and his
followers, Dunlop and his colleagues worked as
experts for public administrations and played a signifi-
cant part in the evolution of collective bargaining and
of legislation till the first oil crisis. Unlike Commons,
they moved from the idea of US exceptionalism to its
apparent opposite: a possible universal convergence
between the national systems of industrial relations.
‘Industrialism’ would bring about a civilization of

social relations everywhere by generating stable pro-
cesses of collective bargaining. Meanwhile, Dunlop
recognized the plurality of national and continental
systems.
2. Three Models in Europe
At the end of the nineteenth century and during the
twentieth, Europe developed specific features in its
industrial relations systems, which are still in force.
Collective bargaining is first and foremost the re-
sponsibility of employers’ associations and trade
unions by trade or sector, coordinated by confedera-
tions. Bargaining at company level came later, is
growing, but remains under the aegis of federations. A
distinction is made between collective bargaining,
which deals mostly with wages and working time, and
participation of wage-earners, which includes work
conditions, welfare, and the adaptation of a broader
collective agreement to a firm; also, more recently,
information on the firm’s strategy and its impact on
employment. In Germany, participation extends to
codetermination, introduced under the Weimar Re-
public and generalized in the aftermath of World War
II, by laws passed in 1951–2. Governments are
involved in the national regulation of industrial
relations. Intra-European variety may be reduced to
three types of patterns. The patterns are quite different
on other continents.
2.1 The UK and the Republic of Ireland
This is the oldest industrial relations system. Trade
unions are closely related to trades and collective
bargaining is basically at the level of the firm or the
workshop. Conversely, strikes are frequent at this
level, yet they do not foster political radicalization.
Labour legislation is light. Politics and society tend to
privilege the freedom of action of employers and
unions.
2.2 Central and Northern Europe
This group comprises Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
and the Scandinavian nations. It is characterized by a
trend towards uniqueness in several forms: uniqueness
of employers’ associations—powerful, structured,
obeyed; uniqueness of trade unions—strong and con-
nected to political power; uniqueness of social con-
flicts—abiding in written or implicit rules. Collective
bargaining is centralized by branch. So are strikes,
limited to the period of negotiation. In these countries
government intervenes by legislating on industrial
relations. However, employers and unions have
moved to restrict its interference. The Netherlands and
Belgium may be included in this group, although both
have a plurality of trade unions.
Industrial Relations, History of
2.3 The Latin Countries
This group covers France, Italy, Spain, Portugal. The
keyword here is pluralism: pluralism of conflicts, with
a significant percentage of preventive strikes and of
wildcat strikes; pluralism of trade unions, with a pole
of socialist origin, another of Christian origin, and one
which calls itself autonomous or independent; plural-
ism of political influences among wage-earners. In
addition, there is limited authority and even, for many
years, pluralism of employers’ organizations them-
selves. Collective bargaining long proceeded only at
the national level (for one branch or for the general
economy), except at the end of local strikes. Bargain-
ing at company level became a more regular practice in
the mid-1950s or even later. Government regulates a
variety of issues, except in Italy.
3. North America and Japan
3.1 North America
The US labor movement long featured a pluralism of
organisations (in fact till 1955), and employers were as
reluctant as elsewhere to negotiate with unions. Things
changed with the New Deal. The 1935 Wagner Act,
however deeply modified by the 1947 Taft–Hartley
Act, made collective bargaining a right for employees,
but a union had to be accredited by the vote of a
majority of them as the sole counterpart of man-
agement in collective bargaining. Law deemed col-
lective bargaining to progress ‘in good faith,’ i.e., to
aim at an agreement. Thanks to the sitdown strikes of
the mid-1930s, bargaining spread all over the USA
and its contents broadened. The areas of bargaining
are now wages, working hours, and work conditions.
They may include other matters which have conse-
quences for these elements. The closed-shop clause has
been declared illegal. As for Canada, it generally
followed the US trends.
3.2 Japan
Up to Japan’s defeat at the end of World War II,
collective bargaining was exceptional in Japanese
companies and would materialize only at the end of
strikes. Practices and legislation changed in the late
1940s, under the influence of Japanese liberals and US
occupying forces. Collective bargaining became a
constitutional right for wage-earners. A company has
to bargain with any union which asks for it, and even
with any group of employees which does not constitute
a union, provided it can express a common will. The
employer must present counterproposals to the de-
mands of the employees and negotiate ‘loyally.’ The
contents of collective bargaining are extremely broad.
A wave of strikes enabled both the spread of unions
and of collective bargaining in postwar Japan. How-
7345
Industrial Relations, History of
ever, radical unions were finally defeated; worker
activism and protest gave way to management victory
in the 1960s and 1970s. Company unions took the
upper hand in pursuit of economic affluence. Col-
lective bargaining became a type of cooperation with
management, and often quite an influential one. This
evolution laid the foundations for a corporate-
centered society.
In North America and in Japan, when there is no
union in the workplace or no agreement is reached, the
rights of the employee may be in fact minimal and
management keeps its unilateral powers.
4. Recent Changes
4.1 The End of an Era
Many authors consider the stages reached by national
industrial relations systems after World War II to have
been parts of social settlements built after the strains
of the international economic depression of the 1930s
and of the wars of the early 1940s, paving the way for
a new era of growth. When growth decelerated in the
time of oil crises in the 1970s, when national tariff
barriers were lowered, and neoliberal ideas made a
spectacular headway in the West, industrial relations
systems came under attack. At the same period in a
number of countries, though not all, membership of
unions started to decline. The breakdown of the
population changed from a majority of blue-collar
workers to an increasing proportion of white-collar
employees, in keeping with a growing proportion of
women at work and a shift from industry to services.
Unemployment simultaneously rose.
4.2 A Shift in Industrial Relations
On a world scale, trade unions entered an era of
concessions to employers in terms of wages. The
flexibility of work conditions grew. Mechanisms of
social protection weakened. Companies moved to a
greater individualization of wages, careers, even con-
tracts, and to a more intense involvement of each
employee in the workplace. Integration quite often
became their motto. Japan was the last country to
undergo this new trend and to try and adjust to the
challenge. In many countries militancy and the yearly
number of strikes and strikers declined. Yet both large
companies and governments stressed the importance
of collective bargaining to accompany such far-
reaching changes and to stabilize the emerging global
competitive order. In some countries ways were found
to integrate small and medium-sized enterprises in
industrial relations systems. Outside the USA the
reduction of working time became a target for col-
lective bargaining and legislation. In each country
some of the trade unions began to adapt and mod-
7346
ernize their strategies and structures. Some were able
to regain members in new working groups. But
altogether their societal position has not yet been
stabilized and the balance between individual and
collective has been altered in significant aspects, in
favor of the former.
5. Current Debates
5.1 The Impact of New Practices on the Paradigm
These changes in industrial relations themselves have
caused new debates among scholars about Dunlop’s
paradigm. The development of framework agree-
ments, of agreements on discussion methods, of
agreements setting a policy and targets rather than
rights, in short of agreements which are not contracts,
is quite different from the explicit forms and the strict
obligations characterizing most of collective bargain-
ing in the USA during the 1950s and the 1960s.
Collective actors appear less neatly defined, more
unstable, and the representativity of unions is under
redefinition in some countries. In short, actors may
become more defined by action itself. A number of
scholars argue that such developments do not invali-
date Dunlop’s paradigm, as it is based on autonomous
actors able to create rules and to keep their word.
5.2 Recurrent Critiques
Simultaneously older critiques of the paradigm find a
greater audience. A number of authors have stressed
the importance of unorganized conflict, expressed by
absenteeism and turnover. They also stress that the US
model of the social conflict as a simple form of
adjusting industrial rules may reduce its dimensions
and that trade unions are not everywhere limited to the
provision of personal services to wage-earners. These
authors doubt the possibility of a convergence of
national industrial relations systems, despite the de-
velopment of multinational companies and of con-
tinental economic unions. Is it still so easy to say that
these systems are functional to industrialization? Are
the frontiers of these systems clearly defined, as they
indeed produce part of their economic or technological
‘context’ themselves? Are they not less stable than
their earliest analysts implied? What are the multiple
sources of their dynamics? Therefore, research on
industrial relations is coming back on the agenda of
social sciences, as well as of organizations and of
individuals.
See also: Business History; Class: Social; Economic
History; Industrial Policy; Industrial Relations and
Collective Bargaining; Industrial Sociology; In-
dustrialization, Typologies and History of; Labor
Movements, History of; Labor Supply; Labor
 Industrial Society\Post-industrial Society: History of the Concept
Unions; Trade Unions, Economic Behavior of;
Trade Unions: Empirical Analyses; Work, History
of; Working Classes, History of
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P. Fridenson
Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.
Industrial Society/Post-industrial Society:
History of the Concept
As the proportion of occupations engaged in manu-
facturing industry declines, to be replaced by work in
those sectors of the economy called generally ‘services,’
social observers have tried to understand the wider
changes involved. While much has thereby been
learned about the character of society after the decline
of industry (i.e., ‘post-industrial society’), continuing
extensive change makes it difficult to reach firm
conclusions.
1. The Theory of Economic Sectors
An awareness that the rise of mechanized manu-
facturing would have implications for social life going
far beyond the production of goods itself had been one
of the central ideas stimulating the emergence of
sociology as an intellectual discipline during the mid-
nineteenth century. Before the growth of industry,
social life had been governed primarily by the routines
and social relationships of agriculture and land-
holding. Industry brought a vast range of new occupa-
tions; new concentrations of population changed the
character of cities; and relations between the owners of
capital and those who worked for them replaced
relationships based on land tenure as the basic
structure of power and inequality.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
Central to the change had been the gradual shift of
population from agricultural to industrial work. By
the mid-twentieth century, however, it was becoming
clear that, in those areas which had industrialized first,
particularly Great Britain, this process would peak
and be replaced by a new change. A number of
observers, notably the British economic geographer
Colin Clark (1940), had noted a rise in various
occupations which ‘were not concerned with the
production of goods.’ They called these ‘service’
occupations and developed a model of three sectors of
the economy, which also embodied evolutionary
assumptions about the order of change: a primary
sector, in which people extracted useful material from
nature (agriculture and mining), was succeeded by a
secondary one, in which people fashioned the material
so extracted into goods (manufacturing and con-
struction activities); which was in turn to be succeeded
by a tertiary sector, in which people made use of the
goods produced (services). That distinction of three
sectors entered common parlance and became one of
the main means by which economies were analyzed
and change over time predicted.
For a number of years the most industrialized
countries (UK, USA, and some cases on continental
Europe) continued to experience growth of both
industrial and services sectors (at the expense of
agriculture) but from the 1970s it became clear, first in
the USA, then in the whole of Western Europe and
later Japan, that employment in the secondary sector
had joined the primary in a secular decline and that
virtually all net employment growth was coming from
the tertiary sector. This led to predictions that, as the
proportion of the workforce employed in industry
declined, there would be extensive social change across
many areas of life, possibly as marked as that involved
in industrialization itself. The idea of post-industrial
society—not just post-industrial employment—was
born.
1.1 Subdi
isions of the Ser
ices Sector
At the same time, various economists, geographers,
and sociologists were becoming aware of the inad-
equacy of the tripartite division of sectors. The services
sector was not really defined at all by the idea of
using the products of industry, but was just a
residuum, made up of everything that could not be
allocated to the other two sectors. A number of writers
attempted further analysis of the activities that were
being included in the services sector. Katzovien (1970)
suggested distinguishing between services complemen-
tary to industry, ‘new’ services such as the welfare state
and leisure, and ‘old,’ mainly domestic, services. Singer
(1971) made a similar proposal, but replaced the
distinction between old and new by one between
‘collective’ and ‘personal’. Most contributions sought
7347
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