Managing the 1987 Mine Workers' Strike

The 1987 mine workers' strike was obviously a major confrontation between the National Union of Mineworkers and mine management. This article, however, seeks to demonstrate that divisions within management (especially in the Anglo-American Corporation) had important implications not only for the outcome of the strike but also for the potential for institutionalisation on the mines of an industrial relations system based on negotiation rather than confrontation. Disagreement about management styles ran through Anglo-American Corporation from head office down to individual mine managers and their respective industrial relations staffs. While the settlement of the 1987 strike represented a short-term victory for authoritarian mine managements and defeat for the union, in the longer term it kept open the possibility of an industrial relations system with full union participation.