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The purpose of this paper is to look back on 150 years of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and reflect on the recent challenges to organised labour.

Places unions in their current context and discusses how they have responded to the challenge of declining membership.

With declining membership levels and the lack of a “silver bullet” solution, unions continue to face many challenges, although there is some light at the end of the organising tunnel.

This paper introduces the special issue which reflects on 150 years of the TUC.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between trade unions and young workers in the UK using the Young Members’ Network of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union as a case study.

Findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 20 full-time officials and 39 lay officials of all ages, the collection and analysis of primary documents and observations at a range of union meetings.

It is argued that PCS has developed a strong network of young activists and is leading the way in terms of engaging with and representing young workers. However, its success in the future may be limited due to changes to the external environment in which the union is trying to organise.

The research highlights the role of an under researched area of trade union membership. To provide additional insights, further research is needed into the practice of other unions.

This paper provides significant qualitative analysis into this issue which complements the existing quantitative research in this area.

The purpose of this paper is to bring together two separate strands of the literature (politics and industrial relations) on civil service management and reform to enable consideration of the industrial relations implications of these changes.

This paper is conceptual and has no empirical base. The paper is a general review of existing literature on the subject.

The paper identifies the importance of historical legacy in both management and union behaviour in the civil service. By revisiting earlier civil service reforms, the reader is able to gain an understanding of the rationale for much of the current restructuring of the civil service. Additionally, any discussion of trade union behaviour should be located in the context of union tradition and evolution.

In being a general review, the paper does not report empirical evidence but instead provides the background for future research into civil service industrial relations and management.

This paper is the first to provide a systematic review of management restructuring in the civil service whilst at the same time considering union responses. As such, the paper is of interest to academics and practitioners in the areas of both management and politics.

The 50th anniversary of Fox's Beyond Contract and Man Mismanagement coincides with another vital contribution to the sociology of work from 1974: Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital. This article analyses these two scholars' complementary approaches to job design and the extent to which Fox's ideas influenced subsequent labour process thought.

The article's methodological approach is a historiographical reading of Fox and Braverman's thought in the context of their times and later scholarship.

The article demonstrates that despite some noteworthy overlap with Braverman concerning scientific management, Fox's insights were marginal to later iterations of labour process analysis. It delves into the reasons for this relative neglect, providing an understanding of the dynamics at play.

This paper's value lies in its combined industrial relations and labour process historiography. It offers a fresh perspective on Alan Fox's relationship to the latter field of study.

The purpose of the article is to outline the insights provided by Alan Fox in Man Mismanagement in relation to the rise of the New Right political economy and the spread of unitarist managerialism. The article assesses the contemporary work and employment relations implications of mismanagement arising from a “second wave” of the New Right ideology from 2010 in the UK.

Responding to the Special Issue on Alan Fox, the article focuses on Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, considering industrial relations developments arising between the 1st (1974b) and 2nd (1985) editions relating to the political rise of the New Right. It reviews various literature that illustrates the contemporary IR relevance of the book and Fox's insights.

The New Right’s ideology has further fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collective industrial relations institutions, and macho mismanagement praxis is even more commonplace, compared to when Fox wrote Man Mismanagement. The stripping away of the institutional architecture of IR renders the renewal of pluralist praxis, like collective bargaining and other forms of joint regulation of work, a formidable task.

The value of the article relates to the identification of dramatic historical industrial relations events and change in the UK in Alan Fox's book Man Mismanagement, most notably relating to the rise to power of the Thatcherite New Right in 1979. Originality is evidenced by the authors’ drawing on Fox's ideas and assessing the implications of the “second wave” of the New Right in the contemporary industrial relations (IR) context of the 2020s under the conceptual themes of fragmented work, disjointed labour rights and undermined collectivism.

In September 1985, eight sets of children's books from Australia began an odyssey that will take them into all fifty states and Canada by the end of 1988. The books— and the resource, reference and display materials that accompany them—were chosen specifically for their value in introducing non‐Australians to Australia and her children's literature. They also provide an ideal starting point for library collection development.