WAGES WATERSHED
From Our. Industrial Correspondent UrIE by coincidence, polling day has become
something of . a watershed in this year's
industrial wages and hours campaign. The Power station workers, the engineers and the ship- Yard men have submitted their applications for higher wages and a forty-hour week under Mr. Macmillan's first ministry, but they will get their answers under Mr. Macmillan's second—or Mr. Gaitskell's first.
, The coincidence has much more than academic interest. Consider the power workers, who are in one of the most obviously prosperous nationalised Industries, which is why they have been informally Chosen as one of the two prongs of the union attack this year (the .engineers and shipbuilders form the other). Their leaders are clearly ready to argue, if they get a dusty answer from their employers a month or two from now, that it can bear only one interpretation—political inter- ference. This, of course, provides them with yet another reason for helping Mr. Gaitskell in the election. But they are in any case convinced that they have had a raw deal industrially from the Government over the past two years. Many are quite certain that there has been blatant interference in the ordinary processes of collective bargaining in a number of cases. The most obvious was the vetoing by the Minister of Health of a 3 per cent. increase in the salaries of health service clerks. which had been agreed on by the two sides of their Whitley Council. But there was also the advice of Mr. Peter Thorneycroft and Mr. lain Macleod in October, 1957, to all concerned with industrial negotiation, including arbitrators, that they must have regard to the national interest; and the warn- ings that the Government. where it was the employer, would not 'finance inflation' through wage and salary concessions not covered by higher productivity; and the threat to civil servants that their rises, even if they came through arbitration awards, would be met by what the Treasury called 'compensating economies'—i.e., that people would be sacked to find the money for their colleagues' higher salaries.
There was also the strange though clever be- haviour of Mr. Macleod during the London bus strike, when he got his two hats inextricably mixed up (one is the quasi-judicial one he wears as the titular head of the peace-making Ministry of Labour: the other, the steel helmet of a member of the Government, taking part in its second most famous police action—against inflation). And, most curious of all, there was the settlement of the railway wages dispute in the garden at 10 Downing Street. Mr. Sidney Greene had to be shown the Prime Minister's roses before his rail- waymen could be given the news which made them beat their placards into ploughshares.
This account of the Government's deviations on the wages front is, of course, one-sided; but it is unfair only in that it conceals one fact that the trade union leaders prefer not to face. A Govern- ment which is responsible for the economic well- being of the nation, and which is also a major employer of labour, faces a real problem— whether it is Conservative or Labour. As trade unionists have acknowledged themselves this year by their tactical alliance over the order of dif- ferent wage applications, no wage claim is an island; and where—as on the railways—the Government is running an industry which is losing money, any wage increase financed out of a deficit is bound to affect the general wage pattern. For the railways to have a subsidy for a political reason, such as social convenience or defence policy, is one thing; but if they are to get public money to meet wage demands or to get a shorter working week, we are in for a fresh rise in the apoplexy rate among engineering employers.
And there is another problem : what should
the Government do about the two most troubled nationalised industries, coal and the railways? The economic and social welfare of the workers in these industries is considered by the unions as a special case. The Conservative Government's policy has been to leave the whole thing to the free play of the market—'consumer's choice' is the vogue phrase—although it has modified this doctrine on the railways by its blessing on the Modernisation Plan, and by its promises to look at Sir Brian Robertson's latest thoughts on finance and interest charges. But in spite of the appeals of the NUM, the Government has refused to restrict oil imports, and will not fully redeem the pledge which the miners claim they had--that opencast working would be a cushion for their industry, to be stopped when the coal shortage disappeared.
This interlocking puzzle of wages, inflation. deficit financing, and declining-and-rising indus- tries will remain for whichever government we have after October 8. What would Mr. Gaitskell do about it? Although trade union leaders are sure that a Labour Government would be sympathetic about their troubles, tii,e more perceptive are losing any illusions they may have had that those troubles—like the State under Communism-- would wither away.
This is not only as a result of Mr. Gaitskell's discreet warning at the TUC that he will not accept union dictation. More important is the general impression he now leaves of being a man who can dig his heels in. Most important of all is the fact that he has gone into the election without giving any very sizeable hostages to fortune in the way of guarantees to the railway and coal indus- tries. The miners' fuel policy is still not the fuel policy of the TUC or Labour Party. The railway unions have not got the definite promises on C licences which they might like. Mr. Frank Cousins must accept some of the credit, or blame, for this, since he has opposed any sectional interest which might damage his oil workers or lorry drivers.
What the unions would expect from a Labour Government is that it should try to restore the impartiality of arbitration and leave the national- ised industries to do their own negotiating. This seems healthy. but the question remains how one ties a completely free bargaining system to an economy that is State-planned and, in sections, State-owned. It would be simpler if every national- ised industry was paying its way, like electricity. But in cases like the railways and mines, it is less easy to say where politics ends and industry begins.
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