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The increasing sophistication and authority of the shop steward in British industry demands a new attitude by management towards his role in industrial relations. Far from being a bulwark against cordiality on the shop floor, he is often the means by which this is achieved. CIR chairman Len Neal believes that management as well as the unions will benefit from better trained shop stewards. Preston Witts reports

This study investigates the collaboration between Danish nurses' shop stewards and workplace management. The aim of the study is to track changes in workplace climate after a major structural reform of the health sector.

The data source for the study is a comprehensive survey among union representatives in the health and care sectors.

Generally, and not surprisingly, shops stewards maintain closer relations and a higher degree of loyalty to the nearest managers rather than management at higher levels in the hierarchy. It can also be demonstrated that more experienced shop stewards, those who have been employed in this position and in the workplace for the longest terms have more affirmative relations to management than less experienced shop stewards with shorter tenure. Those shop stewards who spend much time on the entitled duties are rewarded with positive collaboration with management. Hard times at the workplace and dissatisfied colleagues, who do not support their union representative, often result in less rewarding relations with management. Quite unexpectedly, the intensity of relations with management is not significantly related to structural or other changes that the workplace has experienced over the past two years. Changes are therefore accepted as inevitable and regular occurrences in the health sector.

The response rate is very high in the survey. Further qualitative research may reveal details about the background and implications.

The study suggests that many shop stewards may suffer from a competence gap in terms of more advanced new public management strategies and tools. This gap has not yet been successfully filled by the services and training activities offered by the Danish Nurses Union.

Results from the study are being taken on board in the union's strategies. The evidence is also helpful for the managers in the health sector, as they are seeking to develop a constructive the collaboration with the unions.

July 26, 1972 Industrial Relations — Unregistered trade union — Shop stewards — “Blacking” container lorries — Court orders on union to stop such action — Union advice to obey court orders unheeded — Whether implied authority from union for conduct of shop stewards as its agents — Whether agents' conduct outside scope of authority — Whether union guilty of wilful contempt of court — Whether union liable for unfair industrial practices — Industrial Relations Act, 1971 (c.72), ss. 99(1) (a), (b), 101,116,154,167(1), (9).

June 13,1972 Industrial Relations — Unregistered trade union — Unpaid shop stewards elected by fellow members with union authority to negotiate at local level with dock employers — Shop stewards initiating campaign of blacking container lorries after blacking by unregistered union knowingly inducing breaches of contract made “unfair industrial practice” by statute — Industrial Court orders to union to stop specified blacking — Union advice to shop stewards to obey court orders rejected — Court finding union in contempt and liable to fines and to compensate complainants for unfair industrial practices — Shop stewards agents, not servants of union — Whether evidence of implied authority from union to agents to black — Union not responsible for conduct of shop stewards acting outside scope of express or implied authority — Industrial Relations Act, 1971 (c.72) ss. 96(1), 101,167(1) (9).

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

INTRODUCTION Shop stewards' educational requirements, in terms of individual needs, organisational and even national needs, are reasonably easy to demonstrate. The meeting of these needs, at these various levels, in terms of the quantity and quality of the education provided for shop stewards, is less easy to demonstrate. In fact, any examination of the current situation in the respects, leads to the inescapable conclusion that the responsible providing bodies are, with few exceptions, failing in this most important task.

In recent years a number of European countries have witnessed the breakdown of the centralised framework of industrial relations established in the early post‐war years giving way to a more decentralised system which allowed more room to shop floor movements. The outbreak of the strikes of May and June 1968 in France, and more particularly of the wildcat strikes of 1969 and the early 1970s in West Germany, France, Great Britain, and Italy, marked a shift in union power towards the shop floor.

Since the late 1970s, the study of the role, structure and functions of personnel management in the United Kingdom has been greatly facilitated by surveys emerging from a number of large‐scale surveys. A major interest in interpreting the data from these surveys has been to evaluate the impact of recession, and, latterly, recovery on the power, structure and roles of personnel departments and personnel specialists in recent years. The survey data are used comparatively to evaluate the empirical plausibility of the different scenarios which have arisen, and to account for the results that emerge.

In the mid‐1970s, there was an upsurge of interest in the notion of worker participation at board level. Several influences contributed to this development, including initiatives from the EEC, experience of worker directors at BSC, political commitment from the then Labour Government, culminating in the establishment of a Committee of Inquiry. It was at this time an unknown researcher with research experience of participation in joint consultative committees — amongst other things — began negotiations with the Department of Employment for monies to pursue her research interests. The outcome was the “worker director project” based at the University of Nottingham. The aim of the project was to examine the role of worker directors in private sector companies. Few companies fitting that description could be found, but of the seven which co‐operated in the research, all were different in many respects. The worker director schemes which they had fostered too were different. This monograph presents brief case descriptions of four of these firms. An attempt is made to highlight the salient features of each which were perceived to be influential in shaping the scheme. Thus various contextual factors are discussed, so too are role and role‐related issues; the extent of training and preparation of the worker director; the amount of information disclosed to and by her/him. Finally, a list of criteria are suggested as guides for assessing and evaluating such schemes, not so much by their own lights, but as a reasonably detached, independent observer.

Learning to represent people, as shop stewards do, is a complex affair. It is especially so for stewards, as their functions vary widely, both according to rule books and in practice. As Goodman and Whittingham observed: “Few training officers operate without detailed job descriptions, yet that of a steward is particularly difficult to define. They are important communicators but also decision‐makers”. Stewards develop and apply to the job attitudes and skills derived formally or informally from a variety of sources, and one such source is the training provision laid on by the TUC and by individual unions.