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ion) rights (Smith and Morton, 2001), they have introduced a range of measures aimed at enhancing the rights and conditions of individual workers. In the context of the local government employment relations system, this operates at three levels. The first level has been the introduction of universal rights, including the national minimum wage, equalizing rights for part-time and temporary workers and enhancing maternity, childcare and dependency rights. At the second level, in the face of pressure from the unions, the government has concluded national agreements that enhance the rights of staff transferred from the public sector. This has included measures addressing the so-called 'two-tier workforce', and, on projects affected by the Public Finance Initiatives (PFI), the concluding of the so-called 'Warwick Agreement' between Labour and the unions prior to the 2005 general election.

The final level of protection has involved sectoral-level actions, which have affected national agreements specifically relating to local government. These actions have included the commitments to pursue 'best practice' initiatives on equal pay, single status and on a 'mainstreaming equalities' agenda (Ruberry et al., 2005) - often specifically tied to BV (Local Government Pay Commission, 2003; EO, 2001). These contextual developments, when taken together, suggest that while BV, like CCT before it, does embody a continued emphasis on the externalization of external services, it does so in an environment that serves to place limits on the extent to which the terms and conditions of those employed by external providers can be lower than those set for directly employed local authority staff through local government collective bargaining machinery. It is for this reason that the issue of how the actions of the regulatory body responsible for overseeing the operation of the BV regime impact on the collective bargaining agenda of local government trade unions seems to be one that merits an investigation of the type undertaken below. For a clear potential exists for these actions to either support or undermine (a) the content of bargaining agendas that the unions wish to pursue; and (b) the role that they may play in pursuance of these, or other, bargaining agendas.

Since the introduction of BV in 1999, Labour's reform of local government has moved on at a rapid pace and in 2002, the tangential policy of comprehensive performance assessment (CPA) was introduced. This more recent policy initiative involves auditors and inspectors assessing local authorities' entire performance rather than, as in BV, the performance of individual services or packages of services (Andrews, 2004). In pursuit of service quality, the AC's work can clearly be seen to have the potential to impact on the bargaining agendas of unions. A clear demonstration of this is the way in which its work formed an important backcloth to the 2002/3 dispute in the British fire service and its aftermath. Thus, while assessments of this dispute, or its antecedents, do not identify the AC as the key protagonist, the AC's initial recommendations for reform (Audit Commission, 1995b) have been identified as an important catalyst to the dispute.

Its subsequent policing of 'modernization' following the dispute's resolution has been seen as playing a role in shaping the ongoing contested situation in the service (Burchill, 2004; Fitzgerald, 2005). Likewise, the role that AC i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。