Sensitivity Bargaining — An Alternative to Conflict

The British industrial relations system has, on the whole, tended to serve the country well, but it has failed to adapt to new conditions in the postwar period and has faltered. More importantly the study of industrial relations has provided a great deal of analysis and a minimum of synthesis of new ideas. The lack of change and adaptation in collective bargaining has increasingly resulted in the failure of the system to cope effectively with the ever changing, and increasingly complex, social, technical and economic forces in our society. Thus collective bargaining has too often been seen to fail in the achievement of orderly settlements to claims, grievances and disputes. One result has been legislation in the shape of the Industrial Relations Act which merely served to inflame collective bargaining. After working for several years in Canada, in the field of labour relations, it is this writer's contention that industrial relations legislation is an unsuitable substitute for management and union jointly solving their problems in an open yet business‐like atmosphere. Legislation is too prickly for the sensitive ears around a bargaining table, and in the last analysis management and unions will do their utmost to avoid any chance of entanglement in the legal web.