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A major focus of the Conservative government's employment policy since 1979 has been the reduction of union power within the labour market, the employment relationship and as representatives of a separate ‘labour interest’ in society ' union exclusion. The principal impact of the legislative changes is to deny workers access to resources of collective power, thereby commensurately increasing employers' discretion to determine the terms of the employment relationship. When forming new subsidiaries and establishments, or purchasing non‐union subsidiaries, employers have been able to resist unionization and recognition except on their own terms, but comparatively few have terminated existing union recognition agreements, preferring to marginalize the role of unions through the adoption of partial exclusion policies ' joint consultation, direct communication, performance‐related pay, and the fragmentation of common employment and bargaining.

The Labour government's goal of social partnership embodies a particular view of the appropriate role of labour within the employment relationship, which requires the marginalization of trade unionism as an autonomous force. Its programme of employment law reform combines a dual focus: first, the reaffirmation of measures that weaken workers' collective power through the exclusion of autonomous trade unionism, and second, initiatives to regulate the labour market, strengthen workers' rights within the employment relationship, and include enterprise-confined, cooperative unions as subordinate 'partners'. However, the second policy dimension has been diluted because of the commitment to free-market values. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd/London School of Economics 2001.

Since it was first elected in 1997, a large Commons majority won in three general elections and a benign economic environment have combined to give New Labour the authority and opportunity to implement its programme for industrial relations and employment law. This paper offers an appraisal of New Labour's neoliberalism, and its relevance for understanding the scope and limits of its reform of employment law. The conclusion calls for a campaign to restore and extend trade union rights as a prerequisite for safeguarding workers' interests within the labour market, employment relationship and society. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2006.

The assumptions and values of neoliberalism came to dominate the Conservative governments, 1979–97, inspiring a range of policies that included industrial relations and employment law. Inasmuch as New Labour has adopted many of these policies then it can be presumed to have accepted their neoliberal underpinnings. Moreover, New Labour's policies owe much to neoliberalism. Wedderburn's exposition of the relationship between the writings of Hayek and the policy of Conservative governments, 1979–88, is utilised and extended to display the continuity and distinctiveness of New Labour's policy on industrial relations and employment law in relation to its Conservative predecessors. New Labour's neoliberal assumptions and values are evaluated. The conclusion argues for a fundamental rebuttal of New Labour's values as an integral component of a campaign to re‐establish trade union rights and liberties, and effective employment protection.