CONFRONTATIONS AND RESTRAINTS
The public continually finds it difficult to understand, as one wage dispute follows another, and as one set of familiar televised disputants gives way to a new set of unfamiliar ones making, alas, the same kind of noises as their predecessors, why, when such small amounts of cash separate the contesting sides, a deal cannot always swiftly and easily be struck. It is a long time since a union demand for a wage increase was met by an employers' proposal for a decrease : not since well before the last war. High unemployment, now sustained for almost two years of Conservative government and with some of its causes buried within Mr Jenkins's Labour Budgets, has had no noticeable effect on reducing wage demands; and it would be almost unthinkable for any employer nowadays to propose a reduction of rates of pay, even if a shortage of orders might make him suggest reduced earnings by way of diluted working. The pattern of wage negotiations over the past twenty-five years has changed hardly at all : a high initial demand, regarded by one and all as of no serious intent; an outraged rejection, regarded similarly; and then a coming together, often accompanied by threats of strikes and of company bankruptcies and sometimes calling forth dire warnings of inflation from the government of the day. When the cost of going on strike is clearly far more than any cash benefit to be gained, and when the cost of refusing a demand is also clearly far greater than that of paying out, the public is bewildered when agreement is not reached. That bewilderment is not lessened when the Government, having earlier urged the disastrous effect of wage increases beyond its stated norm, finally concedes such increases as employer or subsidier.
The public bewilderment does not, of course, end up as a public attitude. There are those who say "Why on earth does not the union settle for what they are offered?", and there are those who say "Why on earth do not the employers cough up?" Public bewilderment turns into partisan anger. Following the established pattern, at this point the government of the day then asserts its version of he national interest; and when it does, the government is invariably on the side of the employers. This is partly because the government of the day is the largest single employer. But it is also partly because successive governments, whatever their political complexion, have been utterly convinced that it is in the national interest that wage demands be resisted and that wage settlements be kept as low as possible.
There is, as we argued last week, much to be said for keeping governments entirely out of wage negotiations, even when the state is the employer. Governments naturally pursue political advantage, and partisan political considerations are best excluded from delicate and intricate haggling. If some national conciliation machinery is devised, then there may be room for a governmental presence at the side of the employers and the unions; but that presence will be distrusted by employees until such time as governments cease automatically to favour wage restraint. Ever since the gloomy days of Sir Stafford Cripps, wage restraint has been governmental policy. Now, when at last we have a government determined to reduce taxation and to encourage growth in the economy, is not the time approaching to cast aside wage restraint as a sine qua non of governmental economic policy? Until such time arrives, if ever it does, wage bargainings will continue to run the risk of degenerating into confrontations between government and unions and thereby become the cause of public bewilderment and anger, and of national divisions.
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