This chapter provides the broad context for understanding Australia, Canada, Germany, the UK and the US during the interwar period. It first examines explanations of historical patterns of employee representation. Building on this discussion, the chapter then focuses on economic issues, industry scale and structure, the division of labour and technology, trade unions and politics, employers and the role of the state in these five countries. The chapter provides a basis for understanding the development of ideas of employee representation and the success or failure of their implementation.

Explanations of Historical Patterns of Employee Representation

There have been a number of explanations for fluctuating patterns of interest in workplace employee representation. The complexity of these empirical trends has not always been well accounted for in theoretical explanations of the historical trajectory of representative employee participation. Harvie Ramsay's influential “cyclical theory” argues that support for industrial democracy grows in periods of economic expansion, when employees’ bargaining power rises and employers search for alternative means of employee voice located outside the collective bargaining relationship. Conversely, support for industrial democracy wanes when economic conditions decline and employer bargaining power is strengthened. This economic determinist theory is not a sufficient explanation as it fails to account for the continuous expansion of legislation for employee representation in occupational health and safety over the past 30 years, notwithstanding major economic fluctuations. There are a variety of factors that affect interest in ideas relating to workplace employee representation and their implementation.

The scale and structure of industry can impact on workplace employee representation. Larger firms are concerned about the growing communication gap between management and employees and have the resources to deal with the problem, particularly where there is limited competition in the industry. There was a general move to bureaucratise employment so as to ensure uniformity and coordination in a growing enterprise. As Jacoby has argued, while “size mattered” there is no “lockstep relation between how big a company was and how its employment system was organised.” Some medium-sized companies can be innovators because they are not inhibited by the rigid bureaucratic control of employment practices.