Huw Beynon

Working Time, Industrial Relations and the Employment Relationship

This article explores the erosion of the standard working-time model associated with the UKs voluntarist system of industrial relations, and argues that its renegotiation is likely to be a critical factor in shaping the employment relationship of the future. As numerous studies over the last two decades have revealed, organizations have increasingly seen ‘time’ as a variable that can be manipulated to increase productivity or expand service provision, through making workers work harder, longer or according to management demands. These studies have also drawn our attention to the wider consequences of the increasing demands that organizations place on their employees in the name of ‘flexibility’, impacting both on what workers do while at work and how they organize and plan the other aspects of their lives. This article brings together two literatures, one on time and the other on industrial relations, and suggests that new working-time arrangements are changing the wage-effort bargain and blurring the previously clearly demarcated boundary between work and non-work time. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in six large UK-based organizations, we argue that there is evidence of a move towards a new ‘temporality’ based on an employer-led model of working time, which differs significantly from both the traditional UK system of working-time regulation and that found in Continental Europe.

The restructuring of career paths in large service sector organizations: 'delayering, upskilling and polarisation

Drawing on detailed case studies of four large service sector organizations this paper finds little evidence of training provision that links skills development with incremental career progression. Past policies of ‘delayering’ have opened up a ‘gap’ in the job ladder and this has both increased the organizational costs of formal training and reduced the likelihood of informal on-the-job training being seen as the basis for promotion to the next level. Managers are thus faced with the challenge of how to establish a new set of premises upon which to strengthen the workforces loyalty and commitment to the organization, in the context of problems of high staff turnover and low job satisfaction. What we find is a greater emphasis on certificated training provision. However, in the absence of a transparent career path employers rely on more intensive techniques of appraisal and selection of workers for a ‘winner-takes-all’ career path. Given the importance of skills acquisition as an important building block of the ‘learning society’, our findings suggest that policymakers in Britain cannot rely solely upon the employer to bridge the skill gap evident in large service sector organizations.

A tale of two industries : the contraction of coal and steel in the North East of England

Part 1 The context - coal and steel 1970-85 expansion and contraction - two sides of state planning international markets a privatizing tendency Part 2 The closure of Horden colliery the colliery and its reserves closure Part 3 Themes, issues, problems rationalization, privatization and the market halting economic decline

Sources of Variation in Trade Union Membership Across the UK: The Case of Wales

This article deals with issues relating to trade union density and the fact that while over the past 30 years, union densities have followed a declining path in all regions, this retreat was not uniform across space. Analysis of the Labour Force Survey reveals that Wales exhibits among the highest levels of union density in the UK. The reasons for this are examined through statistical analysis, historical analysis and interview data. These analyses reveal that there appear to be intrinsic differences in the nature of workplace representation in Wales; one linked to a particular style of trade unionism supported by the authority of a devolved state that continue to contribute to higher levels of membership.

Heritage Work: Re-Representing the Work Ethic in the Coalfields:

This paper aims to discover how, with the decline and ending of the deep coal mining industry in many parts of the UK its legacy is being re-evaluated by those involved in various aspects of economic and social regeneration. It opens by exploring the way coal mine workers and their communities have been seen within popular and academic accounts, and in particular the way this group has been subject to ideal typification and stereo-typing. The main body of the paper examines the way this legacy is still subject to such interpretation, and that further, the specificity of the coal industry is commodified in a variety of ways. We point out the contradictory nature of this process and argue that it is inevitably damaging to a complex analysis of the deep problems facing former coalfield areas.

Nationalised industry policies and the destruction of communities: Some evidence from North East England

This article examines the operation of three nationalised industries—coal, steel and water—in the North East of England. It looks at the links between them and assesses the impact of their policies on the economy and the environment of the local communities. In addition, it explores the relationship between the private and public sectors by examining the effects of private sector open cast coal production upon the National Coal Boards deep-mined output. The authors conclude by pointing to a ‘new politics of production’.

Opencast coalmining and the politics of coal production

Focusing on the general picture, as well as the specific changes in the Northeast, the authors consider the ramifications of an expanding opencast sector in British coal mining. They draw attention to the intersecting politics of employment and environment and suggest that a basis for opposition campaigns may be constructed.

Book review symposium: Response to reviews of Huw Beynon, Working for Ford: Men, Masculinity, Mass Production and Militancy

The editors of Work, Employment and Society have my thanks for organizing this symposium, and I’m grateful to Paul Edwards, Linda McDowell and Jose Ramalho for their interesting comments and criticisms. Generally, in their reviews the content of the book, and its politics, have been taken for granted with praise and criticism directed at its method. While critical in other ways, Linda is generous (‘a wonderful book’) and sees its influence being in the construction of a different style of writing about work and workers, something that Jose documents from the Brazilian context. While not antagonistic, Paul wishes that the book had been more analytical and offers suggestions on how that might have been achieved, ideas he develops more fully in a discussion paper (Edwards, 2013). In these different ways they have made me rethink my reasons for writing the book in the way I did, and to locate it in its historical context, while reflecting on its influence and contemporary relevance.