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EMPLOYERS - A LAST DITCH STAND
Since the failure of the Tripartite talks in 1972/74 the employers have abandoned their previous post-war strategy of compromise and conciliation and have opted to engage in class war to defend their rights and privilege. The Confederation of British Industry's evidence to the Committee of Inquiry represents a determined attempt by the employers to regain the initiative from the TUC. It is essentially a rejection of real industrial democracy onto which a diversionary system of participation and consultation designed to undermine working class power on the shop floor has been grafted.
The CBI has made it clear that it rejects the TUC's perspective absolutely:
'We believe that the CBI should put forward a practical policy of its own and stand by it, rather than attempt to negotiate or compromise on the extreme proposals of others'. (CBI Evidence to the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy)
It condemns the Commission's terms of reference which it rightly claims were dictated by the TUC and recommends that its members should immediately, without waiting for the Commission's report and ignoring its proceedings, negotiate 'participation agreements' with their employees directly without involving trade union machinery. The TUC's proposals are it, quite correctly, says :
'concerned not with genuine participation, but with control'
Industrial democracy, as the bosses see it, is about :
'involvement of the employee in the context and purpose of his job ... promoting understanding'
and making workers
'aware of the reasons for the major decisions which affect them'.
They deny that
'employee representation at board level necessarily has an important role to play in the extension of greater participation'
and reject what they define as the TUC's objective -
'control over major corporate decisions (by) representatives of organised labour.'
Clearly the CBI is reacting against the threat to the basis of its power which is inherent in the TUC's demand for legislation to give effect to parity of representation on the boards of companies, It has the enthusiastic backing of its entire class in its oppositionist strategy.
The Engineering Employers Federation has taken a similar stand against the TUC's proposals. The Industrial Participation Association (whose President, Sir Jack Callard, former chairman of ICI, is a member of the Bullock Commission) also attacks the Inquiry's terms of reference and rejects the suggestion that worker directors should be elected through trade union machinery. It would also limit worker representation to 1/3. Another employers' organisation, The Industrial Society, proposes that the Companies Act should be amended to make it clear that directors have
'a responsibility for the interests of employees as well is shareholders',
and to require annual reports to be made by the boards to a company's employees. At most, they suggest, experimental arrangements should be found whereby workers could endorse the appointment of one or perhaps even two directors. The Steel Industry Management Association likewise rejects union representation on the grounds that:
'... managers must be free to manage.'
They propose that supervisory boards should be made up of four equal parts involving representatives of workers, owners, managers and the social interest.
Big deal all round. The bosses will consider any permutation of participation but the TUC's plan for parity of representation which implies ultimate workers' control.
Nor is this all. The CB1 and EEF's policy of negotiating 'participation agreements' is designed to not only defend but further the employers' interest. Their main aim is to achieve a situation where
'... decision making in industry is with the consent of the employees involved.'
In the CB1 view the justification for industrial democracy is that
'employees today are better educated, better informed and have been encouraged to expect move from their lives.'
It feels that these more mature employees should now be encouraged and given every opportunity of
'... influencing decisions.'
Providing of course that management and unions keep to their respective traditional positions. According to the CBI:
'Bargaining is a proper process for deciding the share of proceeds to be allocated to pay and other employment costs; participation is the means of enlisting employee co-operation in creating the proceeds to be shared.'
Thus it is in the CBI s interest, in furthering its 'management by consent' strategy, to insist on the role of collective bargaining and the trade unions part in that process. It leaves them the option of devising, through participation agreements, ways of bypassing trade union machinery to gain the consent of the workers for their industrial policies.
Such a strategy is ultimately doomed to failure but it should be pointed out that, but for the CPGB and conservative unions' concern for habit and tradition, the possibility of employers using the opportunity for an extension of industrial democracy to involve workers in diversionary participation and consultation machinery would never have arisen.