Mr. Brown's Wages Bill

By CLIVE JENKINS

MR. GEORGE BROWN'S 'Early Warning' Bill resembles nothing so much as General Franco's cosy domestic arrangements for manag- ing his unruly workers. Has the Prime Minister now cut its throat by announcing the Dissolution, or is it just stage-blood?

One thing is fixed and certain : the Bill is a recipe for the destruction of the Labour party- trade union alliance, and perhaps of the party it- self. It places a hazard before every person asking for any improvement in any condition of em- ployment—and threatens him with sanctions. This is not an economic reform: it makes every citizen (not just union officers or members) into a potential transgressor. And it transforms the First Secretary of State into a virtually un- checked — and uncheckable — Obersturmbann- fiihrer over all British workers. Perhaps this view is mistaken; perhaps the Bill was (as some MPs think) a medium-sized bluff which only suc- ceeded in intimidating the almost-always-wrong and easily-startled majority on the General Council of the TUC. Their views, however, are not so weighty alongside the fact that the Bill would have been bitterly opposed by trade union action within the big bargaining machines—as well as on the factory floor. A significant number of Labour MPs (not all on the back benches) would also have declined to go through the 'Aye'

• lobbies for it.

This could have been even more embarrassing than it sounds. A Tory industrial relations specialist put it to me this way: 'Why should we then support the Government at that moment? We might just sit on our hands and let the Government rump carry it against its own left wing. They would then be fixing wages—not us. Our options would all be open.'

The puzzling point is this: why was the Bill published at all—and a good ten days after the Queen had been advised to dissolve Parliament? For it is bound to damage morale amongst the Labour party's door-knocking activists. Can this be made up by a television confrontation with the lumpen voter? It is hard to believe that the trade unionist or his wife is really anti-union. After all, most British union members are not in closed shops; they voluntarily pay their money over every week to collectors they have elected. Is it the electoral calculation that they have no- where else to go? Or, as is much more likely, was a pledge made to those bankers (and their governments) who provided support for sterling at a time when blocks of tens of millions were being unloaded? Did George Brown have to have his Bill published to make real all the threats made to the General Council?

Unfortunately, the TUC discussions in public have been incredibly under-informed : at the special conference of executive committees and Congress itself the analysis made by Mr. George Woodcock set new standards for irrelevancy. The debates ranged around exports, prices and wages, and the 3.5 per cent norm—as if the ex- port of capital, the maintenance of sterling as a reserve currency, and an outdated, over- stretched imperial strategy, were questions that had nothing to do with personal incomes. The TUC General Council must have reached the

Clive Jenkins is general secretary of the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives, and Technicians.

nadir of its influence in the union world as a result of its humiliating capitulations, capped by the astonishing meeting at which the General Council assented to proposed legislation—the whole of which it had not seen—and which now turns out to be monstrously dictatorial.

For the unions, the sharp edge of the matter is in these words: 'The Secretary of State may refer to the Board any question relating to wages, salaries or other forms of incomes . . .' and 'any question . . . relating to any pay claims or other claims relating to terms and conditions of employment, or any awards and settlements relating to terms and conditions of employment': and (to give him a chance to do it), 'Both the trade union or other person by whom the claim is presented, and the employers or employers' organisations to whom the claim is presented, shall be responsible for ensuring that notice of its presentation, with particulars of the claim, is duly given to the appropriate Minister within a period of seven days . . . and, a person who fails to comply . . . shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds.'

The sheer arrogant, all-embracing fatuousness of this takes one's breath away. Does the com- munity realise that what is caught up in this legal net is pay claims, pensions, shift premiums, hours of work, all extra allowances, holidays, sick pay, equal pay for women, productivity deals, annual increments, payment by results, more pay on pro- motion, reeradings, differentials, overtime, sub- sistence allowances and, conceivably, emolu- ments such as protective clothing? Even the respectably large £334,000 estimated to be the cost of the National Board for Prices and In- comes in a full year could not stretch even to the preliminary sampling of this potential Niagara of data. So what will happen? Will only the claims for large numbers be tackled? That would be manifestly discriminatory and danger- ous. For those with big numbers are likely to bite back—and hard.

This Bill is not an early warning exercise. It is a plan to control wages and benefits-- while letting the dividend-receiver off. It is doomed to failure—but staggeringly impudent to the British democratic tradition. It saddens me to see that two of its sponsors should also have assured me that they would never be members

• of a government which sought to set wage and salary levels. What the hell do they think this is? For Clause 12 requires notification within seven days of awards and settlements (including, one presumes. unilateral acts by an employer) to the Secretary of State by an employer on pain of a penalty of fifty pounds on summary convic- tion. Once this notice has been given, the deal cannot be implemented for thirty days (unless the Secretary of States decides otherwise). But this is not the end. If Mr. Brown does refer the matter to the Board, it cannot be imple- mented until the publication of the Board's report. This means a deduction (in terms of back pay) from most deals. What justification is there for this?

And if an angry citizen kicks over the traces (or even threatens to) during the period in which the implementation of an agreement is forbidden, he can be fined up to one hundred pounds on summary conviction or, on indict- ment, up to five hundred pounds. There is no precedent for this interference in free collective bargaining in any other country with a com- parable social or industrial relations system. I won't mince words: it is a tyrannical intrusion.

There are other unsavoury and absolute powers ceded to Mr. Brown. Not only can he pay his Board what he likes, without any check, but he can censor its reports—while they on their part can require a witness to be summoned before them and 'be examined on oath.' He can consult with organisations and bodies 'as he thinks fit,' and generally has a roving right to strike where he will. Should any Minister have these powers in a mixed economy? Specificall■. should Mr. Brown have them?

Wealth is unequally shared in Britain, and if the unions, imperfect though they are, are hobbled in their task of attempting a redistribu- tion there will be an explosion. This Bill deserves to be dropped with blushes. It should not be in Labour's manifesto. If reintroduced in a new Parliament. it should be flouted.