Government Control of Work

Abstract

There are, I think, three types of reason which lie behind government attempts to control aspects of the employer/employee relationship; governments seek to set minimum standards, to minimise industrial conflict and to regulate the economic outcome of collective bargaining. In the first three sections of this paper I will examine in some detail each of these motivating factors which have produced government intervention. In the final section I will try to map out the future of government intervention and to draw some conclusions about the impact this intervention will have upon the long-term pattern of British industrial relations.