Making Sense of Public Sector Employment Relations in a Time of Crisis

The purpose of this book has been thematically to illuminate and analyse an aspect of our society that is in the midst of a particularly turbulent phase of reform and transition: the public sector and more specifically the experiences of its many millions of workers. From Plato through Hobbes and Mill to Hayek and (Ralph) Miliband, the role, function and ideal extent of the State has been debated and contested. To some, a strong, democratic, redistributive state is the hallmark of a civilised society. To others, it is a constraining authority and the taxation it requires to operate is, an unjustifiable imposition. Nevertheless in the modern era, the world’s industrialised democracies have found themselves with a significant proportion of the workforce employed in the delivery of the State’s various activities. Yet the scope and nature of the public sector workforce have become more contested than ever over the last three decades as the influence of the ‘neoliberal turn’ has come to dominate policy discourses (Harvey, 2007). This has been driven by crisis and the shifting forces and relations of production, which have in turn impacted on the political economy of the State and the citizens’ relationship to it.