Introduction

For many years, relations between managers and workers at the frozen food works had been turbulent. But, facing stiff competition, management came to the view that a new approach to industrial relations should be an integral part of a broader reorganisation of manufacturing activities. Senior managers drew up radical plans to bring about a fundamental change in the ‘quality of working life’, with a view to transforming adversarial relationships into co-operative ones. They sought to bring the disagreements of the past to an end by moving away from a traditional ‘one person, one job’ way of organising production to a system based upon autonomous work groups responsible for organising most aspects of their own work.

This chapter is an account of the introduction of new working arrangements and their consequences on the shop floor. It explores the way in which managers identified and analysed their industrial relations ‘problems’, and contemplates the thinking behind their new approach and how it differed from traditional management methods. The way in which the new working arrangements were practised on the shop floor is described, and their impact upon workers and their relations with managers is analysed. Workers' attitudes towards the local union, and the influence of the shop stewards upon the development of the new working practices, are also examined.