Pour devenir plus flexible, le secteur public a ouvert la voie à de nouveaux principes inspirés de la gestion propre aux firmes, soit la marchandisation des services (Fairbrother et Poynter, 2001). Notre recherche souhaite mieux comprendre les facteurs qui peuvent influencer l’implication du syndicat lorsque la marchandisation est introduite dans la gestion de la prestation des services municipaux. Pour se faire, nous avons choisi de comparer des cas des municipalités dans deux pays, la Ville de Québec et Edinburgh en Écosse, afin de nous aider à comprendre davantage les interactions entre les influences nationales et locales. Nous proposons que les ressources de pouvoir du syndicat local et la stratégie patronale influencent l’implication du syndicat dans la gestion de la prestation des services municipaux, peu importe le contexte national. Les résultats de la recherche nous indiquent que les ressources de pouvoir et la stratégie patronale influencent directement l’implication syndicale. Alors que les ressources de pouvoir donnent un rapport de force au syndicat face à l’employeur, la stratégie patronale peut encourager ou freiner l'implication syndicale. Nos résultats ont aussi soulevé certaines différences entre les contextes nationaux de l’Écosse et du Québec affectant l’implication syndicale: les législations de « Best Value » au Royaume-Uni et celles encadrant les conventions collectives et relations de travail au Québec. Ainsi, des recherches futures sont nécessaires pour mettre à l’épreuve les modèles nationaux couramment utilisés en relations industrielles pour contribuer à la création d’une nouvelle théorie comparative. / In order to become more flexible, the public sector has opened the way to new principles inspired by the private sector: the marketisation of services (Fairbrother et Poynter, 2001). Our research aims to better understand the factors which affect the participation of trade unions when marketisation is introduced in the delivery of local government services. To do so, we have decided to compare local government case studies in two different countries, Québec City and Edinburgh in Scotland, to help us better understand the interactions between local and national influences. Our hypothesis is that local trade union power resources and the employer’s strategy will influence trade union participation in the management of local government service delivery, regardless of the national context. The main findings of our research suggest that power resources and employer stategy both directly affect local trade union involvement in the management of local government service delivery. While power resources help to bolster the trade union’s power, the employer strategy can either encourage or impare trade union participation. Our results also raised differences relating to the national contexts of the UK and Québec which affected local trade union participation : « Best Value » legislation in the UK and « Code du Travail » legislation which frame collective agreements and industrial relations in Québec. We consider that future research on the subject is necessary in order to verify the current models on national industrial relations and to develop new comparative theories.

Student Number : 0376246 - PhD thesis - School of Humanities - Faculty of Arts / This thesis examines the building of power and how workers’ control and union independence augmented or detracted from this process in the National Union of Metalworkers and its predecessors from the 1980s to the mid 1990s. These unions aimed to accrue power to improve both their members’ working conditions and to effect political and economic transformation. In this process the building of non-racial national industrial unions that cut across the ethnically constituted state, the promotion of workers’ control, and political independence from formal political organisations were central. This thesis demonstrates how Numsa and its predecessors overcame obstacles to the accrual of power and scrutinizes reasons for failures in achieving pivotal ideological goals. In the early 1980s Numsa’s predecessors constructed greater degrees of democratic organizational and bureaucratic power. The formation of Numsa in 1987 allowed for the further construction of an efficient bureaucracy to support organizational and bargaining activities. It successfully forged national bargaining forums and built hegemony across the industry. In 1993 Numsa adopted a programme through which it hoped to restructure its industries in the transitional period leading up to a new democracy. It failed however to successfully implement the programme in its entirety. Tensions emerged in union goals as membership remained focused on increased wages whilst leadership was attempting to restructure industry, enhance worker skills and augment workers’ control in the workplace. In the political sphere Numsa was largely unable to effect a deeper infusion of its socialist leanings. Though Numsa and other Cosatu unions made an important contribution to the birth of a non-racial democracy, the capitalist state succeeded in demobilizing the trade unions in their pursuit of more fundamental systemic change. By the time Numsa produced the concept of a Reconstruction Accord, later developed into the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP), the space to popularise a socialist perspective had been considerably reduced. Although Numsa forewent its early `party autonomous` position when Cosatu entered the ANC/SACP alliance, this was clearly far from a `state ancillary` stance. Though labour had won the right to be consulted in Nedlac and the right to strike, the possibility of dissent being diverted into bureaucratic chambers existed with a consequent loss of militant, strategic and ideological focus. Key words: trade union power, workers control, trade union independence, National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), National Automobile & Allied Workers Union (Naawu), Metal & Allied Workers Union (Mawu), Motor Industry Combined Workers Union (Micwu), post 1980 metal unions, metal union politics, metal union bargaining, metal union organisation, trade union alliances, trade unions and violence