Putting partnership into practice in Britain

The paper reviews industrial relations developments in Britain during 1999 by assessing how New Labour's policy commitment to encouraging 'partnership' is developing in practice. After a discussion of the Employment Relations Act, it considers the wider influence of European legislation. It then describes how partnership approaches have been developing in trade union policy and industrial practice. This leads to an analysis of the operation of two explicit Social partnership' institutions, ACAS and the Low Pay Commission. The paper ends with a consideration of the developing arguments at the ILO and WTO over international labour standards.