Human Resources Management and Employee Relations

This chapter examines the changing nature of what have traditionally been called personnel management and industrial relations in the public services. It seeks to demonstrate, first, that there has been a move away from a predominantly ‘soft’ welfare-centred, ‘model’ employer approach in the public services since 1979 to a ‘harder,’ market-centred, human resources management approach. Second, there has been a shift away from the dominant Whitley model of industrial relations, which legitimised the role of national collective bargaining, to a more flexible, partly-decentralised bargaining model. Third, there has been a weakening of collectivist approaches to the managing of people in the public services, based on common standards of employment and joint machinery between employers and staff, to more fractional, individualist initiatives. Whilst these changes must not be exaggerated, they provide a distinctive shift in the styles and practices of managing the work-force in the public services since the late 1970s. The major personnel management and industrial relations issue facing employers, unions and employees in the public services during the 1990s is the extent to which these developments are permanent and irreversible and to what extent the changes outlined below are likely to be extended.