Is the Strike No Longer Necessary?

Is the strike no longer necessary?

Throughout the years conflict has occurred between managers and workers resulting in industrial action taken either individually or as a collective form. The most favoured form of industrial action is the strike where employees demonstrate the importance of the issue concerned by stopping work and leaving the workplace. Strikes occur for a number of reasons one being pay. Strike patterns have changed over the years showing a decline in numbers that are due to many reasons such as changes in the law, which will be discussed later.

Strikes are an obvious expression of industrial conflict and can be defined as 'a temporary stoppage of work by a group of employees in order to express a grievance or enforce a demand'. The term temporary stoppage implies that the workers intend to return to their jobs when the strike is over. As it is a stoppage of work this distinguishes the strike from other forms of industrial action such as an overtime ban or go-slow. The strike is undertaken by a group of employees thereby highlighting it as a collective act; also the strike is specifically designed to seek a solution to problems and to apply pressure to enforce demands.

It has been suggested there are six definitions that can describe the main types of strikes which include, the trial of strength where the strikes tend to be long-lasting affairs concerning substantial costs to employers. A second type of strike can be illustrated as the 'official strike' where a union officially supports its members according to the union rules governing the conduct of disputes. However a third type of strike the 'unofficial strike' is where the strike has not been recognised by the union leadership, although in recent years these types of strikes have declined.

It is evident that Britain's strike figures show a number of trends. There have been significant changes in patterns of striking since the 1940s. During the late 1940s there were fewer strikes in many subsequent periods. However, for the first time since 1926, the 1950s saw a number of large national strikes in industries such as engineering and dock working. The strike numbers came to a peak in the 1960s as there was a substantial increase in the number of small strikes in the car industry and other related sectors, also at the same time there was a continuation of the larger national disputes which resulted in the large numbers of strikes. During the 1970s, the number of strikes began to slightly fall. However, there were still several large disputes involving stoppages in engineering and the public sector. The 1980s saw a substantial decline in the number of strikes recorded, and also in the 1990s there were further substantial falls and the number of large disputes fell significantly. The 1980s were associated with significant changes in the economic and political environments, with a substantial decline in the manufacturing sector and privatisation, there were also high levels of unemployment and declining trade union membership. The 1990s saw an increased importance on organisational competitiveness and changes in working patterns.

Strikes are not spread out equally throughout the labour force for example in Britain from 1966 to 1970 the number of days lost through strikes was greatest in the dock industry, followed by the car industry and coalmining. The patterns of striking have changed to some extent, for example in 1996, transport, storage and communication had the highest strike rate, followed by the manufacture of petroleum products and then manufacturing of transport equipment. Certain industries seem more prone to strikes than others.

Kerr and Siegel (1954) in a study off strikes in eleven countries found that miners, dockers and seamen had the highest strike records. They argued that community integration was the key to explaining the level of strike activity in these occupations. The miners, dockers and seamen tended to live in occupational communities, which are relatively isolated from the wider society. In these communities a consciousness of kind developed which involved a strong awareness of shared grievances, a close emotional commitment to trade unionism and a high level of working-class solidarity. The close-knit community of these workers tended to make strike action more likely. However, most of these traditional industries in Britain around which occupational communities were based have declined and the communities have fragmented. These include coal, shipbuilding and steel industries, all of which have drastically reduced in their workforces therefore resulting in a decline in their trade union membership.

Edwards claims that technical and organisational change plays an important role in affecting the level of strikes. The role of technology has been used to explain the high levels of strikes in the car industry. Blauner (1964) demonstrated that there was an obvious connection between the type of technology used in the production process and worker alienation. Blauner argued that assembly line technology produces high levels of alienation and this leads to hostile relationships between workers and management. These relationships tend to lead to industrial conflict in industries with production technology, therefore resulting in strikes. Blauner's explanation has been criticised for the assumption that there is a relationship between technology for determining behaviour and attitudes between workers. Also Blauner does not account for variations in strike activity within the same industry in different countries.

Research by Gallie (1978, 1988) and Daniel and Millward (1983) disagree with Blauner and claim that technology is only one factor among many that may cause workers to take strikes.

Negotiating procedures for dealing with disputes tend to be a factor of the causes of strikes. A study by Ross and Hartman (1960) compared strike activity levels in fifteen countries from 1900 to 1956. The study concluded that strikes are least likely to occur when there are well-established industry and organisational procedures for negotiation. The Devlin Report (1965) investigated into the British docks industry and argued that a major reason for the high level of strikes in the industry was the ineffectiveness nature of the resolving disputes.

However, Hyman (1984) provides an explanation of the variations in strike activity between industries. Hyman claims that the strikers' definitions of the situations are greatly ignored, for example, workers in one industry may define strikes as a last resort in a situation, while others in another may see strikes as part of a routine and even a natural part