The impact of the law on industrial disputes in the 1980s: report of a survey of public transport employers

This paper reports the results of one part of a research project which investigated the nature and extent of the impact of the labour legislation enacted between 1980 and 1990 on the conduct of the industrial relations and the processes by which this came about. Interviews were carried out with managers in three major public sector transport organisations. All three were subject to radical organisational change during the period under review and had quite extensive experience of dispute in this time. While they had made greater use of the law than employers in other sectors covered by the research project, there were mixed views on the results of this resort to the law. In general the law appeared to be a subsidiary part of, and influence on, the management of the process of change rather than an independent factor influencing management''s relations with trade unions and the workforce

Union Negotiators

It has been widely assumed that the labour legislation of the 1980s has been a major catalyst for change in British industrial relations. The nature and extent of the law's impact have usually been assumed and rarely been clearly articulated. This paper reports the results of part of a research project designed to investigate these issues and the processes by which any legal influences took effect. A survey of negotiations in twenty five trade unions was carried out by questionnaire. The responses showed that the law had become a more important factor in the conduct of disputes. Its influence on union negotiations had not, however, been entirely negative. The law on strike ballots stood out as the most important of the changes in the law made by the 1980s legislation and the use of ballots emerged as a feature of union strategy in negotiations. More often than not this produced positive results from a union perspective. Nevertheless overall a majority of negotiations saw the law as an important factor favouring employers in the bargaining process.

The Impact of the Law on Industrial Disputes in the 1980s: Report of a Survey of Education Authorities

This paper reports the results of one part of a research project designed to investigate the nature and extent of the impact of the labour legislation enacted between 1980 and 1990 on the conduct of industrial relations and the processes by which this has come about. Interviews were carried out with officers in the education departments of ten Local Education Authorities. All had felt the impact of major national disputes from the mid-1980s to early 1990s. The most important legacy of this experience so far as the law was concerned was that it had now become generally the case that any significant industrial action would lead to Authorities considering whether to make deductions from the pay of workers concerned. Modification to the structure for the provision of public sector education under the Education Acts of the late 1980s and early 1990s was a far more important legal influence. This required significant change in established industrial relations and employment practices and could be a cause of dispute to which the labour legislation of the 1980s was of limited relevance.

The Impact of the Law on Industrial Disputes in the 1980s: Report of a Survey of Public Transport Employers

This paper reports the results of one part of a research project which investigated the nature and extent of the impact of the labour legislation enacted between 1980 and 1990 on the conduct of the industrial relations and the processes by which this came about. Interviews were carried out with managers in three major public sector transport organisations. All three were subject to radical organisational change during the period under review and had quite extensive experience of dispute in this time. While they had made greater use of the law than employers in other sectors covered by the research project, there were mixed views on the results of this resort to the law. In general the law appeared to be a subsidiary part of, and influence on, the management of the process of change rather than an independent factor influencing management's relations with trade unions and the workforce.

Imprints of deviations from the gravitational inverse-square law on the power spectrum of mass fluctuations

Deviations from the gravitational inverse-square law would imprint scale-dependent features on the power spectrum of mass density fluctuations. We model such deviations as a Yukawa-like contribution to the gravitational potential and discuss the growth function in a mixed dark matter model with adiabatic initial conditions. Evolution of perturbations is considered in general non-flat cosmological models with a cosmological constant, and an analytical approximation for the growth function is provided. The coupling between baryons and cold dark matter across recombination is negligibly affected by modified gravity physics if the proper cutoff length of the long-range Yukawa-like force is > 10 h^{-1} Mpc. Enhancement of gravity affects the subsequent evolution, boosting large-scale power in a way that resembles the effect of a lower matter density. This phenomenon is almost perfectly degenerate in power-spectrum shape with the effect of a background of massive neutrinos. Back-reaction on density growth from a modified cosmic expansion rate should however also affect the normalization of the power spectrum, with a shape distortion similar to the case of a non-modified background.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures; submitted to MNRA