2 SEPTEMBER 1955, Page 7

PLEASANT THOUGH it is to be able to congratulate BEA

on their profit. I should feel happier about the Corporation's future if its executive would learn how to handle its staff as 'satisfactorily as the staff handle their operations. I understand that the weekend's 'work to rule' incident was a protest not so much at the threat to issue the supervisory staff with over- alls insteads of uniforms, but at the company's apparent failure to allow due weight to the men's point of view, and to keep them informed of the progress of the negotiations on the subject. The men's concern, after all, was understandable. BEA's staff relations (as distinct from union relations) remain poor largely because the executive is out of touch with its employees whom it tends to treat as statistical abstracts rather than as touchy men and women. Wasn't there a belief at one time that nationalisation would promote a new buoyant spirit among the workers, liberated from their capitalist chains? Mr. Peter Masefield has finally dispelled that illusion.