MANCHESTER INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SOCIETY

FORTHCOMING EVENTS
http://www.mirs.org.uk/ 
Please note the next session of the Manchester Industrial Relations Society will be held at 6pm on Thursday 10 May 2012 (see attachments):
 
TWO YEARS ON – EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS UNDER THE COALITION GOVERNMENT
Speaker: Professor Mark Stuart
Director of the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change
University of Leeds
 
The lecture will review the implications for employment relations of unfolding Coalition Government policy. Elected against the backdrop of severe economic crisis, the Coalition has sought to pursue a deeper programme of deficit reduction than the previous Labour administration. Yet it is not the ‘cuts’ per se that define Coalition policy, but its naked support for private employers’ interests and antipathy to labour market regulation.
Three developments will be explored. First, the Government’s programme of marketisation will be reviewed, paying particular attention to the changing landscape of welfare to work and the role of big business in the delivery of programmes for the unemployed. Second, the extent of resistance to Coalition policy will be considered, paying particular attention to the role of trade unions and collective mobilisation. Third, the role of ‘other actors’ will be explored, most particularly in terms of the tensions between those lobby groups that seek to advance agendas of equality and social protection and those, increasingly influential groups, that seek to lobby government on the interests of the taxpayer and the free market.