Preliminary Programme

Much of the research over the last 20 years influenced by John Kelly’s Rethinking Industrial Relations (1998) has tended to place particular emphasis on his identification of the key driving role played by activists and leaders in the process of identifying and articulating workers’ grievances, transforming vague feelings of discontent into a firmer sense of injustice, attributing blame for the sources of discontent on employers and government, advocating and mobilising for strike action as an effective means of collective redress. Arguably, this analysis of the relationship of activist leadership to collective action within the overall jigsaw of mobilisation theory – while not completely re-inventing the wheel - made a very important multi-dimensional and sophisticated analytical contribution to the field of industrial relations that remains of continuing relevance. But it also highlights some potential tensions and critical limitations that suggest the need for further refinement and development.
To begin with the paper explores the way Kelly’s approach to the relationship between mobilisation and leadership rebalanced the analysis away from the primarily objective structural/institutional emphasis of much historical industrial relations work on explaining strike activity towards a more nuanced analytical framework that documented the central role of the subjective agency of union leadership in channelling workers’ grievances into collective forms of mobilisation. But at the same time as drawing on such an actor-related approach, Kelly recognised that leadership, whilst absolutely central, is merely one ingredient amongst other factors, and thereby that the nature and dynamics of leadership has analytically to be anchored within a broader context of social, economic, political, and organisational variables both within the workplace and society generally, that places both material opportunities and constraints for collective mobilisation (Darlington, 2002; 2009; 2014).
Three potential tensions are then explored (Atzeni, 2009; Ghigliani, 2010; Cohen, 2014). First, the extent to which workers’ grievances and sense of injustice are generated directly from the structural contradictions of the capitalist labour process and are therefore a socially based process, and the crucial role played by union leaders in interest formation/construction for collective organisation and activity. Second, the way in which mobilisation can originate in the more or less spontaneous action of workers, and the extent to which leaders are required to ‘frame’ grievances and encourage/organise collective action. Third, the relationship between ‘leaders’ in promoting and transforming the interests/identities of workers, and extent to which there is a more dynamic two-way process in which the role of ‘ordinary’ union members can be as important.
Two critical limitations with Kelly’s approach are also identified. First, the potentially central role of specifically left-wing political activists in workplace collective mobilisation is undeveloped and explored. Second, there is an inadequate integration of an analysis of the potential conflicting priorities and interests between union members and full-time national union officers which can impact on the limits/potential for workplace collective mobilisation.
Ralph Darlington, Salford Business School, University of Salford, United Kingdom (Show less)

Industrial action in response to job loss has become increasingly uncommon and, at least in Britain, was very rare in the period of recession following the 2008 financial crisis (e.g. Gall, 2013). This paper explores the dynamics of worker resistance to redundancy and restructuring in the 1980s, drawing on three published papers focusing on particular individual disputes in the period: the 1980 Gardner strike and occupation (Mustchin, 2016); the 1984 strike and occupation at Cammell Laird shipbuilders (Mustchin, 2011); and the 1985-87 strike at Silentnight (Mustchin, 2014).
The three cases are based on detailed research involving archival materials and oral history interviews, developing rich accounts of significant strikes drawn from a period often overshadowed by the 1984/5 miners’ strike. In each of these three cases, sustained industrial action arose in response to job losses and was driven by locally organised workers, contrasting with analyses suggesting such responses only develop when the leadership of unions are directly threatened (Golden, 1997). Each strike featured workers campaigning to maintain manufacturing jobs in a wider context of recession, and involved notable grass-roots organisation, coalition building and solidarity campaigning with a wide range of unions, labour movement organisations, social movements and communities in the face of a harsh economic climate and increasingly confident, anti-union management during the period of the Thatcher governments.
The paper will draw together these three papers, focusing on: the context within which the strikes took place and their economic and political catalysts; several remarkable cases of grassroots union action featuring the development of broad supportive coalitions involving the wider labour movement and community campaigning; tensions between strike participants and their union bureaucracies; the role of the state in framing and challenging these actions; and anti-unionism in practice, including the role of the state agencies, public relations campaigning, strike breakers and opponents of organised labour such as the Economic League. The wider decline of strikes against job losses and workplace occupations will be considered in the context of economic restructuring, notions of worker ‘quiescence’ and the wider role of the state in suppressing industrial action in the 1980s and more contemporarily.
Stephen Mustchin, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, United Kingdom (Show less)

Since the 1980s strike activity in Western countries has plummeted. This development is well-known and undisputed by researchers. No one can foresee the future but despite the recent crisis there are no signs that this downfall has come to an end. The tertiarization and feminization of the strike movement also haven’t stopped the often predicted demise.
But what about other parts of the world? Will they take over the role of the West in this respect? To investigate this I calculated a strike index for 27 non-Western countries for the period 1953-2010. This index can easily be compared to a similar index for 16 Western countries. It turns out that both indices show different patterns and diverging trends.
Mainly based on official strike data we can conclude that the developing world is taking over the role of the West as the place where IT happens.
Sjaak van der Velden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Show less)

Shipyard workers are reputed to have a special willingness to strike, often with a political content. This applies to the workers of the Bremer Vulkan, a shipyard that produced its ships in the northwest of Germany from the end of the 19th century to the 1990s. The “Vulcaneos” were important actors during the revolutionary events around 1919 and brought Bremen the reputation of the “Sonderweg” in the labour movement because of their long-lasting claim for the “Räterepublik”. The strike in 1953 also turned into a political one, in which social-democratic and communist groups tried to assert their ideas about union-based work.
In the early 1970s, when several wildcat strikes happened at the Bremer shipyard, New Left actors tried to become active on the Bremer Vulkan. Their aim was to inspire the workers for a fight against the established trade union policy and to form an alternative trade union movement from below. In the beginning they were very successful. They achieved wage increases and the resignation of the social-democratic chairman of the works council. But distrust between the various communist actors brought the movement into trouble. The paper will present the negotiations between the different political groups and the works council as well as the reactions by the workers, who were overcome by sense of being caught between chairs.
Johanna Wolf, Global and European Studies Institute, University of Leipzig, Germany (Show less)