Goodbye Blue Sky: Partnership in the UK Aerospace Sector

Abstract

This chapter presents two case studies of workplace partnership in the aerospace industry, a key strategic sector for Britain’s manufacturing base. We first provide a brief account of organisational context by describing recent politico-economic changes affecting the sector along with the distinctive patterns of organisational restructuring that have transformed many UK aerospace plants into ‘new flexible firms’. We then provide detailed case study accounts of the impact of restructuring, focusing upon the labour process and patterns of management control. These changes generated widespread feelings of insecurity, grievance and discontent on the shop floor and in the engineering offices. But they did not take hold in an industrial relations vacuum. The chapter analyses two contrasting examples of management attempts to legitimise organisational change by developing partnership relationships with workplace unions. The first is an example of ‘informal partnership’ characterised by an emphasis upon informality and process. The second is an example of ‘formal partnership’ governed by written agreement and emphasising process but also a more systematic, methodical approach to recasting management-union relations. In both cases the analysis highlights tensions and contradictions inherent in partnership strategies by drawing on the first hand accounts of union stewards and workers.