Industrial Relations in the 1980's: Issues and Implications

A special acknowledgement is owed to all the members of the staff of the Industrial Relations Centre/School of Industrial Relations who contributed so much to the organization of the symposium and to the preparation of these proceedings, and to all of the other activities that formed a part of our 50th anniversary celebrations. [...] I think the main issues of the 1980s have been management's response to the deep economic crisis we had in the early 1980s, more generally management's response to the general problem of the loss of the United States' relative economic power; and the intensification of competition. [...] One of the things, however, that we really tried to do that was different from the United States was to retain the independence of the unions, to emphasize the independence of the unions as a structure. [...] Prior to becoming the National President of NUPGE, he was the general secretary and chief negotiator for the British Columbia Government Employees' Union, Director of Research for the Canadian Labour Congress, and a member of the staff of the AFLICIO in Washington, and the United Packinghouse Food and Allied Workers in Chicago. [...] At the same time, the government also has both the responsibility and the power to lay down the rules of the labour relations environment, the rules of the game, the rules that govern both the employers and the unions alike, the rules that are supposed to be fair and even-handed to both sides.