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Work, wages and the industrial relations tradition

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Industrial Relations in the NHS

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Abstract

The reform of the NHS in the 1990s represents the greatest change to the provision of health care in the United Kingdom since the setting up of the NHS itself in 1948. Much of the reform programme is centred around financial systems based on limiting funds and stimulating managerial controls. The industrial relations within the NHS are a main element of this new corporate strategy, and will play a key part in the success of the new methods of allocating resources. It is the allocation of resources which is the prime mover in the current situation. The Conservative governments of the 1980s argued consistently that the real issue in the funding of the NHS was not the level of available resources, but rather the management of those resources. Within that is the question of how the resources are allocated as between regions, types of health activity, specialisms and medical procedures. This in turn raises a further question of how resources are allocated as between equipment, staffing levels and the employers’ costs of employing any given mix of labour. It is this latter point which, in a labour-intensive industry, places pay determination and other industrial relations issues near the heart of the changes.

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Keele, UK

    Roger Seifert (Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations)

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  1. Roger Seifert
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© 1992 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Seifert, R. (1992). Work, wages and the industrial relations tradition. In: Industrial Relations in the NHS. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3214-3_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3214-3_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-56593-040-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-3214-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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