The Role of the State in Industrial Relations

Abstract

This article examines the role of the state in industrial relations, which

has been highly neglected in the literature. It examines the nature of the

state and proposes a typology of four distinct roles of the state that affect

industrial relations: (1) a third party regulator of labor relations; (2) a

regulator of markets; (3) an establisher of the welfare system; and (4) its

own employer and policy maker. In doing so, the article sheds light on the

importance of the concepts of power and politics in industrial relations that

have been unnoticed by industrial relations orthodoxy; that is, it attempts

to clarify how each of the four roles of the state affects the power relations

between labor and management.