1980's Labour Market

Gomez-Mejia, L., Balkin, D., & Cardy, R. (2012). Managing Human Resources (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

The government used monetary policy over demand management, and concentrated on the control of the rate of interest in an attempt to stop low levels of unemployment causing inflation. The government decided to use collective bargaining as a means of setting rates of pay for the first time, the government no longer required Trade Unionists as negotiators of pay, because private negotiating bodies were now used. It was now assumed that in the present economic climate, in accordance with interest rates and government objectives that the price which was set would be reasonable, and if not then the government assumed that the employers knew better, this being one indication of Mrs Thatchers non-tolerance towards Trade Unions, also shown by Mrs Thatcher passing control of pay structures to private bodies and employers. This attitude is very different to the present day ‘New’ Labour government, who sees government interaction in the wage structure as being very important. For example, the introduction of the National Minimum Wage.

21 John Hsu, ‘Work Choices Legislation Upheld by high Court’ (2006) Batallion Legal 1, 1-2 < http://www.batallion.com.au/Web-workchoices.pdf> at 9 April 2007.

Assess the likely impact of UK Government labour market policies on any three macro-economic objectives. Refer to the information and to your own knowledge (30)

During Britain’s Industrial Revolution, a multitude of different jobs were opened to the working class of men, women, and children. While this era offered a wide variety of new opportunities for everyone, women were somewhat excluded in areas such as occupation availability and wage due to the cultural norms of the time period.

2. Leatherbarrow, C., Fletcher, J. & Currie, D. (2010) Introduction to Human Resource Management. 2nd Edition. London: CIPD

I will start with a short presentation of each of the two articles, how and from what time data is collected, some of the findings and conclusion. And then what contribution their papers have made to the historical debate about women’s role in the pre-industrial labour market.

“There is barely sufficient work for the regular employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed” (Thompson cited in 250)

Cascio, W. F. (2013). Managing Human Resources (9th ed.). New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc

Political: the job market in the UK is split between Public sector ie Government and Private sector. Government policies have control of reward strategy within the Public

Boxall, P and Purcell, J (2011), The Goals of Human Resource Management, Strategy and Human Resource Management, 3rd Edition, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, pp. 1-36.

Women in the post war era were praised for their job roles in wartime and due to this, the government gave them a choice whether to stay in the Labour scheme or not. It was more encouraged rather than a choice due to the reconstruction effort in the 1950s as they needed to fill in the labor force and market. There was a rise in increase of women in the labour force: statistically from “45.9% in 1955 to 51% in 1965” (cite). Even though this was a positive outlook, there was still debates and concerns over the unfair and unequal pay for women. Campaigns continued by women workers discussed the issues over the unequal pay and were unfortunate that they remained ostracized from debates about equal pay; that included women working in the private sector also.

Throughout the twentieth century collective bargaining was the most significant means of regularity relationships in UK between employers and employees via trade union. In continental Europe there is more emphasis on

Alexander, M., 2003. A handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. 9th ed. London: Kogan Page

Occupational segregation is important and difficult to measure. Summary measures are used to track change in the sexual division of labour across decades, but no single index can capture all dimensions of interest, in particular vertical segregation, which explains much of the sex differential in earnings. The choice of index is not crucial; research results are determined primarily by other methodological choices in the formatting of the base data-set. Britain provides a strategic case for assessing the impact of recession and work-force restructuring in the 1980s, in analyses based on Census and Labour Force Survey data for 1979–90 for 550 occupational groups. Surprisingly, the 1980s display a larger fall in occupational segregation than