Public service employee relations are at the centre of political debate with the Coalition government pursuing its austerity programme and shrinking the state.

But how did we get to where we are now and how much did New Labour open the door to academy schools and ‘any willing provider’ in the NHS? Is there any substance to the Coalition’s talk of a Big Society? These changes are impacting on the workforce indicating that public management reforms have major consequences for employees and service users.

The book develops a framework for analysing the relationship between public management and employee relations in the public services sector. This framework is applied to three domains: industrial relations, focusing on the regulation of terms and conditions of employment and associated trade union involvement; employment relations, concentrating on the management of the individual employee through pay and performance management systems, forms of flexibility and equalities; and work relations exploring changes in patterns of work organisation.

Distinguishing between these domains allows the authors to map changes in the nature of public services employee relations under New Labour, examining how modernisation affected public service workers, employers, managers and service users in central government, health, and local government including education and social care.

The overall argument is that New Labour adopted a hybrid approach, retaining elements of a market-driven approach, often captured by the term New Public Management (NPM), but grafting on features of a network governance model. The government’s hybrid model of service delivery, with its ‘tough love’ approach to employees, was to generate tensions and uncertainties, weakening, workforce engagement with the modernization agenda but bringing some benefits to the workforce.

Under New Labour, there was a striking shift towards work relations as the main preoccupation of employee relations. Person-centred services based on user choice, voice and independence required changed ways of working and new employee capabilities. This was reflected in a re-distribution of tasks across the public services workforce, with a weakening of longstanding occupational boundaries.

The rise of the support worker (e.g. the teaching assistant) was indicative of this trend. Changes in work relations also saw the service user emerge as a key actor in work organisation. The user was to become a partner rather than a passive recipient of services, a co-designer and co-producer. The creation of new bodies, for instance, to regulate workforce standards, as in education and social care, and to develop occupational competencies and career pathways was designed to support and deliver modern services.

In summary the book provides an analysis of public service modernisation in Britain and explores the durability of these reforms in an era of austerity. It also illustrates the analytical value of making a tight connection between public management and workforce management if we are to understand the experience of the workforce in a more diverse and fragmented public services landscape.

* Dr Stephen Bach is Professor of Employment Relations at King’s College, London and co-author (with Ian Kessler) of The Modernisation of the Public Services and Employee Relations: Targeted Change. More information is available here