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In this chapter, I suggest that Connecticut’s and other states’ recent discontinuation of civil unions in the name of marriage “equality” marginalizes and demeans marriage – rejecting people who may nonetheless wish to codify their intimate partnerships – for purposes of legal “incidents,” including rights and privileges, like hospital visitation rights, testimonial privilege, inheritance rights, etc. In doing so, I also call for a rejuvenation of the practice of granting civil union licenses in these states.

This article aims to provide an initial assessment of the response of the civil service unions to the government′s most recent initiatives on management and working practices in ministerial departments. It considers in particular the Ibbs Report on “Improving Management in Government”, the most publicised of recent documents emerging from the Cabinet Office. A fairly wide ranging approach is adopted in order that the historical context of the report, and its consequent importance, may be appreciated. The core of the article is the result of interviews with senior officials from the main civil service unions. An assessment is made of their perceptions of the report and its implications for the civil service. It is argued that the ambivalence towards Ibbs evident in the positions of the various unions is a result of the divisions that exist between them, and of the heterogeneity of the civil service itself. Consequently any opposition from the unions is severely constrained, although obstacles to implementation may arise elsewhere.

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.

This article is concerned with a description of the way in which a small group of Civil Service trade unionists attempted to participate in the 1981 pay campaign by the British Civil Service trade unions. The problems faced by the group are analysed and the group members' experiences of their activity explored.

This chapter begins by introducing trade unions: their purpose in representing members, different perspectives on the role and impact of trade unions and the opposition they face within the workplace. The chapter proceeds to discuss the role of, and particular challenges faced by, trade unions in the civil aviation industry. There follows a discussion of the role of women in civil aviation and both the crucial role played by women within trade unions and the role of trade unions in representing the interests of women. The chapter closes with a discussion of the role women might play in the revitalisation of the labour movement within the civil aviation industry.

Contextualizing its argument specifically into the role and impact of the traditional political culture on the process of modernization, this paper aims to examine the “culture matters” approach through the two‐century experience of the top‐down modernization of the Ottoman‐Turkish civilization in the realm of state‐labor relations.

The paper makes a comparative analysis of the interplay between the state and craft associations in the Ottoman Empire, and then the state and labor organizations in contemporary Turkey in terms of the influence of the rules, norms and institutions transferred by the bureaucratic élites from Western Europe.

The paper concludes that a substantive democratic setting for the interplay of the state and labor organizations could not be built up without a self‐supportive political culture in view of the fact that the process of top‐down modernization/Europeanization in the Ottoman‐Turkish context has given rise to a never‐ending center‐periphery dichotomy between both inter‐class and intra‐class relationships.

The paper sheds light on the labor relations part of the Ottoman‐Turkish political culture and reveals its impact on the never‐ending top‐down modernization initiative.

In this paper we will focus on the perceptions of the relations between civil society and the armed forces in Turkey. This is a bundle of complex relationships and it has many direct and indirect effects on the development of civil society in Turkey. The Constitution of 1961 that followed the 1960 military intervention brought a very suitable political environment for the development of organisational life in Turkey. Particularly unions, as semi-public organisations, developed and became the pioneers of civil society. However, this period was characterised by ideological polarisation that divided these so-called ‘democratic mass organisations’ into opposite political camps. The 1980 military coup stopped this process, constrained the rights of organisations and closed many democratic mass organisations. Due to the strict controlling mechanisms of the post-coup period, democratic mass organisations, mainly unions and chambers, such as the Turkish Union of Chambers of Engineers & Architects and Confederation of Revolutionary Labour Unions, lost their power. The labour union was closed and many of its leaders were imprisoned after the coup. On the other hand, during the post-1980 era, the central cleavage of left-right politics and ideologies was transformed into more diffused and fragmented cleavages.

This chapter discusses the power of trade unions within the UK civil aviation industry, focusing specifically on the British Air Line Pilots’ Association (BALPA) that represents flight crew. The deleterious effects of the contemporary legislative and competitive environment of air transportation on the ability of BALPA to exact concessions from airline management are discussed as are the changes to the nature of work of flight crew that impact on the structural dimensions from which BALPA derives its power. These are weighed against the associational dimension of BALPA's power base, in particular the willingness of pilots to engage in active militancy. The chapter also considers possible organizing strategies for BALPA in order to challenge managerial prerogative in the industry.

This article shows that regulation of the employment relationship in European public services has tended to give more importance to collective bargaining than to unilateral employer regulation. Although collective bargaining is a general trend, it is not the same in every country. This article concentrates on collective bargaining levels and the outcomes of collective bargaining in selected European states. A major explanatory factor of the extent of collective bargaining is the nature of the civil service system. Reformed “non‐career” systems tend to adopt collective bargaining institutions, resulting in binding collective agreements between employers and unions, while classical “career” systems do not.

Under the British Government’s current plan, the devolution of authority for civil service pay will be complete in 1996, with all departments and agencies receiving control over the pay of their employees. The process of pay delegation began some years ago with selected Next Steps executive agencies. What lessons does the progress of the Conservative administration’s pay reform programme hold for the future? In examining the success that the government has had so far with delegation of pay to executive agencies, centres on primary research involving a postal survey of executive agencies and in‐depth interviews with several agency human resources directors. Provides an insight into the shape that pay reform is likely to take as further devolution occurs. Reform is unlikely to be either as rapid, coherent or concerted as the government would like. Concludes that while there is little question that change is occurring, its pace has not kept up with the government’s deadlines, and its form is only partially in line with the government’s stated objectives. Identifies several factors explaining the slow progress, most importantly: the internal inconsistencies among the government’s pay reform objectives; the uncertain environment in which many agencies are operating; agencies’ lack of resources; and a failure to take account of the institutional context.