A Case for Consultation Available to Purchase

From recent evidence in both the industrial and the political arena, it would seem that diluted forms of industrial democracy/employee participation are undergoing some kind of a revival. This is probably a reflection of a change of government on the one hand and a reaction to the proposals of Bullock and the White Paper on the other. One of the forms of participation attracting most interest would appear to be joint consultation and, in a recent report in the Employment Gazette, Hawes and Brookes have argued that “in particular it seems likely that over the next few years emphasis will be placed on the voluntary development of employee participation by managements and trade unions, and the growth of new and existing forms of negotiating and consultative machinery”. It is within a context such as this that we can outline the remainder of this article.