Manajemen | Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Maritim Raja Ali Haji 2002 20
BOOK REVIEWS
GENDER DEMOCRACY
IN
TRADE UNIONS
By Anne McBride. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, ix + 192 pp., £39.95 (hardback)
A
lthough research into gender in trade unions was a relatively neglected topic
in the past, there has been a recent upsurge of work in this area. Anne
McBride’s in-depth and captivating study of gender democracy in UNISON, the
largest UK public sector union, is a significant addition to this literature. Indeed,
the book also raises issues of concern with regard to union representation for
black and lesbian and gay union members whilst also inter-relating these with
working class members of all groups, including white men.
The book begins by reminding us of the changing face of British trade unions;
that women now make up around 44 per cent of the workforce and about 40 per
cent of trade union members, and that a key strategy of the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) is to recruit more women. It describes how the merger of three
public sector unions––the National and Local Government Officers’ Association
(NALGO), the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and the
Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE)––made the new union
UNISON the largest union in Britain, with almost one million female members
(72 per cent) and with approximately 10 per cent of its members black workers.
Within a union where it was anticipated that, following the merger, it ‘would
represent one in 18 of all workers in the country, one in six trade unionists and
one-third of all women union members’, the quest for equality of representation
and participation is clearly of major consequence, particularly to women members of UNISON and potentially to women members of other unions. By implementing proportionality in a union with such a high percentage of women
members, UNISON is arguably changing the dominant (male) values of trade
unionism; the power and authority in decision making previously held by men
perceivably shifts towards the women members. This enlightened approach by
UNISON to union organisation is given thoughtful and balanced consideration
by the author, providing us with insight into tensions that exist between and within
the various representative groups in the quest for the appropriate structures to
support union aims.
Central to the book is the complex notion of democracy. The author draws
upon, and develops, Bachrach and Baratz’s analytical framework of power and
decision making in order to help us through this intricate concept. As McBride
takes us through the literature on democracy and power, she builds up, step by
step, a powerful analysis of gender democracy in trade unions. This analysis
explores the extent to which the ‘rules of the game’ within trade unions tend to
favour white male interests. The book critically appraises different prescriptions
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for gender democracy and situates UNISON’s approach within the more
radical of these. The principle aim of UNISON is to equalise the power between
the various oppressed social groups (women, black, lesbian and gay, and disabled
members) and privileged groups.
As might be expected by the merger of three previously rival unions, there was
apprehension and caution in the creation of the UNISON rule book as each
partner union attempted to retain some of its former identity. The book explores
how, due to the desire of the partner unions to protect their former organisational
strategies, a gender-neutral approach to the merger debate developed.
In order to achieve proportionality and fair representation, UNISON employs
a number of different strategies; these strategies are explored by the author in a
critical and thought provoking manner. In particular, the author considers the
nature of self-organisation and group organisation and the tensions that these
create between various oppressed groups. What is of great significance is the
identification of a multiplicity of oppressed groups which have to be considered
in relation to one another. Although proportionality and fair representation can
indeed generate new sources of authority for both women and black members,
the case study identifies how, due to the methods employed to achieve proportionality, working-class members and black members were less privileged than
middle-class and white members.
A further complexity in the search for democracy is how, despite the intention of the union to recognise self-organised groups as oppressed social groups,
the rules did not go far enough in giving these groups the power they needed in
order to redress the power imbalance already in existence. As McBride suggests,
although the power of the self-organised groups may develop over time, ‘it would
have looked different if it had started from the desire to give power, influence
and authority to women as an oppressed social group’. This leads her to conclude that those who already had the power remained those who were most able
‘to shape the rules of the game’. Interestingly, as the author identifies, proportionality is also, arguably, promoted as a means of redressing, or attempting to
balance, the power relations between paid officers and the lay membership. It
emerged from the research that whilst some paid officers (both men and women)
used strategies which attempted to limit the participation of women in the union,
lay activists promoted an increase in women’s representation. This increased
representation as a whole, thus giving more authority to activists at the local level.
A major strength of the book is the quality of the empirical data. The author
draws extensively on interviews and by giving voice to her subjects brings to life
the complexities and contradictions within the UNISON system of representation. It is fascinating to hear how different women perceive the system and how
some are prepared to use the system to their own advantage in order to get elected
to office; women who are trade union activists, but not necessarily promoting
‘women’s’ issues. By drawing upon the views and beliefs of women activists the
author explores the conflicting views and opinions of how proportionality can,
and should, be achieved. This serves to remind us that even within the oppressed
social groups, the notion of proportionality is a contested issue. The UNISON
rule book allows for self-organised groups. However, it is how these rules are
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interpreted by different members and different branches that provide insight into
how democratic processes operate within unions in general and UNISON in
particular.
What is of significance to the representation debate is that once women are
elected to decision-making bodies within UNISON, they do not necessarily take
part in the decision-making process; this is clearly hindering the promotion of
any gender debate. Due to the particular process by which they were elected,
they may not be required to speak or vote specifically for women, or it might be
because they lack the experience and expertise required to do so. In line with
other research findings in this area, the book identifies how newly elected women
representatives were marginalised at meetings where they were either fearful of
speaking up, or where their workplace issues of concern were seen to be inappropriate to the wider agenda of the meeting. This is an interesting insight into
the democratic process of the union as such marginalisation of the less experienced women members may well result in the experienced members shaping the
future agenda of the union. As the author reminds us ‘the skills of a representative need to be learned’.
The book provides a valuable and absorbing insight into the search for
gender democracy in UNISON, a union that, from this evidence, has gone
some way to changing the traditional model of male dominated trade union
democracy. It does, however, raise concern over how ‘true’ gender democracy
can be achieved within unions. The quality of the data and the rigour of the
analysis provide invaluable resources and lessons from which other unions
embarking on this road should certainly draw.
For me, there were two minor omissions from the book. Firstly, I would like
to have learned more about the researcher’s role in the data gathering process,
how she was perceived by those she was researching and what problems, if any,
she encountered in gaining access to her ‘subjects’ and the settings in which she
observed them. Secondly, an index would be a valuable addition to the finished
work. These issues do not detract from an otherwise stimulating book.
UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
DOWNSIZING: IS
IT
WORKING
MOIRA CALVELEY
FOR
AUSTRALIA?
Edited by Peter Dawkins and Craig R. Littler. Melbourne Institute of Applied
Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2001,
xvi + 84 pp., $33 (paperback)
Organisational downsizing is an economic and social phenomenon with profound
consequences, yet announcements of job losses are so everyday as to be hackneyed. Grant and Oswick (1996), whilst cautious of the ‘evangelism of “pop management” writers’, are convinced that the two decades since the 1980s warrants
being labeled as the downsizing ‘era’, such is its pervasiveness across most
economies. Even given the familiarity of downsizing, critical elements of its
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character still need to be far better understood. This monograph was commissioned by the Myer Foundation and the Committee for the Economic
Development of Australia (CEDA) with the project conducted by the Melbourne
Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Edited by Peter Dawkins
and Craig Littler, it is the final instalment in a two-part series evaluating the
impact of downsizing on Australian businesses and workers. The earlier research
was published in 1999 as The Contours of Restructuring and Downsizing in Australia.
In the Foreword, it is noted that the principals were especially motivated by
Wayne Cascio and other emerging voices of dissent who have challenged the
long-run financial performance of downsizing organisations and the apparent
deterministic effect of the downsizing mantra on managers. Perhaps ‘corporations have gone overboard in implementing downsizing’ (page iii)?
The ambitious terms of reference of the project asked the following (in summary): What was the extent of restructuring and downsizing in Australian industry? Did it achieve its intended objectives and improvements in enterprise
performance, especially productivity and profitability? How did the well-being
of the downsizing ‘survivors’ fare? What were the labour market outcomes of
those exiting the organisation and the effect on the general community?
Understandably, the discussion in this latest report builds on the findings from
the earlier 1999 monograph, which the authors detail in chapter 1. The research
methodology relied on a threefold approach; namely, an investigation into the
effect of downsizing on skill profiles in organisations, a case study of restructuring in the Australian banking industry, and a survey of Australian households,
used to examine the impact of downsizing on employment and re-employment.
Each is analysed in a separate chapter. Data sources included some 4000 large
firms sourced from the Affirmative Action Agency (analysed longitudinally over
the period 1990 to 1998), Finance Sector Union survey data, mail surveys, interviews and focus groups from ‘Onebank’ (the case study) and, less clearly, data
collected in conjunction with the International Social Science Survey.
Given the continuing evidence of unabated organisational job ‘shedding’ in
Australia, when the monograph was ‘launched’ it received widespread, especially
print media, coverage. It was said to build on the earlier ‘ground-breaking’
research that mapped the extent and form (the contours) of downsizing in Australia.
The findings were typically characterised by journalists as ‘landmark’ research
giving ‘the lie’ to corporate executives’ longstanding and ‘comforting’ notion that
downsizing was the equivalent of a ‘purging laxative: unpleasant, but good for
you’ (Long 2001). It was more bad news for the proponents of downsizing.
The monograph does make a considerable scholarly contribution in seeking
to fulfil its terms of reference. Skill implications arising from downsizing and the
banking case study contained in chapters 2 and 3 provide the strongest analysis.
These chapters draw extensively from the literature and cogently set out to
evaluate key propositions about downsizing using well-tried methodologies.
Shibboleths, such as downsizing encourages multi-skilling and ‘empowerment’,
as especially articulated by organisational re-engineering proponents, are carefully tested. Inevitably, the report wrestles with the complex and still opaque relationships between deskilling, the peripheralisation of workforces and whether
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firms are upsizing or downsizing. As an illustration of this conundrum, when firms
decide to contract out their in-house information technology services, the reduced
skill base may be offset by a deepening of skills in the contract supplier/upsizer
(see, for example, Lewer & Gallimore 2001). Overall, however, the authors’
evidence profoundly points to downsizing having a negative impact on the skill
base of organisations. Such firms, which predominate in manufacturing, are
provocatively labelled as ‘dumb downsizers’ (page 19).
The finance sector case study (chapter 3) highlights rich detail of change in
the banking industry. At Onebank, restructuring reduced the number of
branches from 1740 to 1390, there was a ‘spill and fill’ of all positions, and fulltime employment fell by 16 per cent, matched by a similar increase in part-time
workers. Redundancy and other costs associated with one major change intervention––the Restructuring Improvement Program––with the delightful acronym
of RIP, totalled $188 million. Male managers at Onebank had on average over
seventeen years’ tenure and had witnessed three separate restructures. RIP
reduced staff expenses as a proportion of total operating income from 38.4 per
cent in 1992/3 to 32.3 per cent in 1995/6. Operating income per full time
employee also rose by 31.6 per cent. But, as the report argues, the change was
pursued to the significant detriment of Onebank’s ‘human resources’. The findings conclude that the bank (paralleled by the others in the industry) experienced
crumbling employee relations, had shunned HRM-styled high performance work
systems, adopting instead ‘closely monitored performance, targeted incentives
. . . and the use of technology to improve basic business processes’ (page 44). Using
data that emphasise how restructuring has broken the ‘old’ psychological
contract (steady financial rewards, hard work and tenure) and engendered the
survivor syndrome, the authors ask: can organisations be effective without
loyalty?
The analysis of the experience of Australian workers (chapter 4), important
though many of the findings are, is far more uncertain. The authors wanted to
know the impact on earnings, quality of life and other variables, of downsizing
on ‘down-sized out’ workers. They seek to differentiate the net experiences by
factoring in the workers pre-existing human capital characteristics. This aspect
of the methodology needed to be more clearly articulated, as did the use of the
1999 International Social Science Survey/Australia. An assumption that the entire
readership would have a working knowledge of the number of respondents and
data-collection processes used in the survey is unreasonable. Other valuable data
sources, such as Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force and redundancy data,
were ignored. This highlights a fundamental issue with the methodology. The
other chapters are informed by the literature, often testing their findings against
alternative work. Chapter 4 though adopts a more stand-alone approach. To
answer the questions posed by the terms of reference, is a single data source,
even acknowledging its power, the most suitable method?
Not surprisingly, the monograph leans towards a relatively benign set of conclusions, arguing that ‘for most workers, downsizing is not a disaster . . . most
finding jobs, most do so quickly’ (page 70). These broad conclusions are
moderated, among others, by somewhat lower job satisfaction rates in re-
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employment and the specific impact of job loss on vulnerable, mainly older, workers. The explanation for the difference may rest on the understanding that not
all workers who experience downsizing are retrenched, given firms may use
natural attrition, and incentive-based non-compulsory exit strategies. Nevertheless, a more critical frame would have significantly added to the authority of
chapter 4. Given an emerging misanthropic political culture where ‘picking off
the stragglers’ is promoted as being in Australia’s national interest, the editors
needed to carefully analyse their results against the wider literature and evidence.
To do otherwise is to court misappropriation by the neo-liberalist agenda.
Finally, the report conveys a sense of ambiguity in endeavouring to balance its
social science techniques and popularising its message. For example, interspersed
between complex tables which detail chi values and ordinary least squares regression estimates, there is a propensity to adopt colloquialisms (‘the grim reaper’,
‘run on empty’) and catchy but value-laden epithets: ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘dumb’
downsizers and ‘knowledge intensive’ or ‘casual growers’. Thankfully they resist
the distasteful ‘anorexic corporation’. Organisational strategists, like those at
Onebank, are wedded to cost cutting and single bottom line performance indicators. Persuading such a constituency to challenge their apparently unswerving
commitment to the highly questionable long-term value of job shedding is this
monograph’s critical contribution. Perhaps somewhat mischievously, it is not too
difficult to imagine the report being presented at seminars in PowerPoint format
with supporting two-by-two tables and earnestly contrite management-types
nodding whilst nibbling on sweets from small bowls!
REFERENCES
Grant D, Oswick C (eds) (1996) Metaphors and Organisations. London: Sage.
Lewer J, Gallimore P (2001) Are outsourcing and skill formation mutually exclusive? The experience of a heavy manufacturing firm. International Journal of Employment Studies 9(1), 141–162.
Long S (2001) The myth behind the mantra of downsizing. Australian Financial Review 1 August.
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE
JOHN LEWER
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN THE PRIVATISED COAL INDUSTRY:
CONTINUITY, CHANGE AND CONTRADICTIONS
By Emma Wallis. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, xi + 281 pp., £42.50 (hardback)
The 1984/5 British coal strike was, by common agreement, one of the defining
moments for industrial relations during the last 25 years, with the impact of the
strike and the defeat of the miners being felt well away from British shores. Above
all, the miners’ defeat opened the door for a wider application of the ‘Thatcherite’
model, not only in industrial relations but also in terms of the privatisation of
public enterprises. Given the tumultuous events of the strike itself, it is hardly
surprising that, in the wake of the dispute, the initial attention of scholars was
directed towards recording and analysing the reasons for this conflict and for the
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subsequent defeat of the National Union of Minerworkers (NUM). Such work
was necessarily backward looking. With the passage of more than 15 years since
the miners’ defeat, however, a far more important question now confronts us:
what changes to industrial relations patterns did the strike and the subsequent
privatisation of the industry bring about? This key question is comprehensively
addressed in Industrial Relations in the Privatised Coal Industry.
The great strength of Wallis’ excellent and insightful study is its capacity to
ask and then answer the big research questions regarding what has happened to
industrial relations in the British coal industry. As such, this capacity reflects the
origins of the book in an earlier doctoral study. A particularly pleasing aspect of
the book is its ability to link the lessons learned from a series of case studies of
individual mines into wider generalised conclusions. In this regard, Wallis asks
two broad questions. First, she considers whether or not the post-strike privatisation of the industry did, in fact, represent a decisive departure from previous
patterns of industrial relations. Second, she questions whether privatisation has
been negative for collective bargaining and trade union organisation. In this
regard, she notes that it could perhaps be doubted whether any employer could
be more hostile to collective bargaining and unions than the publicly-owned
British Coal during its last decade. Finally, Wallis presents a model for testing,
in which she suggests that industrial relations outcomes in a privatised environment are shaped by two major variables––‘the labour relations strategies adopted
by management’ and ‘the responses of the various mining unions to those strategies’ (pages 59 and 236). Unfortunately, for those of us who feel that collective
bargaining and trade unions are positive additions to our society, Wallis ends up
by rejecting this model. Instead, she concludes that, in the post-1985 world, trade
union responses ‘did not emerge as a significant variable’ and that, instead, management has assumed a sole, ‘determining’ role in deciding industrial relations
systems and outcomes at a local level (pages 236–7).
One of the strengths of Wallis’ work is its capacity to convey a picture of change
in the British coal industry at both the macro and micro levels. In chapter 1, and
again in chapter 3, Wallis provides us with a highly readable overview of the context within which privatisation occurred. For, as Wallis rightly indicates, the key
issue is not whether or not miners worked under private ownership (which, after
all, is hardly new). Instead, the decisive factor was the overall ‘environment’ which
existed during the early 1990s and which laid the basis for ‘the re-assertion of
managerial prerogatives’ in the coal industry’ (page 59). Here Wallis emphasises
a number of factors that, together, undermined trade union bargaining power in
addition to the NUM’s defeat in the 1984/5 strike. Economically, the most significant changes included the privatisation of the electricity industry (which consumed more than 80 per cent of Britain’s coal) and the opening up of the British
economy to cheaper, foreign coal. Together, these changes devastated the industry, with 74 per cent of all jobs being lost between the end of the strike and the
beginning of privatisation in 1991/2. Industrially, the capacity of unions to resist
management’s initiatives was hindered by the emergence of a dual-union situation, as the Union of Democratic Miners (UDM) emerged as the dominant force
on some central mines. Given the UDM’s background as a body of miners who
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had returned to work during the 1984/5 dispute, this development helped to
incapacitate union resistance.
To trace the impact of industrial relations change at the mine-site level, Wallis
undertook case studies at seven mines, with the research at each mine involving
a mixture of quantitative research (surveys) and qualitative research (interviews).
Coal United Kingdom (CUK) owned four of these mines, management buy-out
teams owned two, and one, in South Wales, was a cooperative run by former
NUM members. With the exception of the last case, all of these privatised mines
were characterised by industrial relations regimes that represented both a continuation and an intensification of the unitarist management style that characterised British Coal during its final decade. While, at most mines, unions were
granted ‘representation rights’, these did not normally extend to ‘bargaining
rights’, certainly not in any meaningful sense. Interestingly, the UDM, despite
its more moderate, pro-management credentials, fared no better than the NUM
at those mines where it was able to obtain ‘representation’ rights. Clearly, under
the new regime, unions of whatever ilk were regarded as an irrelevance to be, at
the most, consulted about changes that management had already decided were
going to occur. For the workforce, this new regime (again with the exception of
the colliery owned by former NUM members) involved an intensification of work
and the acceptance of new ‘flexibilities’.
Stylistically, Wallis’ work is highly readable and accessible to a wide audience.
Conceptually, its only significant flaw occurs when the study attempts to leave
British shores to situate the industry within a global context. While this is an
important endeavour, her attempt to link the woes of the British industry with
expanded coal production in the Third World is misguided. Here Wallis confuses leading producing nations, such as China, with leading export nations. For,
while in 1997 China produced more than 1.3 billion tonnes of coal, only 30.7
million tonnes of this was actually exported, reflecting the primitive nature of
the Chinese industry. In consequence, Wallis’ statements that job losses in
Western Europe are associated ‘with the low operating costs and cheap labour
advantages of Third World mining’ operations are simply not accurate (page 40).
Throughout the 1990s, the sea-borne trade in coal continued to be dominated
by first world, not third world, producers. During the course of this decade, it
was Australia that gained a position of pre-eminence, as its exports grew by over
70 per cent from under 100 million tonnes per annum to over 170 million tonnes.
To complicate matters, however, the international coal trade is largely fragmented
by distance into two distinct markets––the North-west Atlantic and North-east
Pacific. Fortunately, this failing does not impact on the overall veracity of Wallis’
work, which remains primarily focused on British outcomes rather than international influences.
As Wallis points out, there is a tendency for industrial relations scholars to
look for a ‘silver lining’ to the processes of privatisation and deregulation that
have characterised economies and labour markets during the last two decades.
In the British context, a number of authors including Peter Fairbrother, Anthony
Ferner and Trevor Colling have all suggested that the likely impact of privatisation was ambiguous, providing opportunities as well as threats. Unfortunately,
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Wallis’ thorough survey suggests otherwise. As she bluntly concludes, ‘privatisation has had negative implications for organised labour within the coal industry’ (page 236).
GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
BRADLEY BOWDEN
GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
AIRLINE INDUSTRY
IN THE
By Jack Eaton. Second edition, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, ix + 158 pp., £39.95
(hardback)
This is an impressively researched, well written book based on an excellent industry analysis. It fills an important void in the relatively sparse literature on Human
Resource Management (HRM) in the airline industry. Eaton’s book is all the more
impressive because not only does it focus on HRM, it also offers a comprehensive review of the concept of globalisation. The focus on the airline industry gives
this book depth and offers the reader the opportunity to balance a sound theoretical understanding of the key theories of HRM with an in-depth practical
knowledge of an industry which has witnessed huge upheaval in the last decade.
The book is aimed at managers in all areas of the airline industry and students
of air transport or human resource management/personnel management.
The book is divided into four parts, with part one focusing on the organisation
of airlines as businesses. The major theme emerging from part one is that a key
driving force of HRM is the need to be market driven rather than operations
driven. A particular strength of this section is the understanding that Eaton displays with regard to the role of managers in the airline industry. The focus of
chapter 1 on the customer is an area all too often overlooked in HRM texts. The
overview of Total Quality Management is rigorous but keeps the reader’s full
attention by remaining relatively descriptive and not being overly analytical. The
role of the state in the airline industry appears to be one which is constantly
debated. Eaton’s review of the industry’s relationship with the state and the impact
of HRM offer a sound historical overview of key developments and gives the
reader an insight into current and future state and corporate strategies. Chapters
3 and 4 consider the key relationships in the airline industry, with the underpinning of the chapters being the impact of these various relationships on the
management of human resources. A popular misconception among HR academics and practitioners is that boards of directors drive corporate strategy and
that the level of HR specialist involvement at board level will determine HR strategy. Eaton’s alternative approach is validated by bringing together a range of stakeholders and interested parties including investors, suppliers, competitors and the
general public and not just placing sole emphasis on the board of directors. A
major strength of Eaton’s approach is that HRM policy and practices are considered in relation to each of the aforementioned.
This reader found part two of the book, which focuses on internal relations
in the airline industry, overly theoretical. However, the reviews of the theory of
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airline organisation and the elements of airline organisation make valuable contributions towards developing the reader’s specialised knowledge of the airline
industry. The theoretical nature of the chapters may result in some finding it
slightly difficult to interpret, but practitioners will find these chapters particularly invaluable.
Part three focuses specifically on industrial relations in the airline industry, with
the single chapter in this section offering a good overview of the changes which
have occurred in managerial approaches to industrial relations throughout the
1990s. The comparative analysis of the approaches taken by Air France and British
Airways is particularly informative and Eaton summarises their complex
approaches extremely well. Practitioners will be particularly interested in the job
specific analysis presented in this chapter.
Part four focuses on an area which is too often neglected in many of the standard textbooks on Human Resource Management: namely, the importance of
integrating the HR function with other managerial functions within the organisation. This reader feels that this section contains the most important chapters
in the book from an air transport or HRM perspective. Students will gain
specialised insights from these chapters, and Eaton’s arguments for greater integration of HRM with other management functions such as production management, finance and, surprisingly, personnel management, are extremely well made.
Eaton’s assessment of personnel management in chapter 10 again raises the argument of whether HRM is any different from personnel management. This chapter will provide much food for thought for both students and academics in the
fields of HRM/Personnel Management and is the most theoretically rigorous
chapter in the book. In this particular case, part four would have been completed,
if not strengthened, with the inclusion of a chapter that links human resource
management with marketing management.
Each chapter of this book offers a broad mix of empirical, reflective and conceptual writing dealing with the theme of globalisation and the impact it has had
on recent sectoral and organisational developments. An important and rare
strength of this book is the observation and discussion with regard to the effect
globalisation has had on HRM practices.
Eaton is to be commended for producing a text which takes a multiple stakeholder approach to the analysis of globalisation and HRM. His assessment of the
internal and external operating environments in the airline industry is clear and
concise. The book is very readable and while it is academically rigorous, the excellent practical insights offered maintain the reader’s interest throughout. I have
no hesitation in recommending this book to managers and students and also to
an audience not specifically targeted by the author––academics and consultants
in the fields of corporate strategy and HRM.
UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER
TREVOR MORROW
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BRITISH CAPITAL, ANTIPODEAN LABOUR: WORKING
ZEALAND WATERFRONT, 1915–1951
THE
June 2002
NEW
By Anna Green. University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 2001, 202 pp., $39.95
(paperback)
In a recent review of New Zealand waterfront union leader Jock Barnes’s autobiography, I lamented that a manuscript documenting port labour relations
during his tenure had not itself been published. This offering from the University
of Otago Press rectifies the situation. British Capital, Antipodean Labour is developed from Anna Green’s doctoral thesis. Additional documentary research conducted at archives in New Zealand and the United Kingdom has been used in
writing the book. Green casts her net widely, to good effect. My familiarity with
the thesis meant that I found reading the book to be an interesting study in the
way that a capable researcher’s thinking on a topic develops over time. Despite
that development, British Capital, Antipodean Labour is not without flaws.
Following a brief introduction, Green begins by identifying the waterfront
employers––shipping companies in the main. For me, chapter 1 is the best
chapter in the book. There is a very good discussion of the origins of the New
Zealand Conference, the cartel-like arrangement between four British shipping
companies contracted by the Producer Boards responsible for the export of New
Zealand’s agricultural products. In fact, it is the only sensible thing that has been
written about this arrangement to date.
Chapter 2 provides a vivid description of the abysmal working conditions
experienced by watersiders or wharfies; the account is animated both by extensive quotes from interviews with retired wharfies and by passages of poetry and
other vernacular writing. However, Green’s focus on three main ports (Auckland,
Wellington and Lyttelton) weakens the discussion of waterfront unionism in chapter 3. These ports may have had the preponderance of watersiders, but there was
parochialism amongst union members at the smaller ports that led to tension
between the local and the national levels, even after the formation of a national
union in 1936. That tension is alluded to by Green herself (pages 71 and 88), so
a fuller account of the role of the smaller unions/branches in the politics of peak
level union organising would have strengthened this chapter. Moreover, fewer
than eight pages are devoted to the internal politics of the Waterside Workers’
Federation and its successor, the Waterside Workers’ Union. The remainder of
the chapter deals with a ragbag assortment of topics––union welfare initiatives,
social activities, stopwork meetings, and wharfie nicknames.
The way that the waterfront labour market was partially decasualised is
explained in chapter 4. An element of the labour-process determinism present
in Green’s earlier work has crept in here, as she describes decasualisation as a
reform to the labour process (page 79), when clearly what she is writing about
is the establishment of exclusionary closure within a labour market. But this is
more a matter of using terms incorrectly than a flaw that cuts to the heart of the
analysis.
Chapter 5 deals with wharfies’ informal resistance to managerial attempts to
control them on the job. The most important of the informal practices, ‘spelling’
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(unauthorised absence from the worksite), is usefully shown to be part of what
might be called an ‘indulgency pattern’ (the term is Alvin Gouldner’s, not Anna
Green’s). In other words, employers condoned the practice in order to minimise
disruptions to work that inevitably occurred in response to the poor conditions
and long hours of work on the waterfront (page 100).
Chapter 6 provides a fascinating account of an early attempt at industrial
democracy in New Zealand, through proposals pushed by controversial waterfront union leader Jim Roberts to introduce a system of ‘cooperative stevedoring’.
Significantly, this chapter shows that the attempt by employers to use pay almost
exclusively to motivate wharfies, in the post-1951 period, had its precursor in
Roberts’ proposals for new payment systems that often conflicted with the wishes
of the rank and file (page 122).
Chapter 7 examines the lead-up to the momentous 1951 dispute that resulted
in the Waterside Workers’ Union being both deregistered and dismantled. In
her favour, Green strives for a novel historical interpretation of the events that
precipitated the waterfront crisis. Although her argument is not altogether clear,
Green seems to attribute the crisis to two causes. The first one is an increase in
the number of disputes that originated on the job between 1945 and 1950, leading to considerable disruptions to cargo movements. However, the two pie charts
that depict this dispute are difficult to read and lump together all of the disputes
in this five-year period. A more fine-grained analysis would be worthwhile. The
second causal factor Green identifies is the employers’ ‘inability to get the work
done faster’ (page 143). Port congestion and the availability of cargo-handling
equipment notwithstanding, that statement implies low labour productivity.
However, nowhere in the book are time series on labour productivity to be found,
despite figuring in Green’s conclusion (page 152). That neglect makes it
difficult to evaluate the claims and counterclaims by employers and unionists
about the rate of work that Green amply reports. But it also brings to the fore
an unacknowledged paradox in Green’s own argument. She is at pains to point
out that the Conference Lines ‘were making “substantial” profits’ (page 21), given
their virtual monopoly position in New Zealand’s export trade which enabled
them to set freight rates almost unilaterally––with little bargaining power
possessed either by the Government or the Producer Boards.
Similarly, Green claims that stevedoring companies did well after 1945, as
‘stevedoring was highly profitable’ (page 22). If shipping companies and stevedoring companies were reaping good returns from the industry, why were they,
as employers, so perturbed by low labour productivity and disruptions to work?
Why did the employers act precipitously to effect the 1951 dispute? There must
have been other factors involved for them to risk a confrontation with the
powerful Waterside Workers’ Union. There are a host of industry-level economic
considerations that may have come into play, but without so much as a simple
explanation of what is happening to labour productivity in this period, it is impossible even to begin considering them. The analysis is not assisted by the fact that
the tune is suddenly changed on the last page of the book and the ‘real underlying causes of the dispute’ are revealed to be simply worker backlash against bad
working conditions that occurred in the context of post-war prosperity (page 153).
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At this point, there seems to be a jumbling of mediate causes and proximate
causes.
The book’s conclusion is short and ends on a rather weak note. Green simply
points to recent events at New Zealand ports reported in a newspaper as
evidence of some continuity in the problems facing waterfront unions. Curiously,
she ignores the published scholarly research about waterfront labour relations
in the period after 1951. For that matter, she does not even engage with a recent
reinterpretation of 1951 provided by Deborah Mabbett who, in Trade, Employment
and Welfare (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995), draws attention to the importance
of the interests of farmers as third parties to the fray. I couldn’t help but feel that
by claiming that waterfront disputes have ‘traditionally been defined in terms of
conflict between militant unionists and the authority of the state’ (page 151), without saying who defined them in this way, Green is simply setting up a straw man
to knock down.
I am pleased that British Capital, Antipodean Labour has been published. But I
am disappointed by the analysis it provides of the pressures that resulted in the
1951 showdown. Given the periodisation and what the publicity material
promises, that analysis seems to be the whole point of the book so it needs to be
thorough.
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
WORKING CAPITAL: THE POWER
JAMES REVELEY
OF
LABOR’S PENSIONS
Edited by Archon Fung, Tessa Hebb and Joel Rogers. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
and London, 2001, x + 273 pp., £22.95 (hardback)
How can labour organise to confront the structural power of capital? What are
the alternative strategies available for workers seeking to influence the behaviour of employers? Labour can attempt to influence capital through control of
the supply of labour and organisation at the point of production. It can also seek
to influence the decisions made by businesses through the agency of the state in
the form of regulation. These mechanisms have been the traditional mainstay of
labour movement strategy in developed countries and have formed the analytical core of industrial relations research.
Recent developments have given rise to a number of alternative strategies that
attempt to overcome the relative decline in the ability of labour to influence
capital at the point of production or through the agency of the state. For example, developed country labour movements have used the mechanism of consumer
boycotts in an attempt to influence the labour practices of companies in developing countries with varying degrees of success. The focus on influencing capital at the point of consumption, rather than production, can in many ways be
seen as a response to the need for international action and an acknowledgement
of the limitations of traditional strategies beyond the level of the nation state.
Working Capital provides a timely and fascinating insight into another potential mechanism through which labour can attempt to influence capital and
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confront its structural power––as a participant in the capital market. As Hebb
notes in the introduction, at just the same time that labour’s ability to influence
employers at the point of production is in decline in the US, the growing importance of workers’ pension savings in the capital market opens another potential
source of influence. Hebb alleges that ‘US capital markets are presently financed
by $7 trillion of workers’ pension fund savings. This pool of assets represents the
largest single source of capital in the world’ (page 2).
However, this potential power is not without its problems. In chapter 2, Barker
and Fung note that there are strong connections between the behaviour of institutional investors in the capital market and the erosion of workers’ wages and
conditions that have occurred from the 1980s in the US. Furthermore they provide strong evidence to suggest that pension funds are just as responsible for producing management practices that focus on short run returns at the expense of
long run growth as are other institutional investors. Overall, this chapter provides a comprehensive, accessible and balanced overview of recent debates about
the role capital markets play in shaping both corporate strategy and industrial
relations outcomes. The book is worth reading for this chapter alone.
Having established that the current way in which workers’ pension funds are
used produces ‘collateral damage’ in terms of jobs, wages and conditions, the
remainder of the book examines potential ways in which workers’ pension funds
can be used to create ‘collateral benefits’. Chapter 3 examines the development
of socially responsible investment funds in the US. It shows that funds that include
social screens have favourable comparative rates of return and have the potential to influence corporate behaviour. Chapter 4 examines the extent to
which unions have been able to use shareholder activism to influence corporate
behaviour. The analysis in these two chapters suggest that while there are some
benefits to be gained from these areas, there are some fundamental limitations
in the extent to which they can be used to alter the balance of power between
labour and capital, in part because of the separation between ownership and
control.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore the potential for collateral benefits to accrue from
direct investment of workers’ pension savings in particular companies and
projects. As Hebb notes in the introduction, one of the characteristics of capital
markets is that they tend to favour large investments because it is easier to generate information on rates of risk and return from these investments. As a consequence, small and medium sized firms find it difficult to attract investment
capital. However, it is these firms that account for the bulk of manufacturing jobs
in the US. Both chapters 5 and 6 look at economically targeted investment
vehicles that attempt to provide capital to this sector. Chapter 6, in particular, is
worth reading. It documents the growth of Labour Sponsored Investment Funds
in Canada. Since the introduction of the Solidarity Fund in Quebec in the early
1980s, legislation supporting the establishment of these funds has spread across
almost all Canadian provinces and now provides a significant source of capital
for small and medium sized firms. At the same time, this encourages job creation
and union involvement. The comparison between the US and Canada demonstrates the crucial role that legislative mechanisms play. However, the lack of
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legislative support is not the only impediment to the growth of such funds in the
US. As Zanglein notes in chapter 8, the lack of critical skills and information for
pension fund trustees also plays a major role in holding back the expansion of
this form of investment.
Chapter 9 outlines an agenda for legal and regulatory reform aimed at maximising ‘collateral benefits’ associated with the investment of workers’ pension
savings. Overall, it presents a comprehensive set of recommendations which,
if fully implemented, would allow labour to more fully exploit its power as
owners of capital. This provides a fitting conclusion to what is generally an excellent book. That said, Working Capital is not without its problems. Briefly, I believe
that there is too little attention given to the issue of how direct the impact of
capital markets is on management practices; most of the contributors assume that
it is a determinate relationship. Secondly, as indicated in chapter 8 which, among
other issues, stresses the important role collective bargaining plays, it is not clear
that these strategies can be effective by themselves. Thirdly, I contend that there
is too little attention given to the inherent conflicts created for labour in a
situation where it attempts to represent the interests of both the owner and the
workers.
Having said this, there are a number of issues raised by Working Capital which
are of direct relevance to the Australian case. I will concentrate primarily on one
of these but briefly mention two others. Australian wage and salary earners account
for a significant percentage of flows into the Australian capital market. A notable
feature of the Australian capital market is the relative importance of the industry super funds, which were created following the introduction of compulsory
superannuation under the federal Labor government during the 1980s. Many of
these industry funds have union representation on their boards of trustees. There
has been little or no academic attention devoted to whether industry super funds
adopt investment strategies different from those of other institutional investors
in the Australian market, or the extent to which industry super funds could be
used to create the type of collateral benefits outlined in this book. Secondly, the
Canadian experience with Labour Sponsored Investment Funds may offer important lessons for Australia. For example, they appear especially favourable to
employment creation and retention in rural and regional areas. Thirdly, a number of Australian unions have attempted to use shareholder activism to influence
corporate human resource policy (most notably, the Construction, Forestry,
Mining and Energy Union in its dealings with Rio Tinto). Do the differences
between US and Australian patterns of corporate governance suggest that these
campaigns are likely to be more successful in Australia than they have been in
the US? For labour movement activists and academics interested i
GENDER DEMOCRACY
IN
TRADE UNIONS
By Anne McBride. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, ix + 192 pp., £39.95 (hardback)
A
lthough research into gender in trade unions was a relatively neglected topic
in the past, there has been a recent upsurge of work in this area. Anne
McBride’s in-depth and captivating study of gender democracy in UNISON, the
largest UK public sector union, is a significant addition to this literature. Indeed,
the book also raises issues of concern with regard to union representation for
black and lesbian and gay union members whilst also inter-relating these with
working class members of all groups, including white men.
The book begins by reminding us of the changing face of British trade unions;
that women now make up around 44 per cent of the workforce and about 40 per
cent of trade union members, and that a key strategy of the Trades Union
Congress (TUC) is to recruit more women. It describes how the merger of three
public sector unions––the National and Local Government Officers’ Association
(NALGO), the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) and the
Confederation of Health Service Employees (COHSE)––made the new union
UNISON the largest union in Britain, with almost one million female members
(72 per cent) and with approximately 10 per cent of its members black workers.
Within a union where it was anticipated that, following the merger, it ‘would
represent one in 18 of all workers in the country, one in six trade unionists and
one-third of all women union members’, the quest for equality of representation
and participation is clearly of major consequence, particularly to women members of UNISON and potentially to women members of other unions. By implementing proportionality in a union with such a high percentage of women
members, UNISON is arguably changing the dominant (male) values of trade
unionism; the power and authority in decision making previously held by men
perceivably shifts towards the women members. This enlightened approach by
UNISON to union organisation is given thoughtful and balanced consideration
by the author, providing us with insight into tensions that exist between and within
the various representative groups in the quest for the appropriate structures to
support union aims.
Central to the book is the complex notion of democracy. The author draws
upon, and develops, Bachrach and Baratz’s analytical framework of power and
decision making in order to help us through this intricate concept. As McBride
takes us through the literature on democracy and power, she builds up, step by
step, a powerful analysis of gender democracy in trade unions. This analysis
explores the extent to which the ‘rules of the game’ within trade unions tend to
favour white male interests. The book critically appraises different prescriptions
THE JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, VOL. 44, NO. 2, JUNE 2002, 290–308
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for gender democracy and situates UNISON’s approach within the more
radical of these. The principle aim of UNISON is to equalise the power between
the various oppressed social groups (women, black, lesbian and gay, and disabled
members) and privileged groups.
As might be expected by the merger of three previously rival unions, there was
apprehension and caution in the creation of the UNISON rule book as each
partner union attempted to retain some of its former identity. The book explores
how, due to the desire of the partner unions to protect their former organisational
strategies, a gender-neutral approach to the merger debate developed.
In order to achieve proportionality and fair representation, UNISON employs
a number of different strategies; these strategies are explored by the author in a
critical and thought provoking manner. In particular, the author considers the
nature of self-organisation and group organisation and the tensions that these
create between various oppressed groups. What is of great significance is the
identification of a multiplicity of oppressed groups which have to be considered
in relation to one another. Although proportionality and fair representation can
indeed generate new sources of authority for both women and black members,
the case study identifies how, due to the methods employed to achieve proportionality, working-class members and black members were less privileged than
middle-class and white members.
A further complexity in the search for democracy is how, despite the intention of the union to recognise self-organised groups as oppressed social groups,
the rules did not go far enough in giving these groups the power they needed in
order to redress the power imbalance already in existence. As McBride suggests,
although the power of the self-organised groups may develop over time, ‘it would
have looked different if it had started from the desire to give power, influence
and authority to women as an oppressed social group’. This leads her to conclude that those who already had the power remained those who were most able
‘to shape the rules of the game’. Interestingly, as the author identifies, proportionality is also, arguably, promoted as a means of redressing, or attempting to
balance, the power relations between paid officers and the lay membership. It
emerged from the research that whilst some paid officers (both men and women)
used strategies which attempted to limit the participation of women in the union,
lay activists promoted an increase in women’s representation. This increased
representation as a whole, thus giving more authority to activists at the local level.
A major strength of the book is the quality of the empirical data. The author
draws extensively on interviews and by giving voice to her subjects brings to life
the complexities and contradictions within the UNISON system of representation. It is fascinating to hear how different women perceive the system and how
some are prepared to use the system to their own advantage in order to get elected
to office; women who are trade union activists, but not necessarily promoting
‘women’s’ issues. By drawing upon the views and beliefs of women activists the
author explores the conflicting views and opinions of how proportionality can,
and should, be achieved. This serves to remind us that even within the oppressed
social groups, the notion of proportionality is a contested issue. The UNISON
rule book allows for self-organised groups. However, it is how these rules are
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interpreted by different members and different branches that provide insight into
how democratic processes operate within unions in general and UNISON in
particular.
What is of significance to the representation debate is that once women are
elected to decision-making bodies within UNISON, they do not necessarily take
part in the decision-making process; this is clearly hindering the promotion of
any gender debate. Due to the particular process by which they were elected,
they may not be required to speak or vote specifically for women, or it might be
because they lack the experience and expertise required to do so. In line with
other research findings in this area, the book identifies how newly elected women
representatives were marginalised at meetings where they were either fearful of
speaking up, or where their workplace issues of concern were seen to be inappropriate to the wider agenda of the meeting. This is an interesting insight into
the democratic process of the union as such marginalisation of the less experienced women members may well result in the experienced members shaping the
future agenda of the union. As the author reminds us ‘the skills of a representative need to be learned’.
The book provides a valuable and absorbing insight into the search for
gender democracy in UNISON, a union that, from this evidence, has gone
some way to changing the traditional model of male dominated trade union
democracy. It does, however, raise concern over how ‘true’ gender democracy
can be achieved within unions. The quality of the data and the rigour of the
analysis provide invaluable resources and lessons from which other unions
embarking on this road should certainly draw.
For me, there were two minor omissions from the book. Firstly, I would like
to have learned more about the researcher’s role in the data gathering process,
how she was perceived by those she was researching and what problems, if any,
she encountered in gaining access to her ‘subjects’ and the settings in which she
observed them. Secondly, an index would be a valuable addition to the finished
work. These issues do not detract from an otherwise stimulating book.
UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
DOWNSIZING: IS
IT
WORKING
MOIRA CALVELEY
FOR
AUSTRALIA?
Edited by Peter Dawkins and Craig R. Littler. Melbourne Institute of Applied
Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2001,
xvi + 84 pp., $33 (paperback)
Organisational downsizing is an economic and social phenomenon with profound
consequences, yet announcements of job losses are so everyday as to be hackneyed. Grant and Oswick (1996), whilst cautious of the ‘evangelism of “pop management” writers’, are convinced that the two decades since the 1980s warrants
being labeled as the downsizing ‘era’, such is its pervasiveness across most
economies. Even given the familiarity of downsizing, critical elements of its
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character still need to be far better understood. This monograph was commissioned by the Myer Foundation and the Committee for the Economic
Development of Australia (CEDA) with the project conducted by the Melbourne
Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Edited by Peter Dawkins
and Craig Littler, it is the final instalment in a two-part series evaluating the
impact of downsizing on Australian businesses and workers. The earlier research
was published in 1999 as The Contours of Restructuring and Downsizing in Australia.
In the Foreword, it is noted that the principals were especially motivated by
Wayne Cascio and other emerging voices of dissent who have challenged the
long-run financial performance of downsizing organisations and the apparent
deterministic effect of the downsizing mantra on managers. Perhaps ‘corporations have gone overboard in implementing downsizing’ (page iii)?
The ambitious terms of reference of the project asked the following (in summary): What was the extent of restructuring and downsizing in Australian industry? Did it achieve its intended objectives and improvements in enterprise
performance, especially productivity and profitability? How did the well-being
of the downsizing ‘survivors’ fare? What were the labour market outcomes of
those exiting the organisation and the effect on the general community?
Understandably, the discussion in this latest report builds on the findings from
the earlier 1999 monograph, which the authors detail in chapter 1. The research
methodology relied on a threefold approach; namely, an investigation into the
effect of downsizing on skill profiles in organisations, a case study of restructuring in the Australian banking industry, and a survey of Australian households,
used to examine the impact of downsizing on employment and re-employment.
Each is analysed in a separate chapter. Data sources included some 4000 large
firms sourced from the Affirmative Action Agency (analysed longitudinally over
the period 1990 to 1998), Finance Sector Union survey data, mail surveys, interviews and focus groups from ‘Onebank’ (the case study) and, less clearly, data
collected in conjunction with the International Social Science Survey.
Given the continuing evidence of unabated organisational job ‘shedding’ in
Australia, when the monograph was ‘launched’ it received widespread, especially
print media, coverage. It was said to build on the earlier ‘ground-breaking’
research that mapped the extent and form (the contours) of downsizing in Australia.
The findings were typically characterised by journalists as ‘landmark’ research
giving ‘the lie’ to corporate executives’ longstanding and ‘comforting’ notion that
downsizing was the equivalent of a ‘purging laxative: unpleasant, but good for
you’ (Long 2001). It was more bad news for the proponents of downsizing.
The monograph does make a considerable scholarly contribution in seeking
to fulfil its terms of reference. Skill implications arising from downsizing and the
banking case study contained in chapters 2 and 3 provide the strongest analysis.
These chapters draw extensively from the literature and cogently set out to
evaluate key propositions about downsizing using well-tried methodologies.
Shibboleths, such as downsizing encourages multi-skilling and ‘empowerment’,
as especially articulated by organisational re-engineering proponents, are carefully tested. Inevitably, the report wrestles with the complex and still opaque relationships between deskilling, the peripheralisation of workforces and whether
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firms are upsizing or downsizing. As an illustration of this conundrum, when firms
decide to contract out their in-house information technology services, the reduced
skill base may be offset by a deepening of skills in the contract supplier/upsizer
(see, for example, Lewer & Gallimore 2001). Overall, however, the authors’
evidence profoundly points to downsizing having a negative impact on the skill
base of organisations. Such firms, which predominate in manufacturing, are
provocatively labelled as ‘dumb downsizers’ (page 19).
The finance sector case study (chapter 3) highlights rich detail of change in
the banking industry. At Onebank, restructuring reduced the number of
branches from 1740 to 1390, there was a ‘spill and fill’ of all positions, and fulltime employment fell by 16 per cent, matched by a similar increase in part-time
workers. Redundancy and other costs associated with one major change intervention––the Restructuring Improvement Program––with the delightful acronym
of RIP, totalled $188 million. Male managers at Onebank had on average over
seventeen years’ tenure and had witnessed three separate restructures. RIP
reduced staff expenses as a proportion of total operating income from 38.4 per
cent in 1992/3 to 32.3 per cent in 1995/6. Operating income per full time
employee also rose by 31.6 per cent. But, as the report argues, the change was
pursued to the significant detriment of Onebank’s ‘human resources’. The findings conclude that the bank (paralleled by the others in the industry) experienced
crumbling employee relations, had shunned HRM-styled high performance work
systems, adopting instead ‘closely monitored performance, targeted incentives
. . . and the use of technology to improve basic business processes’ (page 44). Using
data that emphasise how restructuring has broken the ‘old’ psychological
contract (steady financial rewards, hard work and tenure) and engendered the
survivor syndrome, the authors ask: can organisations be effective without
loyalty?
The analysis of the experience of Australian workers (chapter 4), important
though many of the findings are, is far more uncertain. The authors wanted to
know the impact on earnings, quality of life and other variables, of downsizing
on ‘down-sized out’ workers. They seek to differentiate the net experiences by
factoring in the workers pre-existing human capital characteristics. This aspect
of the methodology needed to be more clearly articulated, as did the use of the
1999 International Social Science Survey/Australia. An assumption that the entire
readership would have a working knowledge of the number of respondents and
data-collection processes used in the survey is unreasonable. Other valuable data
sources, such as Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force and redundancy data,
were ignored. This highlights a fundamental issue with the methodology. The
other chapters are informed by the literature, often testing their findings against
alternative work. Chapter 4 though adopts a more stand-alone approach. To
answer the questions posed by the terms of reference, is a single data source,
even acknowledging its power, the most suitable method?
Not surprisingly, the monograph leans towards a relatively benign set of conclusions, arguing that ‘for most workers, downsizing is not a disaster . . . most
finding jobs, most do so quickly’ (page 70). These broad conclusions are
moderated, among others, by somewhat lower job satisfaction rates in re-
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employment and the specific impact of job loss on vulnerable, mainly older, workers. The explanation for the difference may rest on the understanding that not
all workers who experience downsizing are retrenched, given firms may use
natural attrition, and incentive-based non-compulsory exit strategies. Nevertheless, a more critical frame would have significantly added to the authority of
chapter 4. Given an emerging misanthropic political culture where ‘picking off
the stragglers’ is promoted as being in Australia’s national interest, the editors
needed to carefully analyse their results against the wider literature and evidence.
To do otherwise is to court misappropriation by the neo-liberalist agenda.
Finally, the report conveys a sense of ambiguity in endeavouring to balance its
social science techniques and popularising its message. For example, interspersed
between complex tables which detail chi values and ordinary least squares regression estimates, there is a propensity to adopt colloquialisms (‘the grim reaper’,
‘run on empty’) and catchy but value-laden epithets: ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘dumb’
downsizers and ‘knowledge intensive’ or ‘casual growers’. Thankfully they resist
the distasteful ‘anorexic corporation’. Organisational strategists, like those at
Onebank, are wedded to cost cutting and single bottom line performance indicators. Persuading such a constituency to challenge their apparently unswerving
commitment to the highly questionable long-term value of job shedding is this
monograph’s critical contribution. Perhaps somewhat mischievously, it is not too
difficult to imagine the report being presented at seminars in PowerPoint format
with supporting two-by-two tables and earnestly contrite management-types
nodding whilst nibbling on sweets from small bowls!
REFERENCES
Grant D, Oswick C (eds) (1996) Metaphors and Organisations. London: Sage.
Lewer J, Gallimore P (2001) Are outsourcing and skill formation mutually exclusive? The experience of a heavy manufacturing firm. International Journal of Employment Studies 9(1), 141–162.
Long S (2001) The myth behind the mantra of downsizing. Australian Financial Review 1 August.
UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE
JOHN LEWER
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN THE PRIVATISED COAL INDUSTRY:
CONTINUITY, CHANGE AND CONTRADICTIONS
By Emma Wallis. Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, xi + 281 pp., £42.50 (hardback)
The 1984/5 British coal strike was, by common agreement, one of the defining
moments for industrial relations during the last 25 years, with the impact of the
strike and the defeat of the miners being felt well away from British shores. Above
all, the miners’ defeat opened the door for a wider application of the ‘Thatcherite’
model, not only in industrial relations but also in terms of the privatisation of
public enterprises. Given the tumultuous events of the strike itself, it is hardly
surprising that, in the wake of the dispute, the initial attention of scholars was
directed towards recording and analysing the reasons for this conflict and for the
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subsequent defeat of the National Union of Minerworkers (NUM). Such work
was necessarily backward looking. With the passage of more than 15 years since
the miners’ defeat, however, a far more important question now confronts us:
what changes to industrial relations patterns did the strike and the subsequent
privatisation of the industry bring about? This key question is comprehensively
addressed in Industrial Relations in the Privatised Coal Industry.
The great strength of Wallis’ excellent and insightful study is its capacity to
ask and then answer the big research questions regarding what has happened to
industrial relations in the British coal industry. As such, this capacity reflects the
origins of the book in an earlier doctoral study. A particularly pleasing aspect of
the book is its ability to link the lessons learned from a series of case studies of
individual mines into wider generalised conclusions. In this regard, Wallis asks
two broad questions. First, she considers whether or not the post-strike privatisation of the industry did, in fact, represent a decisive departure from previous
patterns of industrial relations. Second, she questions whether privatisation has
been negative for collective bargaining and trade union organisation. In this
regard, she notes that it could perhaps be doubted whether any employer could
be more hostile to collective bargaining and unions than the publicly-owned
British Coal during its last decade. Finally, Wallis presents a model for testing,
in which she suggests that industrial relations outcomes in a privatised environment are shaped by two major variables––‘the labour relations strategies adopted
by management’ and ‘the responses of the various mining unions to those strategies’ (pages 59 and 236). Unfortunately, for those of us who feel that collective
bargaining and trade unions are positive additions to our society, Wallis ends up
by rejecting this model. Instead, she concludes that, in the post-1985 world, trade
union responses ‘did not emerge as a significant variable’ and that, instead, management has assumed a sole, ‘determining’ role in deciding industrial relations
systems and outcomes at a local level (pages 236–7).
One of the strengths of Wallis’ work is its capacity to convey a picture of change
in the British coal industry at both the macro and micro levels. In chapter 1, and
again in chapter 3, Wallis provides us with a highly readable overview of the context within which privatisation occurred. For, as Wallis rightly indicates, the key
issue is not whether or not miners worked under private ownership (which, after
all, is hardly new). Instead, the decisive factor was the overall ‘environment’ which
existed during the early 1990s and which laid the basis for ‘the re-assertion of
managerial prerogatives’ in the coal industry’ (page 59). Here Wallis emphasises
a number of factors that, together, undermined trade union bargaining power in
addition to the NUM’s defeat in the 1984/5 strike. Economically, the most significant changes included the privatisation of the electricity industry (which consumed more than 80 per cent of Britain’s coal) and the opening up of the British
economy to cheaper, foreign coal. Together, these changes devastated the industry, with 74 per cent of all jobs being lost between the end of the strike and the
beginning of privatisation in 1991/2. Industrially, the capacity of unions to resist
management’s initiatives was hindered by the emergence of a dual-union situation, as the Union of Democratic Miners (UDM) emerged as the dominant force
on some central mines. Given the UDM’s background as a body of miners who
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had returned to work during the 1984/5 dispute, this development helped to
incapacitate union resistance.
To trace the impact of industrial relations change at the mine-site level, Wallis
undertook case studies at seven mines, with the research at each mine involving
a mixture of quantitative research (surveys) and qualitative research (interviews).
Coal United Kingdom (CUK) owned four of these mines, management buy-out
teams owned two, and one, in South Wales, was a cooperative run by former
NUM members. With the exception of the last case, all of these privatised mines
were characterised by industrial relations regimes that represented both a continuation and an intensification of the unitarist management style that characterised British Coal during its final decade. While, at most mines, unions were
granted ‘representation rights’, these did not normally extend to ‘bargaining
rights’, certainly not in any meaningful sense. Interestingly, the UDM, despite
its more moderate, pro-management credentials, fared no better than the NUM
at those mines where it was able to obtain ‘representation’ rights. Clearly, under
the new regime, unions of whatever ilk were regarded as an irrelevance to be, at
the most, consulted about changes that management had already decided were
going to occur. For the workforce, this new regime (again with the exception of
the colliery owned by former NUM members) involved an intensification of work
and the acceptance of new ‘flexibilities’.
Stylistically, Wallis’ work is highly readable and accessible to a wide audience.
Conceptually, its only significant flaw occurs when the study attempts to leave
British shores to situate the industry within a global context. While this is an
important endeavour, her attempt to link the woes of the British industry with
expanded coal production in the Third World is misguided. Here Wallis confuses leading producing nations, such as China, with leading export nations. For,
while in 1997 China produced more than 1.3 billion tonnes of coal, only 30.7
million tonnes of this was actually exported, reflecting the primitive nature of
the Chinese industry. In consequence, Wallis’ statements that job losses in
Western Europe are associated ‘with the low operating costs and cheap labour
advantages of Third World mining’ operations are simply not accurate (page 40).
Throughout the 1990s, the sea-borne trade in coal continued to be dominated
by first world, not third world, producers. During the course of this decade, it
was Australia that gained a position of pre-eminence, as its exports grew by over
70 per cent from under 100 million tonnes per annum to over 170 million tonnes.
To complicate matters, however, the international coal trade is largely fragmented
by distance into two distinct markets––the North-west Atlantic and North-east
Pacific. Fortunately, this failing does not impact on the overall veracity of Wallis’
work, which remains primarily focused on British outcomes rather than international influences.
As Wallis points out, there is a tendency for industrial relations scholars to
look for a ‘silver lining’ to the processes of privatisation and deregulation that
have characterised economies and labour markets during the last two decades.
In the British context, a number of authors including Peter Fairbrother, Anthony
Ferner and Trevor Colling have all suggested that the likely impact of privatisation was ambiguous, providing opportunities as well as threats. Unfortunately,
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Wallis’ thorough survey suggests otherwise. As she bluntly concludes, ‘privatisation has had negative implications for organised labour within the coal industry’ (page 236).
GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
BRADLEY BOWDEN
GLOBALIZATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
AIRLINE INDUSTRY
IN THE
By Jack Eaton. Second edition, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, ix + 158 pp., £39.95
(hardback)
This is an impressively researched, well written book based on an excellent industry analysis. It fills an important void in the relatively sparse literature on Human
Resource Management (HRM) in the airline industry. Eaton’s book is all the more
impressive because not only does it focus on HRM, it also offers a comprehensive review of the concept of globalisation. The focus on the airline industry gives
this book depth and offers the reader the opportunity to balance a sound theoretical understanding of the key theories of HRM with an in-depth practical
knowledge of an industry which has witnessed huge upheaval in the last decade.
The book is aimed at managers in all areas of the airline industry and students
of air transport or human resource management/personnel management.
The book is divided into four parts, with part one focusing on the organisation
of airlines as businesses. The major theme emerging from part one is that a key
driving force of HRM is the need to be market driven rather than operations
driven. A particular strength of this section is the understanding that Eaton displays with regard to the role of managers in the airline industry. The focus of
chapter 1 on the customer is an area all too often overlooked in HRM texts. The
overview of Total Quality Management is rigorous but keeps the reader’s full
attention by remaining relatively descriptive and not being overly analytical. The
role of the state in the airline industry appears to be one which is constantly
debated. Eaton’s review of the industry’s relationship with the state and the impact
of HRM offer a sound historical overview of key developments and gives the
reader an insight into current and future state and corporate strategies. Chapters
3 and 4 consider the key relationships in the airline industry, with the underpinning of the chapters being the impact of these various relationships on the
management of human resources. A popular misconception among HR academics and practitioners is that boards of directors drive corporate strategy and
that the level of HR specialist involvement at board level will determine HR strategy. Eaton’s alternative approach is validated by bringing together a range of stakeholders and interested parties including investors, suppliers, competitors and the
general public and not just placing sole emphasis on the board of directors. A
major strength of Eaton’s approach is that HRM policy and practices are considered in relation to each of the aforementioned.
This reader found part two of the book, which focuses on internal relations
in the airline industry, overly theoretical. However, the reviews of the theory of
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airline organisation and the elements of airline organisation make valuable contributions towards developing the reader’s specialised knowledge of the airline
industry. The theoretical nature of the chapters may result in some finding it
slightly difficult to interpret, but practitioners will find these chapters particularly invaluable.
Part three focuses specifically on industrial relations in the airline industry, with
the single chapter in this section offering a good overview of the changes which
have occurred in managerial approaches to industrial relations throughout the
1990s. The comparative analysis of the approaches taken by Air France and British
Airways is particularly informative and Eaton summarises their complex
approaches extremely well. Practitioners will be particularly interested in the job
specific analysis presented in this chapter.
Part four focuses on an area which is too often neglected in many of the standard textbooks on Human Resource Management: namely, the importance of
integrating the HR function with other managerial functions within the organisation. This reader feels that this section contains the most important chapters
in the book from an air transport or HRM perspective. Students will gain
specialised insights from these chapters, and Eaton’s arguments for greater integration of HRM with other management functions such as production management, finance and, surprisingly, personnel management, are extremely well made.
Eaton’s assessment of personnel management in chapter 10 again raises the argument of whether HRM is any different from personnel management. This chapter will provide much food for thought for both students and academics in the
fields of HRM/Personnel Management and is the most theoretically rigorous
chapter in the book. In this particular case, part four would have been completed,
if not strengthened, with the inclusion of a chapter that links human resource
management with marketing management.
Each chapter of this book offers a broad mix of empirical, reflective and conceptual writing dealing with the theme of globalisation and the impact it has had
on recent sectoral and organisational developments. An important and rare
strength of this book is the observation and discussion with regard to the effect
globalisation has had on HRM practices.
Eaton is to be commended for producing a text which takes a multiple stakeholder approach to the analysis of globalisation and HRM. His assessment of the
internal and external operating environments in the airline industry is clear and
concise. The book is very readable and while it is academically rigorous, the excellent practical insights offered maintain the reader’s interest throughout. I have
no hesitation in recommending this book to managers and students and also to
an audience not specifically targeted by the author––academics and consultants
in the fields of corporate strategy and HRM.
UNIVERSITY OF ULSTER
TREVOR MORROW
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BRITISH CAPITAL, ANTIPODEAN LABOUR: WORKING
ZEALAND WATERFRONT, 1915–1951
THE
June 2002
NEW
By Anna Green. University of Otago Press, Dunedin, 2001, 202 pp., $39.95
(paperback)
In a recent review of New Zealand waterfront union leader Jock Barnes’s autobiography, I lamented that a manuscript documenting port labour relations
during his tenure had not itself been published. This offering from the University
of Otago Press rectifies the situation. British Capital, Antipodean Labour is developed from Anna Green’s doctoral thesis. Additional documentary research conducted at archives in New Zealand and the United Kingdom has been used in
writing the book. Green casts her net widely, to good effect. My familiarity with
the thesis meant that I found reading the book to be an interesting study in the
way that a capable researcher’s thinking on a topic develops over time. Despite
that development, British Capital, Antipodean Labour is not without flaws.
Following a brief introduction, Green begins by identifying the waterfront
employers––shipping companies in the main. For me, chapter 1 is the best
chapter in the book. There is a very good discussion of the origins of the New
Zealand Conference, the cartel-like arrangement between four British shipping
companies contracted by the Producer Boards responsible for the export of New
Zealand’s agricultural products. In fact, it is the only sensible thing that has been
written about this arrangement to date.
Chapter 2 provides a vivid description of the abysmal working conditions
experienced by watersiders or wharfies; the account is animated both by extensive quotes from interviews with retired wharfies and by passages of poetry and
other vernacular writing. However, Green’s focus on three main ports (Auckland,
Wellington and Lyttelton) weakens the discussion of waterfront unionism in chapter 3. These ports may have had the preponderance of watersiders, but there was
parochialism amongst union members at the smaller ports that led to tension
between the local and the national levels, even after the formation of a national
union in 1936. That tension is alluded to by Green herself (pages 71 and 88), so
a fuller account of the role of the smaller unions/branches in the politics of peak
level union organising would have strengthened this chapter. Moreover, fewer
than eight pages are devoted to the internal politics of the Waterside Workers’
Federation and its successor, the Waterside Workers’ Union. The remainder of
the chapter deals with a ragbag assortment of topics––union welfare initiatives,
social activities, stopwork meetings, and wharfie nicknames.
The way that the waterfront labour market was partially decasualised is
explained in chapter 4. An element of the labour-process determinism present
in Green’s earlier work has crept in here, as she describes decasualisation as a
reform to the labour process (page 79), when clearly what she is writing about
is the establishment of exclusionary closure within a labour market. But this is
more a matter of using terms incorrectly than a flaw that cuts to the heart of the
analysis.
Chapter 5 deals with wharfies’ informal resistance to managerial attempts to
control them on the job. The most important of the informal practices, ‘spelling’
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(unauthorised absence from the worksite), is usefully shown to be part of what
might be called an ‘indulgency pattern’ (the term is Alvin Gouldner’s, not Anna
Green’s). In other words, employers condoned the practice in order to minimise
disruptions to work that inevitably occurred in response to the poor conditions
and long hours of work on the waterfront (page 100).
Chapter 6 provides a fascinating account of an early attempt at industrial
democracy in New Zealand, through proposals pushed by controversial waterfront union leader Jim Roberts to introduce a system of ‘cooperative stevedoring’.
Significantly, this chapter shows that the attempt by employers to use pay almost
exclusively to motivate wharfies, in the post-1951 period, had its precursor in
Roberts’ proposals for new payment systems that often conflicted with the wishes
of the rank and file (page 122).
Chapter 7 examines the lead-up to the momentous 1951 dispute that resulted
in the Waterside Workers’ Union being both deregistered and dismantled. In
her favour, Green strives for a novel historical interpretation of the events that
precipitated the waterfront crisis. Although her argument is not altogether clear,
Green seems to attribute the crisis to two causes. The first one is an increase in
the number of disputes that originated on the job between 1945 and 1950, leading to considerable disruptions to cargo movements. However, the two pie charts
that depict this dispute are difficult to read and lump together all of the disputes
in this five-year period. A more fine-grained analysis would be worthwhile. The
second causal factor Green identifies is the employers’ ‘inability to get the work
done faster’ (page 143). Port congestion and the availability of cargo-handling
equipment notwithstanding, that statement implies low labour productivity.
However, nowhere in the book are time series on labour productivity to be found,
despite figuring in Green’s conclusion (page 152). That neglect makes it
difficult to evaluate the claims and counterclaims by employers and unionists
about the rate of work that Green amply reports. But it also brings to the fore
an unacknowledged paradox in Green’s own argument. She is at pains to point
out that the Conference Lines ‘were making “substantial” profits’ (page 21), given
their virtual monopoly position in New Zealand’s export trade which enabled
them to set freight rates almost unilaterally––with little bargaining power
possessed either by the Government or the Producer Boards.
Similarly, Green claims that stevedoring companies did well after 1945, as
‘stevedoring was highly profitable’ (page 22). If shipping companies and stevedoring companies were reaping good returns from the industry, why were they,
as employers, so perturbed by low labour productivity and disruptions to work?
Why did the employers act precipitously to effect the 1951 dispute? There must
have been other factors involved for them to risk a confrontation with the
powerful Waterside Workers’ Union. There are a host of industry-level economic
considerations that may have come into play, but without so much as a simple
explanation of what is happening to labour productivity in this period, it is impossible even to begin considering them. The analysis is not assisted by the fact that
the tune is suddenly changed on the last page of the book and the ‘real underlying causes of the dispute’ are revealed to be simply worker backlash against bad
working conditions that occurred in the context of post-war prosperity (page 153).
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At this point, there seems to be a jumbling of mediate causes and proximate
causes.
The book’s conclusion is short and ends on a rather weak note. Green simply
points to recent events at New Zealand ports reported in a newspaper as
evidence of some continuity in the problems facing waterfront unions. Curiously,
she ignores the published scholarly research about waterfront labour relations
in the period after 1951. For that matter, she does not even engage with a recent
reinterpretation of 1951 provided by Deborah Mabbett who, in Trade, Employment
and Welfare (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995), draws attention to the importance
of the interests of farmers as third parties to the fray. I couldn’t help but feel that
by claiming that waterfront disputes have ‘traditionally been defined in terms of
conflict between militant unionists and the authority of the state’ (page 151), without saying who defined them in this way, Green is simply setting up a straw man
to knock down.
I am pleased that British Capital, Antipodean Labour has been published. But I
am disappointed by the analysis it provides of the pressures that resulted in the
1951 showdown. Given the periodisation and what the publicity material
promises, that analysis seems to be the whole point of the book so it needs to be
thorough.
UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG
WORKING CAPITAL: THE POWER
JAMES REVELEY
OF
LABOR’S PENSIONS
Edited by Archon Fung, Tessa Hebb and Joel Rogers. Cornell University Press, Ithaca
and London, 2001, x + 273 pp., £22.95 (hardback)
How can labour organise to confront the structural power of capital? What are
the alternative strategies available for workers seeking to influence the behaviour of employers? Labour can attempt to influence capital through control of
the supply of labour and organisation at the point of production. It can also seek
to influence the decisions made by businesses through the agency of the state in
the form of regulation. These mechanisms have been the traditional mainstay of
labour movement strategy in developed countries and have formed the analytical core of industrial relations research.
Recent developments have given rise to a number of alternative strategies that
attempt to overcome the relative decline in the ability of labour to influence
capital at the point of production or through the agency of the state. For example, developed country labour movements have used the mechanism of consumer
boycotts in an attempt to influence the labour practices of companies in developing countries with varying degrees of success. The focus on influencing capital at the point of consumption, rather than production, can in many ways be
seen as a response to the need for international action and an acknowledgement
of the limitations of traditional strategies beyond the level of the nation state.
Working Capital provides a timely and fascinating insight into another potential mechanism through which labour can attempt to influence capital and
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confront its structural power––as a participant in the capital market. As Hebb
notes in the introduction, at just the same time that labour’s ability to influence
employers at the point of production is in decline in the US, the growing importance of workers’ pension savings in the capital market opens another potential
source of influence. Hebb alleges that ‘US capital markets are presently financed
by $7 trillion of workers’ pension fund savings. This pool of assets represents the
largest single source of capital in the world’ (page 2).
However, this potential power is not without its problems. In chapter 2, Barker
and Fung note that there are strong connections between the behaviour of institutional investors in the capital market and the erosion of workers’ wages and
conditions that have occurred from the 1980s in the US. Furthermore they provide strong evidence to suggest that pension funds are just as responsible for producing management practices that focus on short run returns at the expense of
long run growth as are other institutional investors. Overall, this chapter provides a comprehensive, accessible and balanced overview of recent debates about
the role capital markets play in shaping both corporate strategy and industrial
relations outcomes. The book is worth reading for this chapter alone.
Having established that the current way in which workers’ pension funds are
used produces ‘collateral damage’ in terms of jobs, wages and conditions, the
remainder of the book examines potential ways in which workers’ pension funds
can be used to create ‘collateral benefits’. Chapter 3 examines the development
of socially responsible investment funds in the US. It shows that funds that include
social screens have favourable comparative rates of return and have the potential to influence corporate behaviour. Chapter 4 examines the extent to
which unions have been able to use shareholder activism to influence corporate
behaviour. The analysis in these two chapters suggest that while there are some
benefits to be gained from these areas, there are some fundamental limitations
in the extent to which they can be used to alter the balance of power between
labour and capital, in part because of the separation between ownership and
control.
Chapters 5 and 6 explore the potential for collateral benefits to accrue from
direct investment of workers’ pension savings in particular companies and
projects. As Hebb notes in the introduction, one of the characteristics of capital
markets is that they tend to favour large investments because it is easier to generate information on rates of risk and return from these investments. As a consequence, small and medium sized firms find it difficult to attract investment
capital. However, it is these firms that account for the bulk of manufacturing jobs
in the US. Both chapters 5 and 6 look at economically targeted investment
vehicles that attempt to provide capital to this sector. Chapter 6, in particular, is
worth reading. It documents the growth of Labour Sponsored Investment Funds
in Canada. Since the introduction of the Solidarity Fund in Quebec in the early
1980s, legislation supporting the establishment of these funds has spread across
almost all Canadian provinces and now provides a significant source of capital
for small and medium sized firms. At the same time, this encourages job creation
and union involvement. The comparison between the US and Canada demonstrates the crucial role that legislative mechanisms play. However, the lack of
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legislative support is not the only impediment to the growth of such funds in the
US. As Zanglein notes in chapter 8, the lack of critical skills and information for
pension fund trustees also plays a major role in holding back the expansion of
this form of investment.
Chapter 9 outlines an agenda for legal and regulatory reform aimed at maximising ‘collateral benefits’ associated with the investment of workers’ pension
savings. Overall, it presents a comprehensive set of recommendations which,
if fully implemented, would allow labour to more fully exploit its power as
owners of capital. This provides a fitting conclusion to what is generally an excellent book. That said, Working Capital is not without its problems. Briefly, I believe
that there is too little attention given to the issue of how direct the impact of
capital markets is on management practices; most of the contributors assume that
it is a determinate relationship. Secondly, as indicated in chapter 8 which, among
other issues, stresses the important role collective bargaining plays, it is not clear
that these strategies can be effective by themselves. Thirdly, I contend that there
is too little attention given to the inherent conflicts created for labour in a
situation where it attempts to represent the interests of both the owner and the
workers.
Having said this, there are a number of issues raised by Working Capital which
are of direct relevance to the Australian case. I will concentrate primarily on one
of these but briefly mention two others. Australian wage and salary earners account
for a significant percentage of flows into the Australian capital market. A notable
feature of the Australian capital market is the relative importance of the industry super funds, which were created following the introduction of compulsory
superannuation under the federal Labor government during the 1980s. Many of
these industry funds have union representation on their boards of trustees. There
has been little or no academic attention devoted to whether industry super funds
adopt investment strategies different from those of other institutional investors
in the Australian market, or the extent to which industry super funds could be
used to create the type of collateral benefits outlined in this book. Secondly, the
Canadian experience with Labour Sponsored Investment Funds may offer important lessons for Australia. For example, they appear especially favourable to
employment creation and retention in rural and regional areas. Thirdly, a number of Australian unions have attempted to use shareholder activism to influence
corporate human resource policy (most notably, the Construction, Forestry,
Mining and Energy Union in its dealings with Rio Tinto). Do the differences
between US and Australian patterns of corporate governance suggest that these
campaigns are likely to be more successful in Australia than they have been in
the US? For labour movement activists and academics interested i