| Summary: | This thesis challenges the prevailing view that institutional industrial relations and multiemployer bargaining are in terminal decline. This view is partial or incomplete, but very powerful. Whilst the decline of multi-employer bargaining has been consistently reported in the last four decades such arrangements continue to survive in the British general printing industry. The following examination of this industry raises a number of questions about continuity rather than change in contemporary industrial relations. Many factors influence the determination of bargaining structures and arrangements. It is often argued that external ones, such as the general political and economic climate, have a significant impact in industrial relations. Such factors appear in many accounts of the change experienced in the post war period. The dialogue of political and economic change has been particularly voluble in the 1980s and 1990s. This raises the question as to why such external forces have still not resulted in fundamental changes to the bargaining structures in the general printing industry. This thesis shows that although the general climate has an impact upon bargaining structures it is not the significant determining influence here. The most significant single force operating within this industry is its structure, although this is not determinate. The actual practice of industrial relations is fundamentally important in shaping the experiences and perspectives of the actors involved, irrespective of political ideology or economic dogma. Decisions about the future of bargaining in general printing, and the appropriateness of the arrangements used, should therefore primarily give weight to such internal factors.
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