ii. current problems of industrial relations

II. CURRENT PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONSAuthor(s): LESLIE CANNONSource: Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 115, No. 5127 (FEBRUARY 1967), pp. 163-175Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41369860 .

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II. CURRENT PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

by LESLIE CANNON

General President of the Electrical Trades Union, delivered on Monday 28 th November 1966, with Sir Walter Worboys, D.Phil. , B.Sc ., Chairman of BTR Industries Ltd. , and a Member of the Society's

Council , in the Chair

the chairman : Last week Miss Joan Woodward approached our subject from the academic side. She described herself as being in the same position as any of us would be if we looked into the fish tank : we could see the fish and we could see one fish in relation to another, but we had not any idea what the fish were doing and what made them move about as they do. Tonight Mr. Leslie Cannon is going to help us to under- stand more clearly. Mr. Cannon is the President of the Electrical Trades Union and has been a member of that union for some thirty years. He was a shop steward more than twenty-five years ago. He will therefore be able to bring a very practical experience to bear on the problem of human problems in industry.

The following lecture was then delivered.

INTRODUCTION

Many problems of industrial relations arise simply because people are people. Ordinary people with the full range of human emotions and degrees of intelligence represented. The aim of a good system of industrial relations should not be to erase these characteristics. This is not the function of a system of industrial relations and it is in any case peculiarly ill-equipped to attempt such a vast feat. The aim of a good system of industrial relations is to recognize that all these human traits exist, to take account of them, and to attempt to contain them within an orderly framework. Trade union officials and management daily solve problems which arise from the basic nature of man. Much as we would all like an easier life, or a more carefree existence, it is probably too much to hope that that type of

problem will ever disappear completely. There are, however, a great many problems which need never arise if the framework, within which our industrial relations are conducted, were greatly improved. There is at the moment a Royal Commission inquiring into the whole field of trade unions and employers' associations. While this inquiry is not unwelcome to trade unionists, it is clear that many things require to be done with or without the urging or approval of a

Royal Commission. Firstly, there is the problem of the internal structure of many of our trade

unions. The basic constitutions of trade unions - their rule books - are in many cases old and out-of-date. They were drawn up in the nineteenth century and there is now an urgent need to review them in the light of present-day circum- stances. If we look at the history of my own trade union, the E.T.U., perhaps the

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967

point can be mäde. The Electrical Trades Union would not have come into being as a separate organization had it not been for the exclusive and rather self- consciously élitist attitude of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. After repeated attempts, each of which met with a rebuff, on the part of the electricians to gain admission to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the electricians decided, with the encouragement of the leaders of the A.S.E., to set up a union of their own. As a gesture of encouragement to the new organization the A.S.E. gave them a copy of their rule book: it was on this that the new E.T.U. rule book was based.

By this time, 1890, the A.S.E. was almost forty years old. Other forms of organization were being developed by the new General and Non-craft unions in this period, but at its very beginning the E.T.U. inherited a rule book that was already forty years old.

If one compares this first rule book with subsequent rule books up to 1962, there are a number of striking similarities. By the end of the First World War it was clear that developments in industry and in the economy as a whole were rendering the structure of the E.T.U. obsolete. Nothing in the way of reform was, however, accomplished. It was only in 1962 that a start was made on a determined effort to bring the structure of the E.T.U. up to date. It is true that the new Executive Council, which had just been elected, was faced with other problems, mainly those of conducting honest elections within the Union and of ensuring that the rights of the ordinary members were upheld. But prominent in their thinking was the need to revitalize the whole structure of the Union.

The problem of communication between the rank and file membership and the leadership of the Union was one that required urgent attention.

As a result of decisions taken at Rules Revision Conferences in 1962 and 1965, a number of changes designed to improve communication at all levels of the Union were instituted. These changes involved recreating the supreme continuing authority of the Union, the Executive Council, as a full-time body, and the complete reorganization of both the middle structure and the basic unit of the Union, the branch. The aim of all this was to make communication within the Union both ready and speedy. In passing it should be noted, for the benefit of those who see some easy way of reorganizing union structures, that the Conferences at which these changes were made only passed them by narrow margins. And this despite the fact that the Conferences were more representative of the Union than ever before and had been preceded by an intensive programme of education and persuasion. In other words, trade unions are voluntary associations of individuals and any attempt to impose new structures on them is fraught with the gravest dangers.

This is not the occasion for going deeply into the whole structural changes of the E.T.U. In any case the changes are either too recent or, as yet, incomplete for a proper evaluation of them. Sufficient to say that the results of the changes so far have been encouraging. We are not, however, complacent. Change for the better is a continuing process and we in the E.T.U. are alive to this fact.

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FEBRUARY 1 967 CURRENT PROBLEMS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS

RELATIONS WITH OTHER UNIONS

The need for internal changes in trade unions is matched by the need for changes in relations between unions. The E.T.U. has given this subject also a great deal of consideration. At the start of trade unionism there was no need for the trade unions to come together; they could operate quite efficiently on their own as long as their purpose was simply to protect the trade of their members and to obtain the best wages and working conditions for them. The increase in concentration and complexity of industry brought an end to this. Means had to be found for closer co-operation of different trade unions.

This close relationship has taken three forms. One, straightforward amalgamation; two, confederation; three, the coming together of unions for the purpose of negotiation.

If there had been no long tradition of trade unionism in this country, and if we were about to establish a trade union movement from scratch, most informed people would choose the form of an entirely new structure - that of one union for each industry; but we are not starting afresh. We are dealing with the development of the oldest trade union movement in the world ; a trade union movement which, considering its original structure, has developed itself remarkably well in order to meet changing conditions. I believe that to go forward on the basis of Utopian ideas about starting afresh is to be involved in a great deal of needless effort and in the end to be doomed to failure. I believe that change should be based on the speeding up of this historical process which has been taking place over the past century. We must deal with things only as they are and not as we might like them to be.

AMALGAMATIONS

Most amalgamations that have taken place have been occupational amalgamations, that is amalgamations of unions having workpeople in similar occupations. There is still considerable scope for further amalgamations of this kind and, while they can be valuable, they must not be viewed as a solution to every problem. Lines of demarcation can exist within unions as between them. Little more can be expected from amalgamations than a crystallization of the present number of unions into fewer numbers but still with the same basic structure as exists at

present. Many difficulties will still remain to be solved by improving co-operation, by co-ordination, confederation and association.

CONFEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS

The best known examples of this form of co-operation are the Confederation of

Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and the National Federation of Building Trades Operatives.

The constitution of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, of which my own Union is a member, provides for an annual conference, an Executive Council and a range of sub -committees and advisory committees. There

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967 are also district committees and provision for Confederation secretaries and chairmen of shop stewards' committees. It has, in fact, the framework of an industrial union.

The constitution also gives the Executive Council and the General Council powers to decide matters and provides for their decisions to be binding upon all their constituent unions. These powers, however, are often abandoned in favour of the extra -constitutional recourse of holding a conference of Executive Councils. Thus the Confederation often abandons its own powers when confronted with difficult issues.

This willingness to surrender its powers is one of the shortcomings of the Confederation. It is not, however, the only one. Others are the absence of direct communications between the Confederation and the membership of individual unions and the extremely inadequate machinery of the Confederation itself.

ASSOCIATION OF UNIONS

Association of Unions is a loose form of co-operation. It is, however, an important one because of the large number of individuals involved. Examples of this kind of co-operation can be seen in the signatory unions in the chemical industry and the trade union side of the National Joint Industrial Council and the Whitley Council. In the main, functions are confined entirely to a trade union side meeting to determine the nature of any claims to be pursued at the joint meeting with employers. The advantages to the trade unions in this kind of co-operation are obvious. It eliminates putting in separate applications to employers. The unions join together in a single application.

But there are many shortcomings in this form of co-operation. In the first place there is often great difficulty in reaching agreement as to what kind of application should be made, e.g., a straight increase or a percentage increase. This makes for serious difficulties. The most serious difficulties of all, however, come when the negotiations run into difficulties. In such an event the union representatives are often forced to abandon their collective discussions and go back to their own Executive Councils for determination of what their policy should be. This involves the machinery in considerable delay. Other shortcomings are the almost complete lack of communication with joint membership and the unsatisfactory state of the trade union side of the machinery, which is based on a very small financial contribution by each union.

I believe that a reform and extension of this form of trade union co-operation is the way in which the British Trade Union Movement should be advancing. The application of Confederation principles, including an increased financial call, the giving of plenary powers to Executive Council representatives, the issue of a joint trade union journal, annual or biennial conferences of representatives of all the unions, the development of direct lines of communication to the members jointly and the institution of Works Committees, should have distinct advantages for British industrial life. It would provide most of the advantages and efficiency of having only one union for each industry and would also conform to the 166




historical and evolutionary development of the British Trade Union Movement. At the moment many opportunities for common action are not pursued. In many cases, even on matters such as holidays and working hours where an obvious common interest between unions lies, the discussions are kept separate and the machinery used is that of the constituent unions. Examples are given later of the gas industry and steel industry.

Before passing on to the machinery of collective bargaining I should like to emphasize the point that it is not only trade unions which require to be brought up to date. The Royal Commission after all is concerned with both trade unions and employers' associations, and no doubt they will have quite a bit to say on the latter subject. All too often the employers' associations are archaic in structure, weak in authority and unrepresentative of the industry with which they are supposedly concerned. The Engineering Employers Federation, for example, contains within it large capital intensive industries as well as the smaller engineering enterprises, and there is no formalized provision for joint examination and discussion of different sections of the engineering industry. There exists no Joint Industrial Council for the motor industry or for machine tools; these complex, highly capitalized, sensitive industries are lumped together with others, less complicated but still within the ambit of the Engineering Employers Association.

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

I believe that the Geddes Report on the shipbuilding industry will be seen in

retrospect as marking the start of favourable new developments in that industry. The time does seem favourable for the establishment of a national joint industrial council in the shipbuilding industry. I take the view that even better than this would be the system of industrial relations established at Fairfields, involving trade union involvement in policy-making at a formative stage. This, however, is an

experiment, and in the absence of its being repeated, a national joint industrial council would mark a great step forward.

National joint industrial councils could also be instituted with profit in a number of other industries in which my own Union is involved. The contrast between collective bargaining in the gas and electricity industries is notorious. Both have similar work force structures, yet each operates collective bargaining systems with

hardly a point of similarity. In the electricity supply industry an efficient and elaborate system of advisory

and negotiating machinery has been set up. A national district and local joint advisory council provides a means of consultation at all levels for the general running of the industry, while the three main negotiating parties of councils determine the wages and conditions of the majority of the employees in the

industry. One deals with all manual grades from craft foreman down to unskilled

grades; another deals with engineers and technicians, and yet another with clerical and administrative workers. There are in addition two committees covering building and civil engineering trades and managerial and executive grades.

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967 In addition, there is also a procedure for dealing with matters which arise in

applying negotiated agreements. Although it may be a little formal and lengthy in operation it is an example of one of the more adequate types of machinery operating within the British industry. In contrast, the gas industry operates a negotiating machinery in which manual workers are divided into production and craft grades. The representatives of each grade negotiate separately with the same authority, the Gas Council. This happens even on matters of common interest, the length of the working week, holiday entitlement, sick pay and pensions. It is obvious that, given this situation, it is impossible for one set of negotiations to accomplish more in principle than the other.

Production workers, by virtue of their majority in industry, inevitably take precedence in negotiations with the Gas Council. This presents problems to the craft grades. Their negotiations border on farce, as questions of principle have already been decided. This is a source of great friction between the trade unions themselves and between the employers and trade unions. Similar comparisons can be made between the civil air transport industry and the iron and steel industry. Civil air transport industry has a similar negotiating machinery to that of electricity supply, while the situation in iron and steel is in marked contrast to this.

In iron and steel we have a case of fragmentation of national machinery. In dealing with labour matters in the industry companies are grouped on a regional or product basis into a number of employers' associations. On the trade union side there are three major organizations who conduct negotiations unilaterally with the employers. These are the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, the National Union of Blastfurnacemen and the National Craftsmen's Co-ordinating Committee on which the E.T.U. is represented.

It is not unusual to find a series of separate negotiations being conducted between various parties at different places and times, even immediately before or after the national agreement has been reached. Further confusion is added by some enterprises in the steel industry, notably in Wales, entering into separate contracts between the company itself and the body of trade unions, while the rest are represented through national negotiating machinery.

On matters of common interest the situation is similar to that which appears in the gas industry. The process workers are dealt with first and the craftsmen are left to bring up the rear. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that conflicts arise.

In both the iron and steel industry and the gas industry, application of the principle of a national joint council similar to that which exists in the electricity supply industry or civil air transport could be profitably introduced.

THE ENGINEERING INDUSTRY PROCEDURE AGREEMENT AND METHOD OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

The industrial unrest in the engineering industry, particularly in the motor car industry, has led to a considerable amount of discussion about the procedure embodied in the agreement between the Engineering and Allied Employers National Federation and the Trades Unions.

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Ignoring in this immediate context important elements in industrial unrest, such as incompetent management and unsatisfactory national economic policies, and leaving aside any possible disagreement on the extent and seriousness of the strikes, I am prepared to say that the situation is an unsatisfactory one.

I believe that a crucially important factor in the escalation of grievances into disputes is the cumbersome procedure in the Agreement usually known as the York Memorandum. The facts are that this Agreement is at once farcical and a dangerous factor in industrial unrest in the engineering industry.

Farcical because the machinery established by the Memorandum is used to negotiate agreements which practically no one applies; dangerous because the machinery for settling disputes is slow-moving and not designed for a rational ending of any dispute.

Just how farcical can be seen when it is realized that the result of all this negotiation, added to the countless hours of negotiation since 1922 when the

procedure was adopted, still only provides for a skilled worker to have a wage somewhere in the region of £11 10 s. This, of course, is ridiculous when it is well known that many workers for whom this Agreement is being negotiated are, in fact, drawing wages of up to three or four times this amount, while others are

lucky to get three or four per cent more. In other words, the full weight and

authority of the national leaders of the trade unions and employers are being given to an Agreement which everyone recognizes has no relevance to the real situation.

If the national agreement bore some kind of relationship to the wages actually received and the local additions were purely of a marginal amount, there would be

perhaps little ground for unease. When, however, the added factor, based on

factory negotiation, is sometimes of the order of two or three per cent and sometimes two or three times the original, this at least suggests that things are

unsatisfactory. A further question has to be asked, whether the present procedure operates in the interest of the parties directly concerned and in the interest of the nation as a whole. On this I am in no doubt. The procedure operates against the interests of the parties themselves and of the nation.

I believe this to be the case because of the type of bargaining to which it leads. It leads to plant bargaining of the worst kind: plant bargaining of a haphazardly narrow type conducted on the basis of the fluctuating bargaining strength of each

department. There is no doubt in my opinion that this had led to an unjustifiable degree of wage drift, which, for the parties to the National Agreement, has involved many skilled men being left behind and, for the nation as a whole, a contribution to a rate of inflation, inconsistent with a steady économie growth and other national objectives.

Damaging as the method of wage negotiations is, it is at least equalled by the method of settling disputes. This involves a steady escalation procedure from informal meeting with management through formal meeting with management at works level, local conference and local officials of both sides to central conference. The whole procedure is costly, time-wasting and frustrating, and strikes right at the heart of good industrial relations, which require the speedy settlement of dis-

agreements before grievances have worsened, either in a real or an imaginary sense.

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967

In support of the procedure it is not sufficient to say that out of hundreds of disputes there have been only fifty or sixty strikes. These have often been the most damaging. In any case the point about procedure is not how it solves problems, which can be solved in any case by the application of common sense. Problems are solved every day by all kinds of people, mainly because they have drawn on common sense when faced with disagreement. To say a complicated and expensive procedure agreement solves disagreement is to say nothing. The test of the procedure agreement is how it tackles and solves problems when men of common sense have failed to come to an agreement.

The fact is that the procedure fails utterly to deal with strikes which affect perhaps twelve people and render 20,000 unemployed ; some of these strikes have, in fact, been caused by the frustrations arising from the long-drawn-out procedure of the agreement.

It is my view that it has become ludicrous to have plant agreements negotiated within the factory which have no relevance to the national agreement, and then to fall back on national procedures to deal with what is an anarchic situation. Where there are plant agreements they should be accepted as such and there should be formal recognition of them. We should embody, in the form of an agreement, all that now takes place and sign our names to that agreement. This would provide a basis for an orderly improvement in the wage patterns for different types of workpeople within the establishment.

My Union is deeply concerned with modernizing British industry and increasing productivity. It recognizes that while this can be achieved in many cases on an industry basis, in other industries more real and radical changes can only be brought about on a plant by plant basis. It is encouraged, in holding this view, by the experience of the Fairfield experiment and its involvement in it. Here was a concern, a member of the Shipbuilders' Federation, a signatory to the shipbuilders' agreement and covered by its accompanying procedures, which could only be taken out of its difficulty by a rescue operation on a plant basis.

I believe that it is quite ridiculous to continue the present procedure in highly sensitive industries in which a dozen men can put 20,000 out of work within a week; an industry in which the flow of production is such that engines which are on the road in the morning are to be assembled in the afternoon. There is six or seven hours leeway in the critical path method of motor car assembly; in six or seven hours a strike begins to take effect on the entire enterprise. We can no longer leave that kind of sensitive, highly capitalized enterprise within the framework of negotiations which also cater for enterprises which are completely insensitive to the same kind of disturbance in industrial relations.

INDUSTRIAL ATTITUDES

So far I have dealt with the need for a better trade union structure, both internally and between unions, the need for better employers' organizations and the need for better communication at all levels. The bést communications and the best procedure agreements that can be devised, however, will be of little value if

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the basic attitudes of both employers and employees are unsatisfactory. Where employees are hostile or apathetic, or where management is autocratic or patronizing, the worst type of response is almost certain to be evolved from the other party.

Great changes are taking place within British industry, and trade unions are adopting more and more the modern attitude of pressing management to modernize their ideas and to urge efficiency on backward management. Manage- ment, too, are increasingly treating their employees as responsible partners in their enterprise and are increasingly willing to participate in joint consultations. Much, however, still requires to be done.

My Union is proud of the fact that it has led trade unions in this country in the field of education. The E.T.U. has long been teaching the principles of work study and of modern productivity techniques. In addition, however, we now have jointly sponsored courses combining principles with the actual industrial relations problems within the industry or the enterprise. In these courses, management and outside specialists work together with full-time trade union officers as tutors and discussion group leaders. Courses have been held with Fairfields, Ford and N. G. Bailey, and the results have been rewarding and encouraging.

I believe, however, that it is not only trade unionists who need to be educated. Management is a very specialized business. Parallel with its own efforts of educating its members, the E.T.U. would like to see a great extension in management training. Only too often management in Britain is recruited for reasons other than its ability to manage. Even where this ability is present it frequently requires to be brought out by education. Even if the process of trade union education

gathers momentum, and I am convinced that it will, it will be of limited value if

management training is not pursued with an equal vigour. Both employers and

employees have much to gain from a good system of industrial training, covering all aspects of industrial relations.

DISCUSSION

MR. ALAN PULFORD, B.sc., A.R.i. c. : I think Mr. Cannon presented very clearly his belief that the way to achieve progress is through co-operation and co-ordination at national level rather than through take-overs by one union or another in the form of amalgamation. If we take into account some of the things which were said at last week's lecture about workers participating in management, I wonder how Mr. Cannon sees this being carried to its logical conclusion at local industry level. How does one get co-ordination at a particular factory? Mr. Cannon talked about the appointment of a full-time officer at national level. Does he agree that co-ordination between unions can be achieved at the firm's level by the appointment of a local full-time union officer? Would he be elected? Who would pay him? How would he be trained?

the lecturer: Amalgamation is only one form of co-ordination. What I don't think you will get is every union in one industry coming together and agreeing to form a new union under the name of that with the most people already in it.

I don't know what was said last week about workers' participation in management; sufficient to say that I don't believe in it. Management has amongst its duties the need to get the best technical advice from its engineers and accountants, and the

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967 closest consultation with its industrial relations adviser ; and if it has got any sense at all, the closest consultation also with representatives of the trade union in its establishment. But I don't think it is any part of the job of a trade unionist to take part in the function of management, which is the taking of decisions. What people mean by participation in management other than that, I do not know. A works manager must take decisions at his level, after consultation surely, but not by a vote. And I don't know what participation means at any given level other than taking joint decisions, or having a vote. If what is meant when this is referred to is the right to take part in management consultations, that is another matter, that is joint consultation. I think management ignores consultation with trade unions at its peril.

Again, I don't believe that workpeople in industry should be on boards of directors in that industry. In individual cases this would probably lead to charges against a man of being an obstructionist from his fellow directors and of being a traitor from his fellow workers. In the case of Fairfields, where we should do everything in our power to make this experiment succeed, my executive did not agree to the appointment of trade union directors from among trade unions actually involved in the industrial relations of Fairfields.

When we reach the philosophical level, in a democracy, power, wherever it is exercised, must have counter-checks. In our machinery we always bring into being counter-checks, whether in the form of a select committee of estimates or of a shop stewards' committee, to ensure that power is not abused. Some managements abuse power; some trade union leaders abuse power. I do not think a trade union should in any way endanger its rôle as a counterbalance to the exercise of power in a demo- cratic society, and this is an aspect of the Trade Union Congress evidence to the Royal Commission with which I do not agree.

On the question of carrying this form of co-ordination to the shop level, there are already in many establishments full facilities provided to bring it about. Time is given, physical facilities are given. The people are highly skilled in dealing with the agreements under which they work, but they don't have to deal with many. They have one agreement, they master it and they certainly can be very articulate in defending the members that they represent in the day-to-day operation of that agreement. In my own union we have a college where we set about training for this task. In the past year we have had a jointly sponsored school of our shop stewards employed by British Railways and ourselves to deal with work study and its extended application, covering maintenance work in British Railways. We encourage this kind of course not just for work study but for all kinds of industrial relations problems. We have jointly sponsored courses with Imperial Chemical Industries and with the Ford Motor Company. We now run courses of the same kind each year with the co-operation of British Railways and of British European Airways. And these have proved to be the most informative and successful, in terms of applicants, that we have actually handled.

group-captain a. N. combe, F.INST.W.S.P., R.A.F.(retd.) : I am engaged in work study. It is the basic aim of people following my employment to act as catalyst between factions in industry who are using time to fight a local battle when that time is needed for use productively in the national interest. It is our dream that perhaps it will be possible to create, by job evaluation, a relationship between different types of skill and employment which will satisfy people and provide a permanent structure of wages, and to link that with National Productivity so that there can be a permanent and widely accepted formula for any change in remuneration appropriate to cost of living changes or improvement in the whole national situation. If that dream can be realized would it not be possible to dissolve the permanent negotiating committees and machinery, and devote the time so spent to be used as productively as possible in the national interest? Is it too idealistic a dream that at some point we

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may be able to arrive at a satisfactory relationship between wages and employment which will remove this whole area of conflict completely?

the lecturer : I think it is a dream. Let me take up your last point. Why do you want to remove the element of conflict in society? Nothing but good comes out of healthy conflict in society. The conflict which emerges in industrial relations often produces some very good things.

I took my first work study lesson a long time ago in Imperial Chemical Industries. I thought, and still think, that it is an enormously powerful instrument in the hands of management to be able to introduce new methods of work, but I never thought that the work study officer was the instrument for realizing this kind of dream, because, let me say quite bluntly, I think there are some phoney work study officers in the field. Again, the rôle of conflict is not entirely eliminated even in job evaluation. It was never thought that you could bring about a perfect degree of exactitude in work studies or measurements of human beings. Let me put this supposition to you. Suppose that a company, up against it in regard to markets, decided to instruct its work study officers to tighten up on the rating principle. You say, that is not possible - it is not part of the ethos of British industry - but it happens.

Even if we must strive for more accurate ways of assessing work done by individuals and groups of people, genuine human grievances remain. I recall one from my own experience. A man who worke3 in a Liverpool factory was being persecuted, not by the management, but by the foreman, who had an antipathy to him. The foreman was driving him into a state of nervous collapse. With typical Lancastrian bluntness I told this foreman that it had to stop, and it stopped forthwith. That man's response was one of the greatest rewards I have had in my long life as a trade union leader.

MRS. jane martin (Medway College of Technology): Wouldn't it be marvellous for good industrial relations in this country if all trade union leaders were like Mr. Cannon? My question is about industrial attitudes to staff status agreements for hourly paid workers. This is one aspect of the change in our social attitudes. One thinks particularly of the agreements that the Central Electricity Board has signed, and of those I believe in certain divisions of I.C.I. Does Mr. Cannon think that these new status agreements create changes of attitude, and is this development going to be on the increase in the future?

the lecturer: I hope so. Workers don't, however, like to be given status which has no meaning. One of the things that people working in electricity supply suspected was that instead of being hourly paid workers they would become salaried workers, and that this would be achieved by multiplying their hourly rate by forty and their weekly rate by fifty-two and calling that a 'salary'. If a man is to be given status at all money is not everything ; he really begins to think about status once he has satisfied the minimum material requirements. He cannot think about it on £10 a week. A man who has a certain skill feels some dignity has been accorded to that skill by raising him nearer to those people who seemed to have had higher status before. But there is no point in speaking about status if we perpetuate the situation where the worker still gets less holidays than the black-coated man, an inferior pension scheme, and less sick pay. The point about the electricity agreement is that we recognize as an objective that these differences must be eliminated. An extraordinary thing about this aspect of industrial relations, however, is that the old situation where a craftsman with thirty years in a firm gets two weeks holiday with pay, and his daughter aged eighteen working in the typists' pool gets three weeks, is considered absolutely outrageous but nothing is ever done about it.

On another question, why should a draughtsman get more holidays than a foundry- man? Why should anybody in these occupations get more holidays than the man who is maintaining the electrical equipment or who is able to take down the complicated

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS FEBRUARY 1 967 machine tools and reassemble them? Yet in these times when status is becoming the vogue the trend still is not to close the gap between some of these categories of workers and the manual workers, but to widen it still further.

MR. Julius HOGBEN : In my very brief experience of industrial relations in engineering I have been extremely depressed by the daily round of conventional bargaining over wage claims in which no question of productivity is raised either by management or by the trade unions. Does Mr. Cannon think that the unions should make some more positive policy statements on productivity than they have so far, or that we should still leave it to individual companies, in dealing with individual unions in productivity bargains, to lead the way?

the lecturer: You certainly cannot have every firm putting its particular productivity problems on the negotiating table at the national level. A particular firm might argue that it had an incentive scheme, piece work schemes, but even a piece work system is abused to attract manpower from one firm to another. If anybody wants to attract people in Birmingham, where they are short of men, the answer is to soften up the bonus rates. This gives £2 a week increase and is a bonus without increased productivity, and so the men come over. If I was a shop steward and saw the possibility of a genuine productivity bargain I would take the initiative even if the management didn't, because I should want my members to have the improved wages which would accrue from such a bargain.

MR. CECIL H. Robinson : Those of us who look at the trade unions from the outside have to judge to some extent by what we read in the Press when there are disputes. The problems of differentials within factories and within trades is one that is often mentioned, and the lecturer mentioned them. He also talked about emergent skills, particularly within his own union. Could he give us his observations (having regard to one of the phrases used earlier about the 'recognition of necessities') on relating emerging skills and new techniques in the structure of existing differentials in such a way that the wages structure can be adapted without causing a great deal of industrial upheaval?

the lecturer: It is quite a problem. It requires, almost totally, the initiative of management. Again, one of the weaknesses of trade union structure, that would exist equally if not more so with one industrial union than at present: there has grown up in this country a phrase known as 'the common craft rate', and it is as old as the days when crafts were common in degree of skill. For example, the people who painted and did the plastering in this room were certainly as skilled as the electricians who put the lights in. But the plasterer of to-day, plastering straight walls, and the painter, who is putting distemper on those walls, are not as skilled as the electrician who puts in the more complicated and sophisticated modern equipment. Nevertheless, we had a case where our members were asked to undergo a period of training on static furnaces. They went through this training, and all of them came out of it confident that they could do the maintenance work required. They were offered threepence an hour for the period of training and threepence an hour when they satisfied the company as to their competence - a very modest increase I thought. But the other unions said, 'No, none of this, there is the 1948 agreement about the common craft rate.' It then became almost entirely a question of the management's insisting that this new development should be met by an amendment to an agreement which existed long before this development occurred.

This is going to happen increasingly. What some people think of as a solution to our trade union problems is really not so. Had there been one union in that case and one representative of the emergent skills, then there would have been no possibility of a claim being made in the first place. The fact that you have co-operation on the one hand, but a genuinely special case which needs to be pleaded on the other, could

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in fact constitute an advantage of this relationship over the idea of one union. This has happened in many places. For us it has got certain difficulties as well. Some of my members are required to develop skills which they did not have and which only the best of them can in fact acquire; and having done this, all of them want the higher rates which are justified. It is a serious problem and one that my union is particularly affected by. It will not be resolved by any form of trade union structure. Unless management recognizes that it must give a reward to men practising the higher skills, it will not get the commodity for the price.

the chairman : I must now on your behalf thank Mr. Cannon for a most interesting, in places provocative, in places encouraging, address. He has said many things that will be of great interest to all who have the health of British industry, and indeed of Britain, at heart.

The vote of thanks to the Lecturer was carried with acclamation and the meeting then ended.

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ii. current problems of industrial relations

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