DESCENT INTO WONDERLAND
From Our Industrial Correspondent
INDUSTRIAL relations get curiouser and curi- ouser; and 1959 did not arrest their descent into wonderland. We had a printing strike, which may have been a lock-out, because It started as an overtime ban, with nine unions united, and one apart, but all together after all. We had Lord Birkett, a judge, called in, but as a referee who was not a judge, yet more than a chairman. (In 1960, the Government will surely suggest that the supreme arbiter in all our major industrial disputes should be the United Nations Security Council.) We also had the birth of the TUC inquiry into strikes.
There was a motion at the annual Congress in September from the Engineer Surveyors' Association; they were worried about the activi- ties of some shop-stewards, and said so. In the eyes of their more horny-handed colleagues, this little, off-beat union was 'too bright and good for human nature's daily food'; its motion was despised and eventually rejected; but this did not prevent Sir Thomas Williamson, on behalf of the General Council. from announcing there would be inquiry into strikes, including unofficial
strikes (which occasionally, it might almost be argued, could conceivably have something to do with the activities of some shop-stewards). And the inquiry has now started, to the accompaniment of ominous sounds from Mr. Cousins. His huge union, it seems, would find the task of collecting all the information the committee of inquiry wants too much for its frail resources.
It has been a fallow year for Mr. Cousins. His hour of glory on the hydrogen bomb at the Labour Party conference was untimely snatched away by the Prime Minister's announcement of a general election. The Blackpool inquest was an inadequate second best for him. With no motions and no amendments and no chance to use his block vote, Mr. Cousins succeeded in making himself look more isolated than ever— no easy task with one and a quarter million members at your back.
Mr. Bill Paynter, a nice, human Communist from South Wales, became secretary of the mine- workers in place of Mr. Arthur Horner, a nice, human Communist from South Wales. In the New Year, there is every prospect that Mr. Alwyn Machen, an unorthodox non-Communist from Yorkshire, will become president in place of Mr. Ernest Jones, an orthodox non-Communist from Yorkshire. Otherwise, the senior leadership of the unions remains unchanged—a fairly uniform grey. There seems no hope of a return to the roaring Forties of Mr. Arthur Deakin, unless the two rising hopefuls, Mr. Alan Birch and Mr. Sidney Greene, receive an access of strength— or Mr. Cousins has a sudden flowering of wisdom.
The strikes inquiry is important, but probably not the most important happening of the year. This was the stability of the cost-of-living index and the switching of the wages cycle into its lowest gear. With these, of course, must be asso- ciated the Labour defeat in the election. October 8 may be even more of a watershed for the unions than for the Labour Party. Before dawn broke over Transport and Congress Houses on October 9, we saw the new idea poking its snout out of the electoral dust : It All Depends On Us, Now. Not since before the war have the unions felt so strongly that the burden of looking after their members rests on their shoulders alone. Previously, so much could be shrugged off for prospective political action. With a Labour Government swept away for—presumably—at least five years, the new thinking is beginning.
Wages and prices and hours: these are the themes. The unions have been strangely slow to hear about prices, except as a sort of built-in motor convenient for keeping the cost-of-living index (and therefore wage rates) moving steadily upwards. Now someone has confided to them that prices are things you pay in shops, and that 'they can come down as well as go up, which helps trade unionists' wives. We may hear a lot about prices in the New Year.
In fact, it seems just possible that it is now the turn of the proprietorial side of industry to have its bottom kicked by the public. By Christmas, 1960, Mr. Peter Sellers may be making us all laugh with his portrayal of a silly, rigid shopkeeper, instead of a silly, rigid shop-steward. It would be interesting to see what happened if the TUC, finding itself settled in a Conserva- tive economy, decided to make it live up to its pretentions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would have won a powerful ally in his campaign to arouse the shopping public to its rights. Already Mr. Cousins, who is not a stupid man, has spoken up about prices; others will follow.
The campaign for the 40-hour week con- tinues, interrupted neither by Christmas nor mid- summer, seedtime nor harvest. It is coming by instalments: the Ford men have got 414; the chemical workers, 42; and ,the engineers have been offered 424, but will get better yet, in spite of the gloomy mouthings of Mr. McCarty, the director of the Engineering Employers' Federa- tion. Someone has told the nationalised elec- tricity industry that, with Lord Mills (ne Sir Percy and once a doughty fighter against en- gineering claims) gone from the Ministry of Power to higher service, it is now possible to act wiih some show of independence and not be shrivelled to a blackened heap of dust by the wrath of private employers. They have dared to concede the 42-hour week before the engineers.
The 40-hour week is coming yet, for all that overtime which makes it a mockery to the workers concerned and gives their employers a good reason for considering it a concealed wage increase. Who knows, some Government some
year may redeem the election oaths of earnestn about the distribution of industry. In that hap RC dawn, employers in the Midlands and along Great West Road out of London may not stealing the workers from each other's factor' with promises of 'ample overtime available.' T would open the way to a more leisured societ and possibly even to a more sensible wag structure.
In the meantime, we must be satisfied, in dying weeks of the year, with the appearan of a new symbol of the affluent society--- Government's Bill to permit payment of wag by cheque. It is symbolic, too, that Mr. Hea the new Minister of Labour, is not really su whether many workmen or employers will u his new law; in Scotland, where the conjuncti, of the law and the banking system have pr duced a different effect, the facilities for pay' wages by cheque already exist, but seem to very little used. Nothing will change too quickl, for that is not the way in British industry.
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