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Mr. ALLEN
National Coal Board
I feel that the mining industry has a particular opportunity - and a special duty to contribute to the debate on industrial democracy. We must give a lead to industry generally - as we have so often done in the past.
However, while we have so much going for us, we have our problems in evolving industrial democracy. It is true that we know each other better than in almost any other industry. But families know each other well and yet manage to have disagreements. If you are going to have a row, then there are few rows worse than family ones. So we have to be careful how we go.
Part of Social Evolution
Industrial democracy is part of the social evolution of our industrial society, and one of those things that everyone believes in. But everyone believes in it in a different way, and I sometimes think that too much has been said and written, and too little effort concentrated on deciding precisely what to do next.
We need to look carefully at what others have done to learn by their successes and to avoid their mistakes. There is no need for us to reinvent the wheel if it has already been invented. So we in the Board and you in the Union, have rightly been looking to see what has already been done on participation in other countries and in other industries.
But when you get down to it, it is extraordinarily difficult to just transplant ideas from one place to another. One reason is that the most important single thing in any effort at participation is the goodwill and enthusiasm of all concerned. You cannot impose participation. You can only get people to participate by getting them to agree. Simply to create an organisational structure without the will to make it work will lead us nowhere.
Little Experimenting
Back home, there has been much discussion of employee participation but relatively little experimenting. There have been a few workers' cooperatives - usually set up when the more traditional organisation failed - and there have been various ideas in the private sector.
The private sector is very different from nationalised industries, however. The current White Paper on the Companies Acts and the proposals for the EEC 4th Directive testify to the acceptance of the view that the Companies Acts cannot go on pretending that the worker does not exist.
If we turn to nationalised industries, we find a great deal of discussion taking place, with each industry tending to seek out its own solutions. The Post Office Corporation experiment will be of great interest to us all. It was designed to start at the top and work downwards.
On the other hand the Steel Industry trials with worker directors have aroused strongly conflicting views of their success .
Starting at Colliery Level
In the mining industry, the JPAC [Joint Policy Advisory Committee. See 'NCB proposals', below] Sub-Committee were determined to start at the colliery level (which is, after all, the place where most of the people in the industry work and most things begin). The Board entirely agree with starting at the colliery, getting the arrangements there right, and then building into a solid colliery basis any changes that are needed at Area and thereafter, nationally.
The face is that, despite all the dramatic initiatives that others (such as British Leyland) are described in the press as having taken, the Board and the unions in our industry still have in my view, the opportunity to make the key contribution to the next stage in the participation debate.
There are many things achieved by the mining industry in the past 20 or 30 years in which we can take great pride. It is my belief that among these things - and not least among them - we can be proud of the way consultation and joint participation has developed.
Cynics
There are cynics who say that consultation in industry means the provision of an opportunity for the Unions to hear what management have decided. I can only say to those cynics that anyone who knows the mining industry could not accept such a premise. The Unions in this industry in recent years, both formally and informally, have played a significant - and forceful - part in determining future strategy. Not only with management but Government also.
Planning
Plan For Coal represents a genuine joint tripartite responsibility.
Also at national level the attitude and policies of the British mining industry towards our colleagues in other mining industries, throughout the world, but particularly in Europe, have been devised jointly. Our participation in the work within the European Community represents a harmonious joint effort.
I hold the view that within our industry the integration of effort in the common cause between the National Coal Board and the National Executive Committees of the industry's unions has already reached a sophistication way ahead of any other industry in this country. I also believe that it is - in real terms - comparable with anything achieved elsewhere.
Only recently, the Government, the Board and the Unions have agreed on a basis for planning agreements. We are the first nationalised industry to introduce planning agreements and of course it is the look forward involved in such agreements which shows up the real alternatives which are open to us.
Consultative Committees
Since their inception Colliery Consultative Committees have done [and are?] still doing sterling work in our industry.
It is at this "grass roots" level where perhaps consultative and participation is most important. It is at the collieries where the wealth of this industry is produced and it is there where the men who produce it must feel involved.
Many at this Conference this morning will say that consultation at colliery level is not as effective as it should be. I would be bound to agree that the effectiveness of consultation varies from pit to pit. In many places it is still a significant factor in the successful operation of the colliery whilst at other places it has tended to become less effective and has perhaps grown a little tired.
We have changed in the past 30 years from making decisions by "TELL" to making decisions by "SELL" through a development of consultation and we move now into an era of joint decision-making .
Collective Bargaining
I was particularly interested in articles by Mr. Heathfield and Mr. Scargill in the recent Miner. Mr. Heathfield was saying that there can be no extension of collective bargaining and also that certain management decisions might be subject to agreement with the NUM.
"Many of us feel that miners have the ability and capacity to play a major role in the running of our industry", he wrote. I agree with much of what he said.
We need to be quite clear at the outset, however, that collective bargaining is one thing and arrangements for joint decision-making another. Collective bargaining is about matters in which the unions' traditional role has been to do the best for their members, and there tend to be necessarily (and quite rightly) arguments between trade unions and management .
Participation & Capitalism
Another contribution in Miner was by Mr. Scargill. He said - and I am paraphrasing a long and complicated set of thoughts - that it was no use seeking participation inside a capitalist society. Part of his argument was, of course, essentially a political one on which you did not invite me here to comment. It is enough for me to say that, in welcoming the nationalisation of our industry at the end of the last war, we did not, in this nation or for that matter within the Coal industry unions, make it a condition of progress that capitalism should disappear .
Nationalisation
Our industry having become nationalised in response to pressures from the trade union movement and its political wing, the Labour Party, it is up to all of us to get involved in rendering it the successful operation it must be. I consider that the real radical in our situation is he who will assist the industry to reach its potential and so ensure to customer, worker, and the nation, maximum returns.
The Board wants the full-hearted commitment of your members to a corporate strategy and they recognise that such a commitment can only come from involvement in the decisions which are part of that strategy.
A fundamental belief, amongst all else, which attached to those who fought long and hard for the nationalisation of our industry was that it would provide for the generation cf a common purpose. Meaningful steps along the route marked Industrial Democracy and Employee Participation are what we require.
Agreement Necessary
Another point - which seems to me quite fundamental - is to appreciate that whatever solution we adopt must be acceptable to all concerned. And all concerned does not mean simply the Board and the NUM - it means all the unions and all their members and it requires the support of the Government too.
We cannot make people want to participate - it is a contradiction in terms. What we can do is to provide a climate in which they will want to participate.
If there are two clear messages which come out of all the previous attempts to improve employee participation they are these - don't expect an Alpine plant to grow in the Fens and don't expect to build a tree - let it grow. In other words, a participation system has to be one which fits its environment and which grows up in it.
NCB Proposal
So the Board's proposal which is set out in a draft Colliery Policy Committee constitution of May 1977 is based on the thinking that it will concentrate on involving people at collieries first, that it will involve some genuine joint decision making on the problems which are really important and on which we can with good will, reach agreement, and that it will build on achieving some limited success, rather than trying to do everything at once.
The decision to start with collieries first was not just the Board's. The Sub-Committee of the Joint Policy Advisory Committee - representing the Board and the unions - agreed to make a start on a new Colliery Committee.
On this basis, there was one clear and important area in which joint decision-making could work.
Management
First of all, let me say that we do not believe that any complex industrial activity - perhaps least of all a colliery - can, in its day-to-day operations be managed by a committee. The functions and responsibilities of day-to-day management - including the onerous statutory responsibilities in our industry - are absolute.
In the joint discussions which have taken place on this subject, this concept has never been in question.
So what we have to consider is what are the policy matters - within which the manager will manage - which shall be for the genuine authority of the Policy Committees.
National Plan for Coal
In this industry it is necessary to have an overall strategy and an overall plan in detail for the years ahead. Within this plan each Area has a contribution to make based on estimates of its production capacity - the markets for its coals and, in turn, the financial contribution it will be expected to make.
In order to fulfil their part in the National plan each Area must in turn have a plan for the years ahead. But that must be an integrated part of the National Plan. The management of an Area cannot, of itself, decide the shape of its activity except that it will achieve part of the National plan. It follows that the resources made available to an Area will be those which best meet the national plan.
Likewise, each Area, to fulfil its plan, must have a plan for the years ahead for each of its collieries. And each colliery's plan must be designed so that it can fulfil its part in the Area, and subsequently, the National plan.
Here again it would not be practicable for the management of a colliery, of itself, to decide the shape of its activity except in so far as it will achieve its part in the Area plan. The resources made available to each colliery, therefore, must in turn be those which will best meet the Area plan.
Input from Below
However, the National plan, the Area plans and in turn the colliery plans which are a constituent part of the whole are not "sent down from above" on tablets of stone.
The National plan is the end product of preparatory work at collieries and Areas. Preparatory work which embraces the views of people at collieries and Areas as to what they think it feasible for them to achieve. And what is regarded as feasible embraces the view of people at colliery and Area levels of the resources etc., which they will require.
In short, the National plan for this industry is the end result of a chain of consideration and decision-making. And the Colliery Policy Committees will be the first link in that chain. Just as the new joint planning Agreements at National level will provide the last link in the chain.
Participation at Colliery Level
The Board's proposal for this first step in achieving employee participation is the creation of colliery policy committees with the authority to approve the Colliery Action plan and with the continuing responsibility to update it and to keep under review the progress made in achieving the plan.
They will be deciding the future plans for the operations of the colliery at which they work. They will not be being consulted after decisions are made by management. They will not be being consulted before decisions are made by management. They will make decisions themselves.
There is one other point on the membership of the Policy Committees and the manner in which they will function which I should mention. The Board's proposals are based on the belief that participation can only succeed on the basis of mutual agreement and a willingness on the part of all the parties to make it work.
Consensus Not Majorities
The Board believe that we can only successfully manage our affairs essentially on the basis of consensus and not on the use of weight of representation and power of the vote.
In our view it is on that basis that the Colliery Policy Committees will most successfully operate. The fear that the involvement of the representatives of the workforce might be inhibited by management is, in my view, unfounded.
In any event, the character and the standing of the unions in this industry are such that any possible obstruction would be removed.