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Rigidities in the Labour Market

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ronald Dore
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Extract

THE STEADY EXPANSION OF THE FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT and its increasingly interventionist role in the economy has for much of the twentieth century seemed an inexorable and irreversible trend. The jurist, Dicey, already saw it as such at the beginning of the century. In a famous series of lectures, he traced the retreat of Benthamite individualist liberalism in the face of what he called ‘collectivism’. The common theme in all the developments he considered — the protection given to trade unions on the one hand, compulsory education and municipal trading on the other — was their limitation of the freedom of contract, the limitation of — the buzz-word of British politics in the late 1980s — ‘choice’.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 23 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1988 , pp. 395 - 412
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1988

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References

1 Dicey, A. V, Law and Public Opinion in England During the Nineteenth Century, London, Macmillan, 1962.Google Scholar

2 Marshall, T. H, ‘Citizenship and Social Class’ in Sociology at the Crossroads, London, Heinemann, 1963.Google Scholar

3 Emerson, Michael, What Model for Europe?, mimeo., Centre for International Affairs, Harvard University, 06 1986.Google Scholar

4 Lloyds Bank Review, May 1987.

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7 Brown, William, ‘The Changing Role of Trade Unions in the Management of Labour’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 24, ii, 07 1986.Google Scholar

9 Emerson, Michael, Regulation or Deregulation of the Labour Market: Policy Regimes for the Recruitment and Dismissal of Employees in the Industrialised Countries, mimeo., Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 06 1986.Google Scholar

10 See UK, Dept. of Employment, Employment; the Challenges for the Nation, London, HMSO, Cmd. 9474, March 1985.

11 Shonfield, Andrew, edited by Shonfield, Zuzanna, The Use of Public Power, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1982.Google Scholar

12 Marris, Robin, ‘Does Britain Really Have a Wages Problem?’, Lloyds Bank Review, 04 1987.Google Scholar

13 For simulations which suggest how much increase in employment might come, after how long, from how great a fall in wages, see Treasury, H.M, The Relationship Between Employment and Treasury Officials, London, HMSO,Google Scholar n.d. and Layard, R, Nickell, S and Jackman, R ‘European Unemployment is Keynesian and Classical but not Structural’, Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, Working Document No. 13, 06 1985.Google Scholar

14 Gregory, M, Lobban, P and Thompson, A, "Wage Settlements in Manufacturing, 1979–84: Evidence from the CBI Pay Databank’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, 23, iii, 11. 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The Uses of Public Power, op. cit., p. 65

16 See, Doeringer, P. B and Piore, M. J, Internal Labour Markets and Manpower Analysis, Lexington, Mass., D. C. Heath, 1971.Google Scholar

17 See, e.g., Akerlof, G. A and Yellan, J. L (eds), Efficiency Wage Models of the Labour Market, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar See also Emerson, ‘What Model…’, op. cit., for a very lucid summary.

18 According to Marris, op. cit. p. 37. He cites Penelope Rowatt, ‘A Model of Wage Bargaining’, Government Economic Service Working Paper, No. 91, August 1986.

19 ‘What Model…’, op. cit., p. 24.

20 ibid., p. 40.