Managerial strategies and trade unions in the company environment

Over the last ten to fifteen years the prospects for a trade union role and collective action in western European countries have been approached largely via a paradigm of crisis of representation and decline. This article argues that uncertainty is equally characteristic of managerial strategies and that, paradoxically enough, the exercise of the trade union function of representation of labour may prove to be particularly crucial in the management of the most innovative organisations, insofar as it can help build the social consensus which such organisations increasingly require. From this perspective, industrial relations at the workplace in the eighties and early nineties are re-interpreted as attempts to secure employee commitment through new uses of the traditional methods of collective bargaining. The more recent developments are then approached by discussing the quite unexpected role played by trade unions and works councils in the two fields - often seen as typical of managerial prerogatives - of the development of key human resources and of programmes for direct employee participation in organisational change. Finally, a new conceptual framework for analysis of the problems facing the labour movement is outlined.