First published in 1985, this multi-author volume discusses the contentious issue of the relationship between shop floor bargaining and the state.

Acknowledgments; 1. Shop floor bargaining and the state: a contradictory relationship Jonathan Zeitlin; 2. Dilution, trade unionism and the state in Britain during the First World War Alastair Reid; 3. Public policy and port labour reform: the dock decasualisation issue, 1910-50 Noel Whiteside; 4. Government, employers and shop floor organisation in the British motor industry, 1939-69 Steven Tolliday; 5. The snares of liberalism? Politicians, bureaucrats, and the shaping of federal labour relations policy in the United States, ca. 1915-47 Howell Harris; 6. Politics, law and shop floor bargaining in postwar Italy Giovanni Contini; 7. Controlling production on the shop floor: the role of state administration and regulation in the British and American aerospace industries Bryn Jones; Index.