Professor Sir George Sayers Bain is a Canadian-British academic who has contributed to the study and practice of industrial relations, has led several academic institutions, has been a non-executive director of companies in the UK and Canada, and has engaged extensively in public service.
Early life
He was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on 24 February 1939, the son of George Alexander Bain, a skilled manual worker at the Canadian Pacific Railway, and Margaret Ioleen Bain (née Bamford).
After attending state schools in Winnipeg, he entered the University of Manitoba in 1956, studying double honours economics and political science, and graduated with a BA (Hons) in 1961 and an MA in 1964. A Commonwealth Scholarship took him to Pembroke College, Oxford in 1963 and to Nuffield College in 1964, where he studied industrial relations and obtained a DPhil in 1968.
While at the University of Manitoba, he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Reserve as an officer cadet and served in various ships and establishments over a six-year period, retiring with the rank of Lieutenant in 1963.
He was also a member of the New Democratic Party, Canada’s social-democratic party, and its predecessor, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and was President of the Manitoba NDP in 1962-63.
Personal Life
He married Carol Lynne Ogden White in 1962; they divorced in 1987. He married Frances Gwynneth Rigby (née Vickers) in 1988; he has a daughter (Katherine) and a son (David) from his first marriage.
He is a keen genealogist and family historian. He has privately published histories of nine families from which he is descended – three in Northern Ireland and six in Scotland – generally tracing them back to the middle of the eighteenth century.
Career
Academic
He was a Lecturer in economics at the University of Manitoba in 1962-63. He was a Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford in 1966-69 and the Frank Thomas Professor of Industrial Relations at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1969-70. He gave up his chair to become the Deputy Director of the Economic & Social Research Council’s Industrial Relations Research Unit at the University of Warwick and became Director in 1974, holding the post until 1981. The Unit was one of the first attempts in the UK to bring together a large group of social scientists to undertake full-time, team research. In 1979, he was appointed to the Pressed Steel Fisher Chair of Industrial Relations at the University of Warwick.
His research interests have been mainly concerned with white-collar employees and their organisations; the theory of union growth; public policy relating to union recognition and union security, collective bargaining, employee participation and industrial democracy; and the bibliography of industrial relations. He has been the author or co-author of nine books and monographs and forty papers in learned journals.
He was Chairman of Warwick Business School (1983-89), Principal of the London Business School (1989-97), and President and Vice Chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast (1998-2004).
He has also served in several academic professional associations, including being: a member, Council, Economic & Social Research Council, 1986-91; chairman, Council of University Management Schools, 1987-90; vice president, European Foundation for Management Development, 1991-95; member, Board of Directors, American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, 1992-94; member, Board, Foundation for Canadian Studies in the UK, 1993-2001, 2004-06; chairman, Association of Commonwealth Universities, 2002-03; and trustee, Council for Advancement & Support of Education, 2004-08, and CASE Europe, 2004-07.
Public Service
Under the auspices of the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and in a private capacity between 1972 and 1992, he conducted 71 arbitrations and mediations between unions and employers in virtually every sector of the UK economy.
He has been a member and the chairman of several commissions of inquiry, including: