Introduction

This book is about the current changes in the organization of work and industrial relations in a selection of case studies based in the North of England. According to Jenkins and Sherman (1979), at the end of the 1970s the advanced capitalist economies stood on the threshold of ‘a new industrial revolution, based on developments in microelectronics’. It was judgements of this kind, together with intense media coverage on the implications of the ‘silicon chip’, which prompted governments, industrialists and trade unions to wake up to the significance of microprocessor-based technology. In the United Kingdom, the government commissioned reports on the state of the British electronics industry, the degree of awareness about the new technology amongst British managers, and the implications of the changes for British manufacturing (Sleigh, et al, 1979). The British trade union movement, already alarmed by rising levels of unemployment, issued documents, passed conference resolutions, organized education courses, and developed policies on technological change (TUC, 1979).