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The merits and demerits of replacement worker legislation continue to be a point of contention. This chapter provides empirical evidence of the impact of replacement worker bans on the outcomes of collective bargaining for the period of 1967–2009. Compared to the existing literature, this study has the advantage of using a merger of two previously separate administrative databases – the collective agreement and work stoppage databases from the Labour Program of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada (HRSDC). Under a temporary replacement worker ban, work stoppage incidence increases in the service sector, but decreases in the nonservice sector; work stoppages last longer but the wage settlements grow more slowly in both sectors. A permanent replacement worker ban increases the work stoppage incidence in the service sector and lowers the wage growth rate in the nonservice sector.

In this review it is intended firstly to set out the available statistical evidence on differences in the level and character of work stoppages due to industrial disputes in developed market economies, and secondly to review the available literature on the reasons for such international differences.

A number of time‐series regression analyses of British strike activity have appeared in recent years. These analyses are the lineal descendants of the “strike cycle” models which have a long history in the United States, although most of the British literature springs from the more sophisticated bargaining models which began to appear in the 1960s.

AS soon as ever possible it is to be hoped that those responsible for looking after the interests of work study technicians will sit at a round table and agree upon what the relative rewards of the various grades of technicians should be.

During the recent strike wave, Britain and other industrial market economies experienced a marked increase in the annual total number of working days lost through stoppages. A question arises, however, as to the validity of these comparisons, and the true meaning of strike statistics. There has been substantial controversy in recent years on the validity of making international comparisons of strike behaviour. All the conceptual and practical problems involved in strike statistics come to the surface when these comparisons are made. It is likely that statistics from different countries will be subject to differing national minimum definitions, and will be based on different answers to the question: What is a strike?

This article has four parts. First, we outline the main determinants of productivity and examine some evidence on the relative importance of the factors involved. Secondly, we outline the “conventional” wisdom on the influence of trade unions and generate several hypotheses on the possible effects of trade unions on a number of economic variables. Thirdly, by an appeal to a wide range of literature, we seek to test these hypotheses but with particular reference to the influence of trade unions on productivity. Fourthly, we indicate that in terms of policy on productivity‐raising measures the conventional wisdom is wanting and there is a need for an alternative theory upon which to base policies for the implementation of change.

Do not reach for your pen—we are quite aware that this journal is for work study technicians. But it is also a journal for management, and is read by a great many readers who are not technicians, but who are otherwise interested in improving industrial efficiency.

This new, dynamic, value-free universal paradigm supplies new concepts for the explanation of all HR/IR phenomena as products of the interaction of impersonal environmental forces with the direct and indirect stakeholders’ relevant characteristics, preferences, and expedients. It supplies new concepts for the inputs of the employee and the employer into their two-way employment interaction that brings about the productive and nonproductive utilization of the employee's human resources in an employment relationship. New concepts are also proposed for stakeholders’ decisions on action to defend and/or advance their preferences and/or expedients. The paradigm recognizes that such action always takes place in formal/informal influence channels leading to formal/informal decision arenas. It analyzes the possible outcomes of the interacting forces. The feedback of such outcomes to the stakeholders and their environments thus produces a continuous flow of HR/IR phenomena that remains constant unless the strength and/or composition of the forces change. Diagrams illustrate these new concepts and a practical example showing how their use improves research and theory.

A key to raising productivity may be to stimulate product market competition, and this will need a complementary policy of relatively low unit labour costs — best achieved through managers developing their social skills, abilities, knowledge and understanding of how the labour market works. Change could be assessed by a small internal project team, whose task is to outline both technical implementation, and industrial relations and managerial consequences of the new methods. Any “inertia” preventing productivity being raised must be identified and defeated. Initial responsibility lies with management, this method being perhaps the best to secure workforce co‐operation to raise Britain from being a low income, low productivity nation.

The problem facing the British economy is to curb inflation, reduce the deficit on the balance of payments, now running at £4,000 million a year, raise company profits to improve new capital investment, improve efficiency and productivity and to contain wage demands. The competitive power of British exports in the world will depend to a large extent on labour costs and managerial competence. Labour costs largely depend on the attitudes and actions of the trade unions, and in full employment their power is considerable. It can have far reaching social and economic effects. Their failure in the past two decades to readjust their philosophy, their organisations and institutional arrangements, created in times of mass unemployment, to conditions of full employment is partly the reason for the present state of industrial relations: backward, inward looking and divisive.