When the TUC leader told The Times before the general election that there were very real risks of difficult industrial disputes ahead, he attempted to set his warning in context.
Days lost to industrial actions were running at historic lows, Brendan Barber said. The number of actual strikes was a fraction of the troubles in the early 1980s or in the 1978-79 Winter of Discontent. Industrial relations in, for instance, the motor industry had never been better.
The amount of industrial action has fallen over the past two decades for other reasons: the tough labour relations laws enacted by Margaret Thatcher, which have had a number of disputes, notably at British Airways, overturned or delayed in the courts; a general rapprochement between labour and capital