Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Industrial Relations in the “Golden Age” in the UK and the USA, 1945 to 1980

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Book cover The Palgrave Handbook of Management History

  • 481 Accesses

Abstract

The dominant interpretation of industrial relations in the UK and USA from 1945 to 1980 emphasizes the “power” of trade unions and manual workers, which narrowed the agency of employers and managers. This involves a linear “rise and fall” narrative, where stable economic growth provided trade unions with an advantage which they exploited and then squandered. Such narrative is shown in this chapter to be inaccurate. Many workers encountered substantial reversals in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1970s, by comparison, often characterized as beset by industrial and social chaos, was for many workers a decade of progress. Labor’s bargaining power was constrained by deindustrialization from the late 1950s onward. The linear narrative of general improvement is further qualified by the experiences of female and ethnic minority employees, who struggled to secure justice in the workplace. Class also remained a key fault line. Collective bargaining was retarded in most manual and many white-collar settings by employer objections to sharing control over the organization of work. Business power, not union power, was the chief characteristic of industrial relations in both the USA and the UK from 1945 to 1980.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Ackers P (2014) Game changer: Hugh Clegg’s role in drafting the 1968 Donovan report and redefining the British industrial relations policy-problem. Hist Stud Ind Relat 35:63–88

    Google Scholar 

  • Arnold J (2016) Vom Verlierer zum Gewinner – und zurück. Der Coal Miners als Schlüsselfigure der Britishen Zeitgeschichte. Geschichte und Gesellschaft 42:266–297

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Beynon H (1973) Working for Ford: men, masculinity, mass production and militancy. Allen Lane, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Cohen S (2012) Equal pay – or what? Economics, politics and the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike. Lab Hist 53(1):51–68

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cole P (2013) No justice, no ships get loaded: political boycotts on the San Francisco and Durban waterfronts. Int Rev Soc Hist 58:185–217

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cosgrove S (2017) Memphis 68: the tragedy of Southern Soul. Polygon, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowie J (1999) Capital moves: RCA’s seventy-year quest for cheap labor. Cornell University Press, Ithaca

    Google Scholar 

  • Cowie J (2010) Stayin’ alive: the 1970s and the last days of the working class. The New Press, New York/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Cummings SD (1998) The dixification of America: The American Odyssey into the conservative economic trap. Praeger, Westport

    Google Scholar 

  • Daniel WW (1968) Racial discrimination in England: based on the PEP report. Penguin, Harmondsworth

    Google Scholar 

  • Dorey P (2014) The stepping stones programme: the conservative party’s struggle to develop a trade union policy, 1975–79. Hist Stud Ind Relat 35:89–116

    Google Scholar 

  • Faue E (2018) Rethinking the American labor movement. Routledge, New York/London

    Google Scholar 

  • Fox A (1966) Industrial sociology and industrial relations. Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations, Research Paper 3. HMSO, London

    Google Scholar 

  • French MJ (1997) US economic history since 1945. Manchester University Press, Manchester

    Google Scholar 

  • Gazely I (2014) Income and living standards, 1870–2010. In: Floud R, Humphries J, Johnson P (eds) The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain, Vol. II, 1870 to the present. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 151–180

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs E, Phillips J (2018) Who owns a factory?: Caterpillar Tractors in Uddingston, 1956–1987. Hist Stud Ind Relat 39:111–138

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs E, Tomlinson J (2016) Planning the new industrial nation: Scotland, 1931–1979. Contemp Br Hist 30(4):585–606

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldthorpe J, Lockwood D, Bechhofer F, Platt J (1969) The affluent worker: industrial attitudes and behaviour. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Groves S, Merritt V (2018) Trico: the longest equal pay strike. Lawrence & Wishart, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Halpern R (1997) Down on the killing floor. Black and white workers in Chicago’s packinghouses, 1904–54. University of Illinois Press, Urbana/Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Hay C (2015) The trade unions and the “winter of discontent”: a case of myth-taken identity. Hist Stud Ind Relat 36:181–203

    Google Scholar 

  • Hood N, Young S (1982) Multinationals in retreat: the Scottish experience. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Joseph K (1975) Reversing the trend. Barry Rose Law Publishers, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Knox WW, McKinlay A (1999) Working For the Yankee Dollar: American inward investment and Scottish labour, 1945–1970. Hist Stud Ind Relat 7:1–26

    Google Scholar 

  • Knox WW, McKinlay A (2003) “Organizing the unorganized”: union recruitment strategies in American transnationals, c. 1945–1977. In: Gall G (ed) Union organizing: campaigning for trade union recognition. Routledge, London, pp 19–38

    Google Scholar 

  • Knox WW, McKinlay A (2011) The union makes us strong? Work and trade unionism in Timex, 1946–83. In: Tomlinson J, Whatley CA (eds) Jute no more: transforming Dundee. University of Dundee Press, Dundee, pp 266–290

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lunn K (1999) Complex encounters: trade unions, immigration and racism. In: Campbell A, Fishman N, McIlroy J (eds) British trade unions and industrial politics, Vol. Two: the high tide of trade unionism, 1964–79. Ashgate, Aldershot, pp 70–90

    Google Scholar 

  • Marr A (2008) A history of modern Britain. Pan, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Martin T (2009) The beginning of labour’s end? Britain’s “winter of discontent” and working-class women’s activism. Int Lab Work Class Hist 75(1):49–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McDowell L, Sundari A, Pearson R (2014) Striking narratives: class, gender and ethnicity in the “Great Grunwick Strike”, London, UK, 1976–1978. Women's Hist Rev 23(4):595–619

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McGowan J (2008) “Dispute”, “Battle”, “Siege”, “Farce”? – Grunwick 30 years on. Contemp Br Hist 22:383–406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Minkin L (1992) The contentious alliance. Trade unions and the labour party. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Phelps Brown H (1986) The origins of trade union power. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips J (2011) UK business power and opposition to the bullock committee’s 1977 proposals for worker directors. Hist Stud Ind Relat 31(32):1–30

    Google Scholar 

  • Phillips J (2013) The moral economy and deindustrialization in the Scottish coalfields, 1947–1991. Int Lab Work Class Hist 84:99–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phillips J (2017) Economic direction and generational change in twentieth century Britain: the case of the Scottish coalfields. Engl Hist Rev 132:885–911

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Phillips J, Wright V, Tomlinson J (2019) Industrial restructuring, the Linwood car plant and Scotland’s political divergence from England in the 1960s and 1970s. Twentieth Century British History, forthcoming

    Google Scholar 

  • Pizzolato N (2013a) Challenging global capitalism: labor migration, radical struggle, and urban change in Detroit and Turin. Palgrave Macmillan, London

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Pizzolato N (2013b) The American worker and the Forze Nuove: Detroit and Turin at the twilight of fordism, Viewpoint Magazine, 25 Sept 2013

    Google Scholar 

  • Portelli A (2011) They say in Harlan county. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Roper, C. (2018) ‘Trade union membership is growing, but there’s still work to do.’, Trades Union Congress Blog, https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/trade-union-membership-growing-there’s-still-work-do; Accessed 4 Jan 2019

    Google Scholar 

  • Savage M (2005) Working class identities in the 1960s: revisiting the affluent worker studies. Sociology 34:929–96

    Google Scholar 

  • Seifert R, Hambler A (2016) ‘Wearing the Turban: the 1967–1969 Sikh bus drivers’ dispute in Wolverhampton. Hist Stud Ind Relat 37:83–111

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith P (2011) Order in British industrial relations: from Donovan to neoliberalism. Hist Stud Ind Relat 31–32:115–154

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevenson G (2016) The forgotten strike: equality, gender, and class in the trico equal pay strike. Lab Hist Rev 81(2):141–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thatcher M (1995) The path to power. Harper Collins, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Todd S (2008) Affluence, class and crown street: reinvestigating the post-war working class. Contemp Br Hist 22:501–518

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomlinson J (2016) De-industrialization not decline: a new meta-narrative for post-war British history. Twentieth Century Br Hist 27(1):76–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomlinson J (2017) Managing the economy, managing the people. Narratives of economic life in Britain from Beveridge to Brexit. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Torode J (1968) Ford women machinists go back to work on a promise. The Guardian, 1 July 1968, p. 16

    Google Scholar 

  • van der Velden S (2016) Global conflicts dataverse. International Institute of Social History. https://datasets.socialhistory.org/dataverse/labourconflicts. Accessed 4 Jan 2019

  • Whiting R (2008) Affluence and industrial relations. Contemp Br Hist 22:519–536

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wrigley C (2002) British trade unions since 1933. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Zieger RH (1994) American workers, American Unions, 2nd edn. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Economic & Social History, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

    Jim Phillips

Authors
  1. Jim Phillips
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jim Phillips .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Phillips, J. (2019). Industrial Relations in the “Golden Age” in the UK and the USA, 1945 to 1980. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Management History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62348-1_37-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62348-1_37-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62348-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62348-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation