Workplace Industrial Relations Under Stress: Ten Year After the Single Union Deal at Norsk Hydro

In 1985 workers for the Norsk Hydro Fertilizers signed new contracts under the company's New Personnel Package, effectively — through pressure on individual workers and the promise of future investment and continued employment on the site — introducing a single union deal for the TGWU derecognising the other four unions on site. This established an Advisory Council, consisting of management and elected members of the workforce, and a three year inflation linked pay deal. The result seemed to give even the remaining union only a token presence on site. While single union deals has been associated with Japanese transplants, and increasingly with other green field sites, this was promoted by their management as the first such deal within an established site with long standing traditions of trade unionism and collective bargaining. This paper examines the developments at Norsk Hydro subsequent to the implementation of the package, which while seeing the establishment of what is characterised — following Parker & Slaughter — as a ‘management‐by‐stress’ regime, it identifies the resurgence of workplace organisation on the site.