Wales TUC, 1974-2004: Devolution and Industrial Politics

The Wales TUC is the national institution representing the organised workers of Wales. Joe England seeks to explain and assess its achievements over the past thirty years of dramatic change: the rundown of the coal and steel industries, the decline in manufacturing jobs, the growth of white-collar employment and unions, the Thatcher and Major years of high unemployment and industrial law reform, and the increasing numbers of low-paid part-time workers, most of them women. Throughout the period the Wales TUC has negotiated with a succession of Secretaries of State of varying persuasions, consistently promoting the case for investment in jobs and fair treatment for workers. A leading campaigner for a Welsh Assembly it now has to adjust to the demands of that body whilst seeking to halt the decline in trade union membership and promote partnership with industry. The result is a book that is relevant not only to the study of recent Welsh political and industrial history and to an understanding of pressure group politics, but also to labour history and industrial relations.