Lord Robens on problems with the workers
It could not have come at a more appropriate time. Last week's General Election has speeded LIP the interest in worker participation and worker involvement in management decisions, arid there has been a spate of speeches from leading politicians of all parties on the subject. There emerged a new pamphlet by the Fabians ,nn working power, a number of discussions in EEC channels on supervisory boards had taken Place, and the TUC had had an interesting debate on the subject at their annual conference. There is no lack of interest in this vital subject.
, Incidentally for forty years of my life I have ueen especially interested in this question of worker-management relations, and indeed When [Was eighteen years of age I sat on one of the few joint advisory councils in existence at that time, at the company in which I worked. You can imagine my eagerness, therefore, to reach out for this new book by David Jenkins.*. I read it, as one would imagine, very carefully and with very deep interest. I read it with the hoPe with which I commenced, unrealised by the time I had reached the end. But I was not t oo disappointed, because there have been so Many books and so many discussions on the aUbject of workers' involvement in managerent without a clear cut solution that, perhaps, was hoping for too much. My hope was that Perhaps in the final chapter David Jenkins, after two years of detailed research in many Parts of the world, would have been able to Produce the blueprint for dealing with this very M1Portant and very sensitive area of workermanagement relations.
was looking for the foolproof formula which would establish a relationship between those Who manage and those who are managed which would enable all the problems that arise In our complex manufacturing and business world to be settled without stopping the creation of wealth. Alas, my hope was not realised; there was no magic chapter, but there \i'llas an interesting account of how the subject ad been tackled in many parts of the world. d The author is quite certain what industrial ,ernocracy is and equally clear about what it is The central feature of industrial demodracy, in his view, is the position of real beclaion-making power of substantial matters the employees of an enterprise, so that the i2telligence and knowledge of employees can ePe Put into action for the benefit of both rr;PloYee and organisation. fore says that it is not merely profit sharing, or aprogramme for the appointment of public consumer representatives as company '4"e tors. It is not trade unionism, because he says „ u_. nions are necessary institutions, but they is `nnot instruments of industrial democracy. It eveot simply permissive environment in which a-,e120rYrhoenre does as he pleases. It is not just 'management trick' to induce Win,P,I0Yees to give more to the company, to 'rK harder and to complain less. It is not *jP° Power David Jenkins (Heinnem an £3.75)
simply a matter of everyone being nice to one another. It is not a ready-made system that can be installed in a company on order, like a new time clock or machine tool. It is not merely a re-arrangement . of tasks to make jobs more interesting. It is about the transference of power to employees in a business enterprise.
Work is by far the dominant activity in rnbst people's lives, and it would be surprising if it did not have a profound influence on one's entire existence. Work is a means to an end. As one British factory worker said to Jenkins "Nothing is gained from the work itself; it has nothing to offer. People who speak grandiosely of the meaning of work should spend a year or two in a factory."
This attitude is echoed by the worker in the Soviet Union, as a collection of essays by Soviet work experts shows. They said the employment of one's intellectual facilities in the course of work, regardless of vocational distinctions, was sure to be the prime incentive for the young workers interviewed, The Soviet authors of this essay say that so influential is this factor that the main target in the education of young workers should be to give greater play to the workers' initiative. Nevertheless, nowhere is there any indication that this type of work is any more common in the Soviet Union than in any other countries, nor that less inspiring types of work have been eliminated there. This attitude towards work is not just taken by the blue collared worker. A survey made by the University of Michigan for the USA Department of Labour showed that 13 per cent of white collared workers expressed negative attitudes towards work, which is not a good deal under the 17 per cent figure for blue collared workers. The American Management Association produced a report on 'Management Discon tent,' which showed "an increasing condition of alienation" among the executives, and that three out of four manager who were inter viewed believed that the situation was getting worse. It would appear that the reasons are identical with those behind the discontent of the blue-collared worker and that it is a decreasing sense of personal reward and personal achievement arising from the highly bureaucratic and authoritarian structures of the modern corporation. So it would appear that as industrialisation has advanced through the last century and a half, what was in the earliest days a matter of interest to the worker — the exercising of his special skills and crafts — has now become a soulless machine operation in which there is really no satisfaction in the work itself, and in many modern assembly plants the work is boring in the extreme. It is not surprising that the worker on the shop floor in a mass assembly unit should find the sameness of his task so frustrating. What is more surprising is that as a result of highly centralised organisations even the administrator is finding that he, too, is getting little satisfaction out of his job.
But how are we going to put all this right? I was more than interested in the story of the Histadrut in Israel. Surely here they had found a solution to the problem of worker-management participation? They had everything in their favour for such a solution. Histadrut is the great central trade union organisation of Israel. It happens also to own a vast variety of enterprises. They had all around them the experience of the Kibbutz principles of democratic management. The share of the Histadrut in its manufacturing and trade organisations is very substantial. It represents something like 20 per cent of Israel's gross national product. So here was a perfect setting; it would seem to provide worker-management participation that would work; the workers own their own organisation. Through their own organisation they had all the influence in the rest of industry in Israel. They had as a young country learned to live together and work together in the face of gigantic odds. This surely must represent the most fertile ground on which the seed of worker-management relations could fructify.
In 1966 the Histadrut had its tenth national convention, and it was decided at this convention to arrange within a fixed period for the workers to participate in the management of the Histadrut undertakings as well as to share in their profits and the responsibility for achieving them.
But none of these new management bodies, says Jenkins, works. It was decided initially, and on an experimental basis, to take about a dozen companies where management labour bodies were set up. It was centrally decided by Histadrut on the matters they were to deal with, the frequency of their meetings and their composition. The plan called for the establishment of joint managements in the companies with a body consisting of top executives of the company involved, representative of Histadrut, appointed by Histadrut, and workers elected by the workers. Meetings of the joint management were to be held regularly and it was supposed to make decisions, though the areas in which it could operate were vaguely defined. The results have been mixed, but Professor J. Tabb, a Professor of Industrial Relations at Haifa Technical University said — -despite twelve years of intentions, declarations and decisions, workers' participation in management has still not been introduced in all Histadrut undertakings, and in the few undertakings where joint managements have been established it is doubtful whether they will last and succeed."
To sum up this experiment, by the trade union owned companies, we turn to Professor Arye Globerson, who is at the University of Tel Aviv. and he said "the fact that Histadrut did not show spectacular results in participation in
their own companies prevented the unions from pressing private industry. As they did not show good results, there is no pressure on private managements." It was of course the original intention of Histadrut to push. democratic management in privately owned companies as well as their own enterprises. Their own experiment, however, has been singularly unsuccessful. In Israel the most successful example of worker-management co-operation is in the Kibbutz, which in fact is a commune and very different from business enterprise which is responsible for manufacture and selling in a very highly competitive market. The story of the Histadrut is one that needs to be studied by all those who are trying to take an objective view of the whole of this workermanagement involvement situation. If where the workers actually own their common companies it has not been possible to make a success of worker-management involvement and co-operation, then what hope is there in other circumstances?
It may be of course that in Britain joint management is not quite the objective that is sought. Certainly in the Fabian tract, to which I previously referred, they say that their proposal is to employ directors as representatives, parity representation and election through trade union machinery designed to extend collective bargaining into the boardroom. The only difference from normal bargaining lies in the fact that employed Directors will be putting forward the employee side of the argument in a wider context and will be concerned with a high level of decision making. The TUC expressed broadly the same view. Their report suggested that half of the members of the boards of companies employing more than two thousand people should be elected through the unions. But they rejected the idea of appointing worker directors in an individual sense and any vague notion of employee representation of works councils. The TUC said it would be important to ensure that trade union representations in . a particular enterprise should not become too centred on that company's affairs. They would need to keep in the picture their relationship with their fellow members in the union. The British trade union movement now is denying the right of workers who are not organised to participate in the management of their companies, and where they are organised they are saying that they must be responsible for the appointment of directors of companies and that the main function of these directors is really to continue their trade union organisation and philosophy inside the boardroom. This is very different from the early days when there was a feeling that worker-management involvement, even at boardroom level, was designed to ensure the greater efficiency of the organisation, and to provide that the interests of the workers should receive the same consideration as the shareholders of the company. It is very clear to me that a great deal of additional thinking will have to take place before this problem of worker-management co-operation is finally solved. There can be no question that the objectives of management and of workers can in many cases be completely different, and it is no more possible to run a business with two objectives than to row a boat in two directions at the same time.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to have an experiment, and if this were so then it seems to me that the coal mining industry would be a most suitable candidate. Here with the work groups being in smaller numbers at various places, of activity, it would not be difficult to bring into operation a worker-management system, and one could then see in an industry which has had more than its share of trouble, both technical and industrial, whether real worker-management co-operation on an equal basis would be the remedy for the problems. At least the experience of the Histadrut would seem to show that to go blindly ahead with legislation will be a colossal blunder. Some experimentation is essential, because if one is trying to be objective, and seeking the right pattern for worker-management co-operation, then it is essential to have experimentation before firm political decisions are made. Job Power deals with experiments in this field in Yugoslavia, West Germany, France, USA, Britain and Scandinavia. So there is much for the enquiring reader to discover. Everyone who has an interest in these matters, and I personally regard it as a most important aspect of our industrial life, will need to read this book, for the information that it contains in relation to what has already been accomplished, and particularly where there have been disappointing failures. It is on the basis of trial and error that we shall eventually get the right solution. What is abundantly clear, however, after reading this book by David Jenkins, is that the present approach in Britain based upon blind legislation about putting the whole of the authority into the hands of the trade union movement, which represents only a proportion, less than a half of the total workers who are gainfully employed, is certainly not the way to bring an industrial nation like Britain to the peak of economic perfection. No progressive management and no progressive trade union official ought to lake a dogmatic attitude about this question of worker-management involvement. We must patiently work together to find out what is the best way of dealing with it. But, first, we shall need to agree on objectives. If the trade union movement view is that it is an extension of collective bargaining, then that is one thing. If the management view, as certainly mine is, is te bring about a situation in which we can produce far more wealth from our resources so that we can allocate much larger slices of cake on the basis of equality and fairness, then that is another. The danger that faces any country that moves into this field without careful thought is very apparent from reading this book. I commend it to management and to trade unionists as a book that can give them the background upon which they can make much better decisions than they will without it.
Lord Roberts of Woldingham, Chairman of the National Coal Board from 1961 to 1971, is not's' Chairman of Vickers Limited.
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