The next most pressing reform in our present industrial system is to secure for the individual worker a definite status in industry. To describe what is intended is easier than to define it. At present the individual worker complains that the government of industry is conducted by the employer entirely as the latter thinks fit. He calls it the “domination of capital”; he describes himself as treated with scant or no consideration, and undoubtedly he draws all his industrial inspirations from an atmosphere in which there is little apparent development of his human personality. The worker is right and he is wrong. He forgets that the conduct of industry to-day is not a matter in the uncontrolled hands of any employer. He loses sight of the fact that in all well-organized industries the conditions of employment which prevail have been the matter of extensive adjustment between the employers’ organizations and the Trade Unions, negotiated, of course, centrally beyond the horizon of the individual worker.
The Slowness of Ordinary Conciliation Machinery
The real feeling that the worker is trying to express is his sense of personal insignificance in a great factory, accentuated, when grievances arise, by the difficulty, in large works, of securing prompt discussion of them between the workers and the management. All that can be done is for the worker to report the matter to the shop steward of his particular craft in the department, who will no doubt report it to the secretary of his Trade Union district committee. The latter will put it forward for consideration by the committee and take their instructions upon it, and the committee will, in course of time, send down him or the district delegate to the works to see the employer. A discussion will take place, the results of which the district delegate will report back to the district committee. If the matter is amicably settled there is an end of it; if, on the other hand, it still remains in dispute, the district committee may decide to refer it to the executive council of their Union. The executive council will then remit it to the central organization of the employers, to be considered by them at their next meeting. The matter may be then adjusted, or it may be left over for discussion at one of the periodical joint central conferences. While this ponderous machinery is functioning the individual worker is left face to face with the remembrance of his grievance, and it is not surprising that he gradually acquires a sense of inferiority and a feeling of being neglected, through his ignorance that the mills of conciliation grind slowly. The object first and foremost must be to adapt existing, or provide new, machinery in all industries to enable grievances to be speedily discussed in the works in which they arise. It may be found when they are investigated that they involve some issue common to all the works in the district engaged in the same industry. Obviously, then, that is a matter to be discussed between the district employers and the district committees of the Trade Unions, or through the district conciliation machinery, whatever it may be. In course of the district discussions it may be ascertained that the matters of controversy have raised some national question, then, obviously, for the sake of industrial uniformity, these questions should be considered nationally between the organizations representing all the employers in the country engaged in the particular industry and the Trade Unions representing the men, or through the appropriate national conciliation machinery.
These are the general lines along which, as [Part II] shows, industrial conciliation machinery has developed. In the highly organized industries, there is machinery, district and national, but not as a rule works’ committees. The drawback in all industries is the delay.
The Whitley Councils Scheme
The want of such machinery became apparent in many imperfectly organized industries in the early part of the war, and in October 1916, “the Whitley Committee” was appointed by the Prime Minister with the following terms of reference:
(1) To make and consider suggestions for securing a permanent improvement in the relations between employers and workmen.
(2) To recommend means for securing that industrial conditions affecting the relations between employers and workmen should be systematically reviewed by those concerned, with a view to improving conditions in the future.
Of this Committee the present Speaker of the House of Commons, the Right Hon. J. H. Whitley, was Chairman. It comprised representatives of the employers and also of the Trade Unions engaged in some of the great industries. The Committee presented five reports recommending what is now known as the Whitley Councils Scheme.