Employee Relations in the Public Sector: Themes and Issues

Citation

Hamblett, J. (2001), "Employee Relations in the Public Sector: Themes and Issues", Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 94-104. https://doi.org/10.1108/er.2001.23.1.94.3

Because I will have some harsh‐sounding things to say about this text I want to make it plain at the start that I found the contributions that comprise it illuminating and engaging. It is a book I will draw on, often, in my teaching. The good thing about it is that contributions are organised thematically rather than on the “sub‐sectoral” approach one sees more often. It seems to me that the editors are right to propose that material organised in this way allows for “key issues” to be abstracted and subject to: “a more rigorous and coherent cross‐sectoral critique than can be obtained from descriptive, organisation based texts” ( p. 14). The editors have done colleagues and their students a service, also, in drawing together a team of authors who are well qualified to lead an anxious reader through the complexities of change and continuity that comprise the subject area.

In sum, this is the plot and the manner of its telling. It is the editors’ claim that: “the UK public services exhibit five themes and trends” (p. 15) of great significance. These are the:

… blurring of the public/private sector divide; decentralisation; the growth of flexibility; the erosion of collectivism; and the decline of the public sector ethos (p. 15).

By turn, these themes are deemed to represent fundamental structural elements that invest with shape and meaning each of the issues dealt with across the four parts of the book. The four parts in question are as follows: An Introduction wherein the editors provide an historical overview of change in the public sector; two chapters, both highly informative, dealing with changes in the economic and financial context, and the legislative framework, the former written by Jean Shaoul, the latter by Sandra Freeman; and an “issues” section in which Geoff White talks about public sector remuneration. Susan Corby examines the question of equal opportunities, Ariane Hegewisch deals with flexibility, Trevor Colling discusses tendering and outsourcing, and Miguel Martinez Lucio and Robert Mackenzie examine the vexed question of quality management. Finally, under the banner of “players”, Stephen Bach debates the role of personnel managers, while Hamish Mathieson and Susan Corby discuss the challenges to public sector trade unionism.

Within the bounds of a review of this length it would be impossible to treat evenly with the relative strengths and weaknesses of the individual contributions. And yet, I do have things to say of a critical kind. My major concern is that conceptual laxity allows convention too easy a victory over critical enquiry even in those contributions which cleave closest to a radical agenda. In order to put some flesh on the bones of this criticism I will focus my attention on the introductory, scene‐setting chapter written by the book’s editors as this seems to me to exemplify the flaw in question.

First and most significantly, I want to say that the foundation on which the whole enterprise is built looks decidedly shaky. Following Storey (1992), the editors subscribe to the view that “public sector employee relations” represents an analytically distinct state of affairs because its doings and its structures are, “shot through with the all‐important dimension of political power” (p. 3). Such being the case, the reader might expect to see a “dimension” identified thus subject to something like a systematic exposition. One might, for example and at least, anticipate remarks covering the concept, “political”, its meaning, boundaries, and so on. It is the case, however, that this founding proposition and its central component are used in an exclusively intuitive fashion throughout.

So, for example, we learn that although the private sector is subject to some political interference, “In the final analysis […] private sector employers remain free to regulate the employment relationship as they choose” (p. 4). One might argue, then, that “politics”, here, is being used in a “natural” rather than technical sense to denote the things that “politicians” do. Such a defence, however, would not get the authors out of jail. The point is that howsoever one views the issue, “politics” is used in a viscously reductive manner in order that an uncompelling convention be protected from critical scrutiny.

The short quotation identified in the above paragraph offers evidence of a related problem. This concerns the “history” presented here. In that quotation the authors claim that employers in the private sector are distinguished by the fact that they, “remain free to regulate the employment relationship as they choose”. The reader might feel that this is something of an intemperate claim. It is a claim, certainly, made with scant regard for the determining significance of conjunctural factors, or, in a word, History. Are we to understand, really, that the authors intend to convey the belief that all private sector employers throughout history have enjoyed such freedom?

One would be hard pressed to contrive an answer to that question from the history; presented in the text. To put the matter bluntly, the chronological account on offer is de‐contextualised, teleological, parochial, descriptive and highly selective. It is also fiercely whiggish; the major signposts in the development of the public sector employment relationship develop, exclusively, as the result of powerful figures (Thatcher) and the institutions that stand in their stead (Whitley, or, “the Government”).

Paradoxically, perhaps, when the authors turn their gaze to things more concrete than the unnervingly abstract generalities which comprise most of their “history” the conceptual distinctions which are taken to mark out the public sector (always rudimentary at best) threaten to crumble under the weight of description. So, for example, we read of the “good employer” model, only to discover a public sector where employers did not pass up the opportunity to keep “pay levels low for many public servants” (p. 6). My guess is that if the “good employer” notion was unpacked a little more systematically we would reveal a set of policies and practices not dissimilar from those of a number of corporate employers, patchy and uneven in conception and application, and replete with the apparent paradox and contradiction definitive of the employment relationship under capitalist social relations.

If we are to talk meaningfully of a distinctive public sector employment relationship then we need to do more, systematic work of a theoretical kind than is evident, here. At the very least, it seems to me, those who take upon themselves the task of explaining the changing process and structure of State‐sponsored work and workplaces should evince a working familiarity with historically significant contributions to the field such as those of Allen (1960) O’Connor (1973), Gough (1979), and Seiffert (1987, 1992).