r,41, Spectator's Notebook Much power do union officers have? A

"j'Ar .i.'great deal — but of a very special kind. ye t'lle accusation that they possess that un...,:rnroelled freedom of action which is so rare ceNr society is basically true. When Michael atant talked to our 1,000 strong Conference edE",.,ui;ehoe last week he said, "I went to the .iesnlitheers, and for the next week the papers Hughie Scanlon was running the country. d'jxt week it will be Clive Jenkins." The helegates fell about. They know that the eged power we exercise is given on very

• °trict terms and total accountability.

hae' tlelt Might be an exaggeration to say a union b gotiator is only rated as good as his last Atre4hr;gain. But it isn't far off the mark. If the • ;°n negotiates 2,500 substantial contracts a II 2`,41the possibility of dissatisfaction can be Oged. How many leaderwriters realise that cr'bn officers are — properly — accountable enti,11 bY clay to their members in a way ,e rearrit of by administrators or legislators? i've looked with great feeling upon the • pr st,ight of other union secretaries being underir Clidably but publicly hammered by impa ej'e j,ellt delegates for the actions of employers — i,,,4rticularly the Heath Government (which '-)r•a"'jloYed virtually all the low paid non e gietiltural workers in the country). . 0,Arnazingly, we didn't have a single motion 10F °Lir agenda about pay. Because of the size ;e siNr bargaining units we have, by and large, , f juPlY carried on, tolerated the growing pile

) .

f arnIng notices and 'freeze orders' and —Auaved as if the Pay Board did not exist. fr,..1 Public sector union general secretary 'end groaned and said, "I've got 400 — all — after the hardest year of my life." ,alsb've set up trust funds, had money put in (,,e„cial accounts and will sue on every broken sh-utract. Why not? The monies are due and 1,°11,1d be paid.

ey"le Midland Bank is an interesting otTaMple. Its managers have an agreement

1:viding for salary increases. These haven't

4,edrt Paid — except in the Channel Islands the Isle of Man where I established under 1966 wage freeze that the legislation does 5 fr`ftrun. But in England and Wales your r frolendly neighbourhood bank manager is jr (r‘zeh. Not for long.

n iuPen politics pWr MI der what Ministers will make of the new e i hesdent of the CBI, Mr Ralph Bateman, airman of Turner Newall since 1967. His tehj 1.,:"Panyseems militantly anti-.Labour. In 1973 Crrier and Newall gave £15,000 to British t.telited Industrialists, £2,000 to the Economic gue and £500 to Aims of Industry. , be,,Ile presidency of the CBI seems to be or,:orning increasingly politicised and overtly , 4P05ed to Labour policies. Everybody in the tjjjrv, by the way, seems to think that Mr 5 Ze eY of Con-Mech was advised by the of °1"lomic League. It would be nice, in this era

,

"Pen politics, to know what options and "rses of action were .suggested to him.

ir squalls Governments have adequate industrial j,tions sensing mechanisms to warn of fl" , b.alls? Obviously, future NIRC action 45a,Mst the TGWU in respect of the General bevl4ti0n Services claim for damages ought to q.,,Watched very carefully indeed (I was and IL4tri unrepentantly in favour of the idea of ""cmt Bill repealing the Industrial Relations

Act even if that temporarily exposed unions to the perils of British common law and fertile judicial invention). Strangely, observers still refer to GAS as a Canadian company. So it is, but isn't it controlled by an American corporation incorporated in easy Delaware? Be that as it may, another problem may be on the way. The TGWU dockers with their union's support in the West India docks have been refusing to handle Californian grapes. Now it is being rumoured that if the shipping lines cannot bring in 2,000 tons from the strikebound grapefarms they will end their contracts with the Port of London authority.

This won't faze the Transport Workers, but why all the fuss over a smallish tonnage? The dockers' union sees it as a clear moral issue: the Mexican-Americans have been bitterly exploited and their union led by Cesar Chavez is their hope for dignified labour and social participation. So why are shippers upset? Are we seeing any more spin-offs from the American establishment's involved arrangements for favours and favouring? The farmworkers' rival (and farmers' friend) is the rival giant Teamsters' Union which supported Richard Nixon and seems still to do. They are contesting Chavez's union. Is there a link here?

Con—Mech Looking back at the Con-Mech affair a disturbing feature was the appallingly low level of research by the media. 13y concentrating on the abrasive personalities involved there was no proper balance sheet analysis. This seems to be a remarkably profitably enterprise. In 1971 there was a trading profit of £146,270 on sales of £599,602. But what has happened since then?

This is difficult to estimate because the firm seems in breach of the law requiring the registration of annual returns. The last accounts, now two years out of date, come from a return filed on September 5, 1972. Since then, nothing. By ignoring the Companies Act of 1948 and 1967 the Company and each individual director are liable to a fine of £5 each for every day the offence continues. On the most generous of estimates each of the directors ancreon-Mech itself could now be fined up to £400, making a grand total of £2,800. I wonder if someone will take some action?

The work of researchers at Companies House is greatly impeded by the large numbers of firms who flout the law in this way. It will be even harder to find what they are up to if the Government adopt the quite insane plan of its predecessor to move it all to Cardiff.

Political memorabilia

Eric Lubbock covets my glass plate with the inscription, "Gladstone for the Million produced to commemorate the Grand Old Man's Midlothian campaign. I can top that with tiles portraying Mr and Mrs Gladstone (now in my loo) facing Mr David Lloyd George. Plus hand-coloured magic-lantern slides of the distinguished couple in domestic bliss and a lithographed tea caddy portraying Gladstone doing everything except that decimation of the English woodlands which was his particular hobby. Eric has a chip of a tree the Prime Minister cut down in 1884 with a small silver axe riveted to it which seems to underline the great election victories of 1880 when Gladstone was nominated in both Leeds and Midlothian and topped the poll in both cases with Herbert (his lad) also elected for Leeds. We both suffer from a narrow and jealous passion for political memorabilia such as byelection jugs, Neville Chamberlain's triumphal plates and saucers produced to celebrate the Munich peace conference and disasters of every other kind. Eric also attempted to inject new china into the tradition by having his own mug produced for his last general election victory. Another seems to have been produced to record Dick Taverne's Lincoln election. But the Liberals still lead the field in pottery. All the potteries of the Five Towns seem to have devoted themselves to an endless congratulation of Liberal leadership. The best the Labour movement has done so far is a lurid plate to mark the release of the Pentonville Five.

Intrusive cassettes

Among more chilling new developments in that festering area between consultants-onthe-make and computer software salesmen is a new technique being pioneered by the executive selection firms. The old procedure was relatively primitive. Customer and headhunter sat together and riffled through the files. Now the potential employee is colour video-taped in a searching interview and twenty-four cassetted copies are made and mailed out.

This seems violently intrusive but I suppose it has advantages. The interviews can be produced and edited precisely,. jerky movements (and wrong answers) eliminated, sallow complexions and blue chins made clear and groomed by pancake make-up. There is also the immense advantage, long employed by politicians in election addresses, of using an earlier lovelier image.

It hasn't much to do with talent and doing a job but it does take packaging to splendid new levels.

Scene of the crime

As part of a plan to develop multinational trade union relationships, I am shortly off to the United States and will be enjoying the hospitality of our Washington Embassy at a reception to meet politicians, labour leaders, and experts in the health field. There has been an odd frisson in the office on discovering that the reception is to be held not 500 miles from Watergate.

Clive Jenkins