WELFARE STATE
White collar agitation
Jim Daly
Dependent upon our personal feelings and attitudes, we may conjure the vision of White Collar people as The Ideal Wimpey Family — with aspirations for 2.5 children, a through-lounge house, a Granada:or Avenger car and reasonable life insurance based on a securely employed husband.
Seen from another angle we may regard White Collar Man as steady and reliable — prone to side with management — to identify with the top rather than the mass. Loyalty and faithfulness is his return for the enjoyment of staff privileges. Insofar as it is possible to put this objectively White Collar Man does not think of himself as a worker but believes himself to be an indispensable partner in his company — often summed up in white collar vernacular: "Who are you with?" "Oh, I'm with Whitney's — have been for thirty years."
There is another view of White Collar Man in modern society which sees him in a quite different light. Minimised and oppressed by the dominance of his firm's pension fund — he is hounded by insecurity as the development of office technology diminishes his status and without mercy closes his exits. Even his daily newspaper is a threat, heralding the takeover and the message of redundancy as the new management buys its way into control.
Confined within the suffocating restraints of what C. Wright Mills called the Tight White Collar, the'first reaction is one of bitter frustration and resentment. This leads eventually to aggression. But the attack is not necessarily upon management. The wrath is directed against manual or non-staff employees and their unions. In those posters produced by an advertising agency for Clive Jenkins — "I should have picked up a shovel not a pen," there is latent condemnation of the car workers and dustmen. Precisely because of the ethics which have been instilled over generations they consider it fundamentally wrong to strike. Yet they see around them others who appear to benefit from such action. They are torn between the idea of resolving the problem by stopping the others joining in theundignified free-for-all themselves.
It is significant that the balance is now swinging in favour of a free-for-all. The old moral restraints are being cast aside and Mr White Collar is taking action at last. Furthermore, the lead has been given by the most staid groups — airline pilots, teachers and civil servants. All have a tradition of unionism and joint consultation and this marks them out from white collar workers in manufacturing industry and commerce — so organisationally they are well placed for collective action. They have not done so in the past because their ethic was professional and their organisation geared accordingly. For example, the National Union of Teachers is dominated by a complex of committees, many of which are seriously concerned with basic educational matters, as much as a participative instrument as a defensive or aggressive machine. It took 100 years for the NUT to go to war. When it finally did so in 1970, victory was achieved. The teachers may like the spoils and expand their targets.
More importantly its sister organisations in the public sector will not fail to learn from the teachers' experience. Great changes may well then come about in the industrial relations scene — it is not generally appreciated that the established white collar unions in the public sector are much better endowed, financially, administratively and in proportion of membership, than in the manual fields.
The pressures are likely to be put on throughout the public sector and will by no means be confined to salaries. Conditions of service, environment, facilities, continued training and education, a greater measure of responsibility and, self-government will be demanded and I believe conceded in due course. This will open the way for similar demands in the private sector as we can observe in Sweden today. There the trade union federation has influenced the governing Social Democratic Party to make the working environment an issue for the next general election. Once having attained the whiff of victory white collar unions will not be slow to learn. Even as early as 1963 the NUT realised that original research can be a mighty force in fanning public opinion on such issues as environment and facilities.
The NUT surveyed conditions in 30,000 schools and, for the first time ever assembled the facts about the state of buildings in which children were being educated and their members were working. The stories about the exact number of classes held in corridors, the lack of gymnasiums, the awful sanitation, poor libraries and outdated equipment and furniture took on a new significance when published to the world. Parents were worried. Politicians reacted and government acted. There is plenty of scope for other groups to obtain consumer or public reaction by drawing attention to defects in the system.
Nurses are a good example. Their organisation — the Royal College of Nursing — may like in future to review the conditions of their members and research them fully. Having obtained their evidence they will have to decide how to use it. The National Health. Service is one of the three biggest investors and largest employers in the UK. There is a crisis in hospital management. Nurses can play a much greater role in managing the service, although there is a feeling among some that to expose administrative shortcomings will damage their image. When the schools survey was concluded some teachers were afraid to talk about the defects of their schools in case they should be blamed in some way.
Certainly it may be a factor in the low prestige of teachers that so often they work in relatively primitive conditions. The rubber plant in the hallway, the commissionaire at the glass-plated entrance, and Miss Marshbanks all-welcoming at her teak reception desk is a far cry from the morning grunt of the school caretaker or the hospital porter in his nineteenth century lobby. As an urgent priority, white collar workers in the public sector will press for improvements in working conditions and this will mean heavy capital expenditure on new buildings, properly planned and functional in use. In turn this will give rise to demand for representation — on, if not outright control of, the policy-making machinery. Membership of the Boards of Governors, Management Committees, and in industry, Boards of Directors, will be demanded. For if you leave the planning of buildings to those who d,o not have to use them, they will be wrong and inadequate from the word go. And if environmental planning is ger car and reasonable life insurance yesterday's ideals rather than tomorrow's needs will wield too great an influence,
Such involvement in planning Is effective participation in management policy. It is but a short step to even deeper involvement in investment strategy, use of manpower, job specification, remuneration and general conditions of service. Such ad' vances in turn will be noticed by the white collar men of industry, commerce, banking, insurance and services. We cannot solve the white collar workers' crisis of identity inside the pre sent hierarchy of management. New strue" tures must be devised and different concepts accepted. The signs are that unions will force structural change if management fails to recognise the need. Jim Daly is Lecturer in Industrial Relations at the Thames Polytechnic
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