WBS Professor is Awarded an MBE
Professor Linda Dickens, of Warwick Business School, received her MBE from Prince Charles at a Buckingham Palace Investiture last week, 21st November. The MBE was conferred on her in the Queen's Jubilee Honours List for 'services to employment relations'.
Linda said "I was pleased to see my subject area, as well as my contribution to it, being recognised in this way. The current emphasis on evidence-based policy-making highlights the importance of the impartial, rigorous approach to research which Warwick's Industrial Relations Research Unit has adopted since its inception."
Professor Dickins has also accepted the Chair of Independent Commission to look at Local Government Pay.
Local government employers and unions have agreed terms of reference for the Commission to look at pay and rewards for local government services staff. Establishing the Commission was one of the key proposals made by Acas as part of the two-year pay proposals to settle the council workers dispute.
The Pay Commission for Local Government Services' Staff will be chaired by Professor Linda Dickens MBE, who is Deputy Chairman of the Central Arbitration Committee and Professor of Industrial Relations at Warwick University's Business School.
Speaking on her appointment, Professor Dickens said: "I am pleased to accept the joint invitation of the employers and unions to chair the Commission. I recognise the importance of this inquiry in addressing a number of key issues relating to local government pay and will work hard to produce a useful outcome. There is a lot of work ahead and I look forward to meeting with my fellow Commissioners shortly to determine our work schedule. We shall soon be announcing how people can make an input into the Commission and the main themes and areas on which views are
sought."
Linda Dickens has been a member of IRRU for many years, and has published extensively in the areas of legal regulation of employment; employee representation; dispute settlement processes and mechanisms, and equal employment opportunity. She is Director of Warwick's renowned specialist masters programmes in industrial relations, and also teaches industrial relations and human resource management on MBA and undergraduate programmes at Warwick Business School. Professor Dickens is a disputes arbitrator and mediator for the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), an appointment held since the late 1980s. She was appointed Deputy Chair of the Central Arbitration Committee in 1994, a post she still holds. Linda Dickens served as Vice Chair of the Industrial Law Society (1992 - 1995) and President of the British Universities Industrial Relations Association (1998-2001). She is currently on the Executive Committee of the International Industrial Relations Association, run under the auspices of the ILO. During her long service at Warwick, she has held visiting appointments at Universities in Australia and in the USA.