Enforcing and re-enforcing trust: Employers, managers and upper-white-collar employees in Finnish manufacturing companies, 1920–1980

In this article employee–employer relations with respect to upper-white-collar employees in Finnish large-scale companies are investigated. The period is from the 1920s to the 1980s. The article shows that the employee–employer relations were during the whole period based on mutual trust. In spite of significant transformations in the labour market practices and in interest formulation and unionisation among these employees, it was in the interests of both parties to maintain these trustful relations. However, the tools with which to maintain such relations changed and adapted. The process was not easy, and was marked by elements of conflict and tension. The elements of trust had to be actively strengthened and rebuilt, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. But as the post-war economic and societal model was marked by a striving for consensus and the smoothing out of conflicts in order to promote industrialisation and growth, the institutional model also supported the maintaining of mutual trust and loyalty between the employees and the employers.