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CONSERVATIVE UNIONS
As the TUC points out in its report:
'The traditional British trade union attitude to schemes for 'participation' in management of private industry has been one of opposition. If has been considered that the basic conflict of interest between the workers and the owners of capital and their agents prevents any meaningful participation in management decisions. The reasoning behind this opposition has varied from the claim that the trade unions job is simply to negotiate terms and conditions and not to usurp the function of management, to the proposition that trade unions should not be collaborationists in a system of industrial power and private wealth of which they disapprove ...'
Change has been a long time coming, In 1944 the TUC's attitude to worker representation on the boards of nationalised industries was purely negative:
'It does not seem by any means certain that it would be in the best interests of the work people of a nationalised industry to have, as directly representative of them, members of the controlling board who would be committed to its joint decisions ... trade unions should maintain their complete independence.'
The 1953 Interim Report on Public Ownership went on to say:
'Joint, consultative machinery is essentially advisory as distinct from executive in its scope ... this limitation which is inherent in the policy of congress must be recognised and accepted, and joint consultative machinery must not be expected to give executive power to workers representatives.'
By 1966 the TUC had reassessed its position. In its evidence to the Donovan Commission it said :
'The experience of the last twenty years at home has stimulated new thinking on all aspects of industrial organisation and there has also been the experience of a whole variety of developments abroad. A new approach to industrial democracy in the nationalised industries can now be based on the experience of running these industries. There is now a growing recognition that at least in industries under public ownership provision should be made at each level in the management structure for trade union representatives of the work people employed in these industries to participate in the formulation of policy and in the day to day operation of these industries '
A 1970 Congress resolution called on the government to introduce legislation providing for trade union representatives on the management boards of all nationalised industries. In 1974 Congress adopted the Report on Industrial Democracy which advocates legislation in both the public and private sectors to allow for 50% worker representation on the boards. Now the government has set up the Bullock Commission which is charged to report within terms of reference dictated by the TUC.
The problem is that the change reflected in this line of development has not taken place within the body of the trade union movement on the basis of a vigorous and wide-ranging discussion. It has taken place purely and simply in the heads of some progressives on the General Council (Jones, Murray and Lea) who manoeuvred skilfully to carry their more pliant brethren along with them. It is, consequently, hardly surprising that the TUC's present line has not been fully endorsed by all its members.
At the 1974 Congress the General and Municipal Workers Union and the Electrical Electronic Telecommunication and Plumbing Union, in alliance with the Communist Party of Great Britain, opposed the report on industrial democracy and introduced the following resolution, which was adopted :
'Congress reaffirms that the overriding role of the unions is the advancement of the interests of their members. It therefore requires that any extension of trade union participation in industrial management shall be, and be seen to be, an extension of collective bargaining and shall in no sense compromise the unions' role as here defined.
'Recognising that the best way to strengthen industrial democracy is to strengthen and extend the area of collective bargaining giving union representatives increasing control over elements of management including dismissals, [rat?]ionalisatian etc. Congress rejects the mandatory imposition of Supervisory Boards with worker directors, and calls for a more flexible approach giving statutory backing to the right to negotiate on these major issues, but relating the control more directly to collective bargaining machinery.'
More recently the TUC has attempted to dissuade the dissident unions from putting their own, contradictory, evidence to the Committee of Inquiry by stressing that legislation to allow 50% worker participation should only be put into operation with the approval of the unions concerned.
Again, following the 1974 Congress, the GMWU and EETPU opposed the TUC's evidence to the Plowden Committee arguing that
'a trade unions' duty to represent its members' interests, including those of members employed outside the electricity supply industry, could not be reconciled with even a share in responsibility for managing the industry' (Plowden report on the Structure of the Electricity Supply Industry in England and Wales. 1976)
When after the Plowden Committee's Report, the Secretary of State for Energy, Mr Anthony Wedgwood Benn, told the TGWU Executive that it was:
'essential that those who work in the energy industries should have a full opportunity to contribute to the development of policy' (Financial Times 4.3.76)
the GMWU and EETPU, along with NALGO and the EPEA wrote to him endorsing Plowden's recommendations (which ruled out the development of any real form of industrial democracy) and rejecting any system of industrial democracy involving worker directors.
The attitude adopted by these unions is one of straightforward conservatism. They are refusing to recognise that the situation in British industry has changed drastically and requires fresh organisational and tactical responses from trade unions. Workers can no longer leave management to get on with the job and expect automatic increases in their standard of living as management by some god-given reflex manages efficiently and well. The plain fact is that management is incapable of managing. The employers 'right' to manage as they see fit is not only not sacred in practice, it is non-existent. There is no such thing as a right that is not, and cannot be, exercised.
Basnett and Chapple may well feel comfortable and secure confronting the employers as always across the negotiating table. Their members will no doubt feel somewhat less secure confronting them from the dole queue, which, unless their leaders wake up to the realities of post-imperial Britain, is where they'll be.
A trade union's duty to its members goes far beyond simply representing them in negotiations. To be effective in this day and age unions must involve themselves, on behalf of their members, in running industry efficiently and profitably. Productivity and efficiency are not matters for negotiation and compromise. In such areas it is a simple matter of telling management what to do and forcing it to do the job properly. Here there can be no substitute for workers in the board room to monitor progress and report developments to the shop floor.
The Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers has also taken a stand against the TUC's proposals but its case is more substantial than the simple minded, anti-working class conservatism of the leadership of the GMWU and EETPU.
In the first place the AUEW is in favour of worker-representation on the boards of nationalised industries. Its objections apply to the extension of the TUC's proposals to the private sector where according to Hugh Scanlon, it is
'management's right to manage' (Financial Times 18.2.76)
The AUEW's opposition is based on a fear that workers on the boards of private companies will 'collaborate' with employers to do down their fellow workers; that they would at the very least become enmeshed in managements machiavellian schemes to wring the last drop of sweat out of an unwilling workforce.
This attitude is not at all realistic. It is not after all as though the TUC were advocating that existing trade union machinery should be dismantled. In the unlikely event of workers' representatives deserting to the enemy the workers themselves will still have the ability, lessened not one whit by participation in management, to down tools, go slow, ban overtime etc. Unless the working class en masse deserts Hugh Scanlon and Ernie Roberts and goes over to the employers there is little danger of 'collaboration' amounting to anything worth worrying about.
There is no longer any objective need to keep the roles of management and unions separate and clearly defined. That was the case when the working class was weak but now that it is the employers who are on the defensive it is in the workers interest to let such distinctions blur and take on for themselves the functions and prerogatives of management. In this new situation advocating that management should be left in sole charge of policy making is tantamount to treason; giving aid and comfort to a beleaguered and almost helpless enemy.
It is high time that the immense strength of the workers, built up through and based on the development of collective bargaining, was used positively in the struggle for power. That that struggle involves in its initial phase a formal sharing of responsibility with capitalism is unavoidable. If the working class is to safeguard its living standards, let alone strengthen its economic and political base, it must immediately invade the board room There is no way round that simple fact. Parity of representation on the boards of both private and public industries is an opportunity to be seized and used not a danger to be avoided