SYMPOSIUM: TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE AND INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS Introduction: Technological Change and the Labour Process

Abstract

Lying at the very heart of industrial relations, the impact of technological change began to receive widespread attention in New Zealand about 1979. The debate grew out of overseas experience with micro-electronics (particularly in Britain, West Germany, France and Australia) in the context of the anticipated widespread application of similar technology to New Zealand. Although among industrial relations practitioners the impact of new technology maintained a high profile during 1979-80 (see for example Young (Ed.), 1980), it was soon overshadowed by other more immediate and pressing industrial relations matters, such as the reform of the wage fixing system , voluntary unionism and the price and wage freeze. Though only of relatively brief duration, the debate was intense and marked by the deterministic attitude on the one hand that technological change was both inevitable and beneficial, and on the other, that the changes could and should be controlled because the "benefits" might by no means be shared evenly among the participants. Government and employer groups typified the former view, and trade unions the latter.