Tom Gore

trade unions: useful background for trainers

The recent wave of strikes, official and unofficial, in all kinds of economic and public activity, affecting all kinds of persons from children to pensioners, occasioning suffering, misery and harm to the community in general, has caused January 1979 to be called ‘Black January’. Yet ten years ago, in January 1969 a White Paper entitled ‘In Place of Strife’ [Cmnd 3888] was published. The White Paper set out a policy for Industrial Relations. It was the policy of a Labour Government and had been designed in the light of the report of the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers Associations which had been published in June 1968 [Cmnd 3623]. The main recommendations of the Report [called the Donovan Report] were embodied in the proposals for an Industrial Relations Act which is Appendix I in the White Paper. That paper, following Donovan, boldly states in para 2:

Worker participation in Sweden

One of the last actions of the Social Democratic Government in Sweden, before its 44 year rule ended in September 1976, was to place a new industrial law on the statute book. It is called Medbestammandelagen or MBL for short, which gives employees in Sweden — private and public — new rights of participation in decision making. It came into force on January 1st 1977. The recent publication of the Bullock Report, calling for legislation to put trade unionists on company boards affords an opportunity to examine the new Swedish law and to update the situation outlined in my article on this subject in this journal in December 1973.

16 plus education

The reform of 16+ education has been discussed for a decade. Agreement about its future profile has still to be achieved. Yet the urgency of taking a decision about it can hardly be challenged. Any proposed new system will take five to ten years to implement. In the interim the quality of the human resources needed by the UK for the next three decades to contribute to the standard of life and to strengthen democratic and social institutions depends largely on the tertiary system of education. And the present arrangements are unsatisfactory. Objectives and the methods of meeting them are seriously misconceived, muddled and costly.

Trade unions and the social contract

The problem facing the British economy is to curb inflation, reduce the deficit on the balance of payments, now running at £4,000 million a year, raise company profits to improve new capital investment, improve efficiency and productivity and to contain wage demands. The competitive power of British exports in the world will depend to a large extent on labour costs and managerial competence. Labour costs largely depend on the attitudes and actions of the trade unions, and in full employment their power is considerable. It can have far reaching social and economic effects. Their failure in the past two decades to readjust their philosophy, their organisations and institutional arrangements, created in times of mass unemployment, to conditions of full employment is partly the reason for the present state of industrial relations: backward, inward looking and divisive.

Technician education: A progress report

The Technician Education Council has recently issued its first Report and Consultative Document. It is now clearly in business assuming responsibility for the rationalisation of the grand assortment of qualifications which lead to the creation of technicians. Technicians are those whose job responsibilities lie between the technologist and the skilled craftsman. They must have specialist skills and specialist knowledge. But they must know, too, the theory behind the skills and have the capacity to exercise technical judgment. Present day needs of industry suggested to the Haslegrave Committee concerned with the Education and Training of Technicians (1969) that technicians should have a recognised national status and a national award understood by all.

Training for change in local government

Local Government is in the process of dynamic change. In April, May and June 1973 new County Councils, new metropolitan district councils and non metropolitan district councils will be elected. On 1 April 1974 the present local authorities will be liquidated and their functions transferred to the new councils and to the health and water authorities. Currently the central government departments are in consultation with local authorities about the provisions for the constitution of the new authorities and the transfer of staff and properties. Joint Committees have already been formed by constituent authorities to plan for the many changes which will require new management structures, the redeployment of staff, the preparation of detailed stablishment, the determination of training needs, accommodation needs and the recreation of the web of communication that keeps a big complex in good heart.