Explaining Variation in the Enterprise Response to Industrial Relations Legislation: The Case of the Safety Representative Regulations Available to Purchase

A much quoted observation of Phelps Brown in the late 1950s was that “when British industrial relations are compared with those of the other democracies they stand out because they are so little regulated by law”. However, the position has changed so substantially since then that Lewis was able to comment that “in 1975 it would seem that the one indubitably fundamental and irreversible trend is the ever‐increasing extent of the legal regulation of the British system of industrial relations”. In view of this substantially changed state of affairs a fundamental task for industrial relations researchers to undertake is that of explaining variation in the impact of industrial relations legislation at the level of the individual employment establishment.