Subcontracting and the reregulation of the employment relationship: A casestudy from the telecommunications industry

This is a case study of the use of subcontracting within BT pie the UK's la rgest telecommunications firm. The 1990s have witnessed significant quantit ative and qualitative changes in the utilisation end management of subcontr acting within BT. The deregulation, or rather the shift in regulation, of t he employment relationship represented by movement from bureaucratic hierar chical forms of organisation to subcontracting introduces several sources o f uncertainty into the process of ensuring an adequate supply of labour and inducing the desired contribution within production. This study examines w hether the regulation of labour in terms of supply and performance can be r econciled through subcontracting mechanisms. In this case the experience of deregulation of the capital-labour relationship threw up unforeseen outcom es. The problems that arose from the reliance upon a labour source that was ostensibly beyond the control of the firm inspired initiatives that essent ially represented the partial reregulation of the capital-labour relationsh ip.