Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

The Need of Strict Justice

The unenlightened employer has not yet given it a chance. He does not believe in its existence, nor in its efficacy as a moderating influence. There are no conceivable circumstances, he will tell you, which Labour will not unjustly use for its own aggrandisement, if an opportunity coincides with power. That in the past has, unfortunately, been the tradition on the part of reactionary employers no less than on the part of Labour. In regard to either justification or excuse, no distinction whatsoever can be drawn between the two. Propositions and proposals founded on equity and reason can, with confidence, be submitted to the workman’s sense of justice. In many instances during the war, I have appealed to this sense of justice with signal success in shop matters of peculiarly acute trade controversy. Even in regard to victimization disputes, always formidable questions, productive often of almost intractable controversy, that is to say, cases of dismissal, fine or reducing, on grounds alleged by the men of the prominence of the “victim” in furthering the interests of his Trade Union, or because of alleged breaches of unwritten shop law, invented, it would be said, by some vindictive foreman. When masters and men have failed to adjust the difference—the former taking their stand on “their right to maintain discipline,” the latter on their duty “to protect their Trade Union interests”—I have invariably found it possible to settle the dispute by getting down to principles of fair-play. If the workman who has been “dealt with” was a shop steward, and was really using his employer’s time for doing his Trade Union branch work when he might and ought to have been doing his shop work, the men have accepted the position that, after notice, the employer is entitled to take exception to that procedure. On the other hand, if he has only been utilizing for Union business the many periods of time which occur in the best organized shops when he is “waiting for work” or “standing by,” and has done it in such a way as not to interfere with his shop work, then the men claim that he has only done what he was entitled to do, and that an employer who objects to him doing Union business under such circumstances is really out against the Union. Most fair-minded people would probably draw the same inference.

The Money Value of Sympathy in Industry

There are to-day many employers, managers, under-managers, and foremen who still act on the dogma that there is nothing to be got out of the sympathetic handling of labour. “It’s so much cutting air,” more than one has said to me. If an employer of this type honestly believed there was money in it, he is far too keen a business man not to try it. But to many employers Labour is still only a machine which, as long as it runs in any sort of way, is to be left severely alone; when it jerks or sticks it is to be lubricated with smooth words, professions of the employer’s anxiety for its welfare, “soft sawder,” for which the men, naturally, have the utmost contempt.

The Sympathetic Handling of Labour a Special Art

A very large number of employers have not realized yet that the sympathetic management of labour is a special art, calling for peculiar qualities of temperament and tact. Until that is accepted as sound economics there can never be co-operation. Technical experience is the usual qualification required of a foreman, seldom, if ever, is the least regard paid to his ability to handle men sympathetically so as to get the best out of them. Yet that, much more than technical capacity, contributes to workshop efficiency. There are many persons wholly unfitted by nature to have the charge of men, more especially to perform the responsible duty of taking on and discharging them. Their presence in a shop is a chronic source of irritation, and keeps the men’s backs perpetually up. Co-operation, under such conditions, cannot exist. An outsider entering the shop can feel the strained relationship almost intuitively. A sort of nervous tension seems to pervade the place. No cheery words are exchanged between men and manager, as the latter passes through the shop. A notice is often found in the office: “Workmen must wipe their feet before entering.” As a workman said to me: “No such direction is given to anyone who comes to place an order,” How much better to say to every one, “Please wipe your feet.” If a workman wants to see some one in authority he is kept hanging about, losing his piece-work earnings, or is brusquely told that the manager is engaged, while all the time he sees customers admitted with welcome to the office. One manager frankly told me that but for his clerk, who artfully got rid of the workman always wanting to see him, he would never have had any time to do his business. That indicates the attitude of mind that good employers are fighting against. It is not considered by unprogressive employers any part of the recognized duty of a manager to apply sympathy, understanding, and tact to the treatment of Labour. There is no doubt it requires very great time and patience and prolonged study and investigation of numerous circumstances which are on the surface trivial. A manager is often loath to devote to work of that kind time and energy which he thinks, and which many employers certainly think, can more profitably be spent in technical and commercial activity.

An Illustration of its Successful Application

But assuming that management will accept the teaching of the best employers that the sympathetic handling of labour is an employer’s duty, and, apart from that, is good business, the problem then will be how to make and sustain such an appeal to the worker that he will be induced to co-operate with the management. A similar problem confronted myself during part of the war period when, as Director of Shipyard Labour, I had charge of the labour in some 2,500 firms, employing something like one million men. Output had to be secured and maintained at all costs, so when any trouble occurred my Department had to intervene if the management and men failed to come to a speedy settlement. When forming the Department I gathered together a small band of enthusiastic and far-sighted employers and Trade Unionists, and in conjunction we made a determined and intensive effort to get right down au fond and strike the chords in industrial human nature, on whose vibration co-operation is dependent. Some simple principles were formulated, which, later, as experience grew, were modified in detail. These were made the basis of the appeal, not merely in mass meetings, Trade Union lodges, and elsewhere among the men, but also, with the assistance—and it was loyally given—of the employers, carried into daily workshop practice. At the time when these principles were first put into operation, there were close on 200 strikes a week in the 2,500 firms. After a twelve-months’ regime the strikes which had fallen regularly, month by month, came down to under ten a week. Some employers denied that the principles had anything to do with the diminution of strikes. One of the most prominent described them as “so much pap.” But the Trade Unions took a different view, and I hold many personal letters from some of the principal Unions attributing the whole of the improvement to the sympathetic regime that had been put into operation—it was really nothing more than carrying sympathy and strict justice into all the details of workshop life. Far be it from me to suggest that any State department, without executive responsibility, can run labour as well as a private employer who has that responsibility; the point is that enormous improvement in the co-operative spirit between employers and employed can be effected by the adoption of a well-developed methodized system of handling labour based on sympathetic principles.

Co-operation is a vital essential for the reconstruction of industry. It is the true antidote to revolution. It will only be forthcoming in industry when sound economic conviction operates in an atmosphere and environment of justice and sympathy. As long as economic fallacy is allowed to permeate the minds of employers and employed, leading them to reject or belittle the material advantages of co-operation by representing it as inimical to their respective interests, and as long as the want of sympathy and justice continues to feed that fallacy, co-operation will never emerge as an integrating force in industry. The remedy is, therefore, obvious.