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The Employment and Training Act 1973 set up three bodies corporate to coordinate and manage the country's employment and training services. These are: The Manpower Services Commission which was set up on the 1 January 1974 and currently has a staff of about 25 at its London headquarters. The staff of the Commission is likely to stay small and not rise above 50. The Training Services Agency formally comes into being on the 1 April 1974 when responsibility for training services is transferred from the Secretary of State for Employment to the Manpower Services Commission. The TSA does not formally employ anybody as yet as it is still part of the Department of Employment, but in April it aims to have a total staff of about 5 700. Of these there will be about 100 technical and 450 non‐technical staff in its headquarters and about 20 technical and 500 non‐technical in its regional offices. Most of its staff, about 2 150 technical and 900 non‐technical, will be employed in the 53 Government Training Centres. In addition, the TSA will employ about 1 500 industrial staff — storekeepers, timekeepers, maintenance men, etc. The Employment Services Agency will be formally set up on the 1 October 1974 when responsibility for employment services, including industrial rehabilitation units, the Professional and Executive Recruitment, employment exchanges, Jobcentres and Occupational Guidance Units, is transferred from the Secretary of State to the Manpower Services Commission. In its 1 076 employment offices, which includes about 200 part‐time and sub‐offices, the ESA aims to employ about 11 500 staff; 700 staff will be employed in the 40 Professional and Executive Recruitment offices and a further 200 in the 27 industrial rehabilitation units which will be partly staffed by the TSA.

The subject of part‐time work is one which has become increasingly important in industrialised economies where it accounts for a substantial and growing proportion of total employment. It is estimated that in 1970, average annual hours worked per employee amounted to only 60% of those for 1870. Two major factors are attributed to explaining the underlying trend towards a reduction in working time: (a) the increase in the number of voluntary part‐time employees and (b) the decrease in average annual number of days worked per employee (Kok and de Neubourg, 1986). The authors noted that the growth rate of part‐time employment in many countries was greater than the corresponding rate of growth in full‐time employment.

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides:

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This article is a summary of a report published by the Manpower Services Commission in pursuance of its top priority to help the economic recovery of the UK.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

The Government's plans for the future organisation of employment and training are described in a White Paper published on the 2 March as Cmnd No 5250 at 13½p under the title Employment and Training: Government Proposals. The White Paper actually accompanied the Employment and Training Bill which was presented to Parliament on the same day. It sets out the Government's intention to establish an independent Manpower Services Commission (MSG) to take over responsibility for running the public employment and training services and coordinating industrial training as a whole, and describes how, subject to Parliamentary approval, the Government envisages that the new arrangements will operate in practice. Just as the Industrial Training Act 1964 is about the Industry Training Boards, the Employment and Training Bill 1973 is about the Manpower Services Commission and the changes which are necessary within the various parts of the national system to make it work. This means creating one new institution, transferring responsibility for various aspects from one organisation to another and clarifying the relationships between the proposed component parts. This is what the Bill is about.

The Manpower Services Commission has now been operating for just over a year. In that time it has assumed responsibility for the employment and training services previously provided directly by the Department of Employment. It has expressed its views on a number of issues affecting the labour market, industrial training and education, and has considered its future role. Contingency plans for high unemployment and manpower implications of offshore oil have also occupied the Commission's attention in a busy programme which included seventeen meetings of the full Commission during 1974. The MSC describes itself as ‘a new approach’. Is this claim justified?

An Act to establish public authorities concerned with arrangements for persons to obtain employment and with arrangements for training for employment and to make provision as to the functions of the authorities; to authorise the Secretary of State to provide temporary employment for unemployed persons; to amend the Industrial Training Act 1964 and the law relating to the provision by education authorities of services relating to employment; and for purposes connected with those matters. [25th July 1973]