Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

In the stormy days on the Clyde in the spring of 1916, I had, as Chairman of the Government Commission for Dilution of Labour, remarkable proofs of the extent to which workshop committees, when loyally supported by employers, operate to create industrial contentment. Up to that time the skilled men in the engineering shops on the Clyde had firmly refused to comply with the “Treasury” Agreements of March 1915, accepted on ballot by their own Trade Union, and declined absolutely to permit any woman to be introduced for the purpose of doing work previously done by a man or even a boy. The Executive Council of the A.S.E. confessed their entire inability to persuade their Clyde members to comply with the Agreement, and left the matter to the Clyde District Committee. We, as a Commission, found the Clyde District Committee willing to assist, but powerless. It then occurred to us that the best way to achieve our purpose of introducing women was to establish in each workshop a workshop committee consisting of an equal number of workers and management. We explained the scheme of dilution to the committee, leaving it to be discussed between the men on the one side and the management on the other, all information being given and objections, so far as possible, being met by us in the course of the discussion. The workers’ side of the committee would then report to a mass meeting of the workers and come back in a day’s time to a further meeting of the committee, when adjustments, if necessary, would be made by us in the scheme. The result was truly amazing; the men who previously had been adamant against dilution soon realized there was no desire on our part to force some cast-iron proposal down their throats, and that there was a definite opportunity reserved to them as of right for discussing matters, for eliciting information on doubtful aspects, for pointing out and securing a remedy for objectionable features and for introducing safeguards for the protection of their craft. Hostility softened into suspicion, suspicion mellowed into confidence, and confidence in time begat co-operation. Almost insensibly the scope of these committees widened by general consent, and other workshop grievances, apart altogether from dilution, were submitted for discussion and disposed of in the same amicable way. The engineering employers on the Clyde wholeheartedly supported the scheme, and a number of them voluntarily took the initiative in enlarging the sphere of matters to be discussed. It should not be forgotten that this was in one of the most revolutionary districts of the country, where for their own purposes extremists had been long fomenting workshop grievances. When those grievances were remedied in this way there was very little left for the extremists to turn to their own ulterior ends, and the Clyde settled down. After the Commission was dissolved in October 1916, by the Ministry of Munitions, which did not like to see an outside authority doing successfully what it had previously failed to do, the influence for good of these committees rapidly declined under the hard hand of bureaucratic control.

At first I had entertained fears of Trade Union hostility to workshop committees, because local delegates are apt to think that the discussion of workshop grievances is a matter entirely for them, which, if appropriated by a workshop committee, may impair the necessity for their official existence. This difficulty, however, we surmounted in a very simple way. The committee consisted as a rule of seven or eight members elected by the workers in the shop, and an equal number of the representatives of the management. Notice of any meeting of the committee and of the agenda before the committee would be sent to the district delegate of the Union concerned, who would be invited ex-officio, if he cared, to attend and take part in the proceedings. As a rule the delegate invariably did attend, and his presence was most helpful.

In the course of six months’ work the Clyde Commission established nearly 200 workshop committees which met each week, and had the satisfaction of seeing them dispose of workshop grievances and other works disputes in a harmonious, business-like and effective manner. It produced the best possible feeling among the men; they felt—as many of them told me personally—they were no longer under the heel of the foreman, but had an opportunity of putting their complaints fully before the management, being called, of course, as witnesses by the workers’ side of the committee. They felt, they said, that their labour was being no longer treated as merely raw material in industry, and that they had at last attained a human status. This, however, we did insist upon, that a worker had to go through the constitutional shop procedure for disposing of his grievance before it could be brought up at a meeting of the committee; in other words, if shop procedure provided for the question being dealt with by the foreman with an appeal from him to the manager, that it should be exhausted before the committee could take the matter up. In the same way the worker had to exhaust his Trade Union procedure, reporting the matter, it may be, to his shop steward, who would follow the progress of the controversy in the accustomed manner.

Executive Management a Matter for Employers

The cause of what I hope is only a temporary stoppage in the progress of Joint Councils and Works’ Committees is due to the fact that extreme sections of Labour have taken the view that these Councils and Committees seriously interfere with their projects of bringing industry to an end, so as to enable the workers to acquire control of it, and have, therefore, instigated the workers in certain districts to advance demands going to the very root of the employer’s right and responsibility to manage his business, which do not admit of discussion. The employers rightly have objected to this. But for the way in which moderate workmen have unwittingly lent themselves to these tactics, there is no doubt that the scheme for Works’ Committees would have made greater headway. To give an actual illustration: One of our mammoth liners, in shipyard after being repaired, required a few hours’ overtime on the part of six fitters to enable her to go to her home port to load for departure. The fitters refused to work overtime until the matter was discussed between their shop steward and the management; a discussion took place, the former would not agree, and insisted on convening his workshop committee in a couple of days. The ship was all this time being detained, and eventually had to sail, as she could wait no longer, but as a result of the delay, she missed the tide at her home port. While a limitation on the total amount of overtime to be worked per working week is a matter for legitimate agreement between management and men, when and how the overtime is to be worked is obviously a question for the management. The Whitley machinery is admirable, but however excellent it may be, it can do nothing unless there is the right spirit on both sides—a spirit of compromise and mutual endeavour to arrive at some fair and equitable basis of self-government, leaving it to the employer to manage his works in accordance with the principles that have been agreed. Labour cannot seek to settle the principles by negotiation, and in addition manage the works. No employer claims to dictate what the principles shall be.

CHAPTER XXVI
THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED
1. CONTENTMENT IN INDUSTRY (c)

Remuneration of the Worker—Uniform National Wages—Wage-Relationships among the Workers—Wages and the Community—Are Higher Wages Practicable?—The Settlement of Wages—Systems of Remuneration—What is a Fair Wage?—Other Essentials to Industrial Contentment.

(c) Remuneration of the Worker

Contentment in industry depends next on a sound and equitable policy for remuneration of the workers. That implies the summary rejection of all attempts to fix wages on abstract formulae which pay no regard to the circumstances of an industry, or conditions affecting the marketing of the product. If we adopt socialistic nomenclature and call the remuneration of the workers “pay,” and assume elimination of the private employer, and each industry conducted under “democratic control,” even then the gradation of pay between different classes of workers, the rate of pay of each class, the relation between the general standard of pay in one as compared with other industries would depend entirely on the same circumstances as now, and, if the concrete results of past industrial experience are to be disregarded, would be in each case a matter for experimentation, and for practical adjustment and not for pseudo-mathematical solutions.