Employment relations in Britain

25 years of the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

Edited by Brian Towers & William Brown, Blackwell Publishers, 203 pages,

paperback, £14.99

More than half a million people contacted ACAS last year to help them

try to resolve a problem at work. ACAS is now the first port of call for

many workers, particularly in unorganised workplaces.

This book traces the 25 years of ACAS through the eyes of leading

academic contributors. The range of subject areas covered take in all

aspects of industrial relations. Contributors include Linda Dickens, an

academic who has also acted as a disputes arbitrator for ACAS, who

analyses its role in individual conciliation, and Bob Hepple, a

specialist in employment and discrimination law, who gives thoughtful

review of ACAS's role in supporting collective bargaining.

As Brian Towers, one of the book's joint editors, points out, ACAS has

been in continuous existence over a period, which he describes as "among

the most turbulent and transforming in modern British industrial

relations". This book gives a feel of what these transformations have

meant.