The Press MONDAY, MAY 7, 1956. Strike Against Automation

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27961, 7 May 1956, Page 12

The Press MONDAY, MAY 7, 1956. Strike Against Automation

The gravity of the strike in, theStandard Motor Company’s works at Coventry • can hardly be , overestimated. This is apparently only the opening engagement in the campaign of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, spurred on by its strong Communist element, to deny British industry, and the British people generally, the benefits .of automation, which will lower production costs and improve quality. Automation will also eventually reduce working hours. “ Certainly “ no-one with the least sense of “ history would either want - or “ expect to arrest a trend that will “ increase the world’s wealth and “ reduce human drudgery ”, wrote Robert Bendiner, an American liberal journalist, recently. “ Where “ the first Industrial Revolution “degraded man to the level of a “machine part, the second should “ liberate him from the machine “completely”. The Amalgamated Engineering Union is showing that it has no sense of history, and that its members have forgotten how vain were the sacrifices by the Luddites 140 years ago. The Standard strike is “ unofficial ”, which means that it is not recognised by officers of the union. It is no more than the logical result of the union’s decision at its conference a few weeks ago that anyone displaced by automation should be kept in his same employment without loss of earnings. Since most of the value of automation is in reducing the amount of labour required for any particular job, the ufiion’s policy is virtually a flat rejection. This would condemn British industry, already hard pressed in its overseas markets, to stand still while its competitors went ahead. The inevitable failure of the union’s policy is poor compensation for the damage to the British standard of living if progress is prevented for long. Employers and the State have a responsibility in making the change to the new methods as easy as possible, and in finding work for displaced factory hands; but they cannot do much without the co-operation of labour. If strike bitterness is . allowed to grow this co-operation will be too long delayed. The attitude of the Communist Party in Britain to automation is cynical. The Communist maxim of “ socialism in one country ” is now apparently to be read in Britain as “ automation in one country “ Russia ”. Russia is already probably ahead of Britain in the application of the new technique and as far advanced in some fields at least as the United States. British Communists’ belief that automation' is all right if it benefits Russia but wrong if it benefits Britain, is tantamount to saying to the British people that, if they are foolish enough to prefer democracy, the Communists will use their key positions in many industries to make democracy fail. Their attitude may remind New Zealanders of the attitude of the secretary of the Canterbury branch of the Carpenters’ Union (Mr F. L. Langley) to wage incentives as an encouragement to efficiency. Wage incentives were good in Russia, according to Mr Langley, but bad in New Zealand, because New Zealanders preferred a different political system.