Industrial democracy call by writer

Press, 25 August 1988, Page 32

Industrial democracy call by writer

PA Wellington Industrial democracy is the best alternative to the Government’s free-market policies, says a British writer, Hilary Wainwright. “The choice is not between a dynamic market versus an inert and inefficient public sector,” she said. “There are ways of using the public sector to intervene and in effect to take over industry in an innovative and dynamic way.”

Ms Wainwright was the director of the Popular Planning Unit of the

Greater London Council and has recently written books on both the council and the British Labour Party. She also writes for the “Guardian” and the “New Statesman.” She was invited to New Zealand by the Trade Union Education Authority to speak at a seminar on industrial democracy. Workers had an interest in keeping work places going and had the potential to come up with the best ideas to keep industries competitive, Ms Wainwright said.

“Government and workers can develop plans for new products and retraining which lead to competitiveness, but do not involve massive redundancies and social costs,” she said. Many factories were closed as part of a broader corporate strategy while there was still an economic niche for them in the market. Others needed to develop new markets. Ms Wainwright saw the Government’s present free-market policy as being very similar to that

of the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher, in which high levels of unemployment were accepted as an aspect of that policy. She said privatisation of State assets in Britain had led to a decline in the. quality of services available to the general public, though businesses had benefited. For example, the contracting out of cleaning and catering services in public hospitals had caused hygiene scandals. Ms Wainwright said that while the existing New

i Zealand Government was Labour and so had relied . on the support of the 1 unions, it was likely to move further to try to weaken them. The Government was very responsive to the demands of big corporations and one of those demands was going to be to break the minimum national wage and in- ; crease labour flexibility, i she said. [ “I would have thought that is going to be the t next step, however disr guised.”