The Government has taken a further step towards devolving responsibility for industrial relations policy to local health authorities. New guidelines on handling industrial disputes published by the DHSS express the Government's determination to stand well back from these and not interfere: "Ministers want NHS management to know that, having issued this guidance, they would hope not to intervene...

The term 'industrial relations' (IR) came into common use in Britain and North America during the 1920s. It has been joined by personnel management (PM) and, since the 1980s, human resource management (HRM). All three denote a practical activity (the management of people) and an area of academic enquiry. Texts in all three fields commonly take as their starting point the corporate assertion tha...

For persons with reduced work capacity, including disabled and elderly people, employment opportunities are influenced by access to work accommodation. This project aims to improve social partners’ expertise through industrial relations in the field of workplace accommodation, and as a result promote the inclusion of disabled and older people in the workplace. The purpose of this retrospective ...

Workplace Industrial Relations in Britain, 1980-2004 There was a time before the first Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS80) in 1980 when what we knew of industrial relations was based primarily upon small scale surveys and case studies. WIRS80 marked a radical departure in the study of industrial relations for two reasons. First, following in the footsteps of a small number of survey ...