Rethinking Industrial Relations, or at least the British radical frame

Abstract

This article provides a short overview of the analysis in John Kelly’s 1998 book Rethinking Industrial Relations (RIR) of long-run cycles and trends in worker collective mobilization and conflict, Kelly’s development of a model to explain these patterns, the model’s integrative combination of ideas drawn from Kondratiev long wave theory, Marxian political economy, and Tilly’s sociological model of social mobilization theory, and the book’s central prediction – a resurgence in union growth and industrial conflict. The second part of the article provides a critical evaluation of RIR as a general work in industrial relations theory, the strengths and weaknesses of Kelly’s theoretical model, and an assessment of its empirical explanatory power. The conclusion is that RIR provides an insightful conceptual framework for studying worker mobilization but falls short in both theory and empirical explanation because of defects in its Marxian/long wave foundation and overly British-centric focus.