Edinburgh Napier University

  This study seeks both to describe and account for the patterns of industrial relations
which have emerged in the UK coal industry since privatisation in 1994. In doing so,
it also aims to address some of the wider questions concerning the relationship
between ownership and industrial relations.
A series of hypotheses are advanced concerning how changes in ownership
might affect industrial relations within the industry, and whether such changes would
have positive or negative implications for organised labour.
A case study approach is utilised to analyse labour relations developments at a
number of collieries, and it is shown that the industrial relations strategies adopted by
management within the new coal enterprises have had a determining effect upon the
patterns of labour relations within the privati sed industry.
This study also demonstrates that the emergent pattern of labour relations in
the privatised industry is characterised by both continuity and change. However,
whilst continuity with the patterns of labour relations established during the final
decade of public ownership is shown to have had negative implications for organised
labour within the industry, the changes associated with privatisation are demonstrated
to have been a more ambivalent force.
Change has, in different contexts, had some positive implications for
organised labour, but in the majority of cases, the implications for labour have been
negative. Overall, therefore, this study concludes that privatisation has had a
significant influence upon industrial relations within the coal industry, and that
organised labour has been detrimentally affected by these developments.