The Dynamics of Industrial Conflict: Lessons from Ford

The Dynamics of Industrial Conflict (1980) focuses on the workings of industrial relations in the British motor industry, presenting the first joint retrospective analysis of industrial relations in a major multinational. The book includes a closely documented account of the Ford Sewing Machinists’ strike for equal pay and tells the inside story of that dispute, analysing its impact on the coming of equal pay and Britain’s new sex discrimination legislation. It assesses the consequences of the dispute for workers, management and unions at Ford, and then traces its repercussions on Britain’s industrial relations in the 1970s, down to the fall of the Labour Government in May 1979. A detailed explanation is given of the concealed ‘learning process’ which goes on below the surface of every system of industrial relations, whether at factory, company, industrial or national level.