Framing work: unitary, pluralist, and critical perspectives in the twenty‐first century. Edmund Heery Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 1–318, ISBN 978‐0‐19‐956946‐5, £55.00

• Author: Roger Seifert
• Date: 01 January 2017
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12170

Book Review

Framing work: unitary, pluralist, and critical perspectives in the twenty-first century.

Edmund Heery

Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 1–318, ISBN 978-0-19-956946-5, £55.00

This book provides a thorough and exhaustive account of the literature in the field of

industrial relations pertaining to debates concerning Alan Fox’s perspectives. These

were—hubristic and managerial (pro-boss) unitarism; apologetic and liberal plural-

ism; and forms of free radicalism including various branches of Marxism. All of this

is well known and well worn, but the author decided to join up the dots scattered

around academic places and provide us with a telling tribute to intellectual worth

and the benefits of (re)visiting the past. I hope this book will be widely circulated

among interested parties and that it may (hopefully) end for now the nostalgia that

has gripped the children of Donovan.

Much of the discussion is couched in terms of interests (objective and subjective)

and how they are defined, understood, and acted upon. It is about the power relations

at work (and beyond) and about taking sides. The disclaimers of many of the partic-

ipants that they are motivated neither by ideology nor by political preference always

seemed unlikely. Scratch an industrial relations academic and you will find strongly

held views (if frequently muddled) about the role of trade unions, the importance of

legal regulation, the worth of collective bargaining, the relevance of equality, the in-

equality of power, the functions of the labour market, the intervention by state or-

gans, and an endless stream of prescriptive consciousness.

It is not entirely clear who the audience might be for such a work. Students at BA

and MA level might be helped by the chapter sub-divisions (context, agency, and

evaluation) and by the many useful summaries of several unreadable and indeed un-

read academic contributions. Academic colleagues should be grateful to Ed Heery for

his painstaking literature searches, and his efforts to group together the ungroupable

and to explain the often dense accounts of both the main debates and their trouble-

some offshoots. I fear, however, that beyond this eclectic set of readers there will be

few takers in the trade union world, and fewer still among HRM acolytes.

At the heart of this work is an attempt to unravel the muddle that has beset the plu-

ralists and their tweedledee followers in a neo-pluralist wonderland of the lost para-

digm. After a hop skip and jump through unitarism (pp 13–35) we find ourselves in

the pluralist quagmire (pp 36–69). Heery’s conclusion is that “the pluralist conception

of worker interests also remains distinctive and the search to balance the interests of

workers and their employers, through voice and supportive regulation remains a hall-

mark of the pluralist frame of reference”(p. 69). Despite some twists and turns, Heery

lays bare the pluralist dependence on accommodation with the dominant power rela-

tions of the day: compromise both ideologically and practically with the forces of

Capital in whatever form they appear. So be pluralist under Old Labour, and morph

into neo-pluralism under New Labour—institutionally (the retreat from support for

strong trade unions), economically (accept the end of national collective bargaining

Industrial Relations Journal 48:1, 94–95

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2017 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd