BRITAIN SETS EXAMPLE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVIII, Issue 240, 7 September 1928, Page 10

BRITAIN SETS EXAMPLE

VITAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE.

(By A. E. Tomlinson).

If there is one thing more important to Britons all the world over than Empire unity and development it is industrial peace and co-operation. The experiment, then, which is now being tried out in England and which promises to yield such a tremendous success, is of vital interest to every member ot the British Commonwealth of Nations. AYo refer, of course, to the conference between n representative group of employers and the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, usuallly referred to as the Mond Conference. During the past six months the progress of this conference has been closely watched not only in Britain but throughout the world. It has recently issued its first joint report, a document which has been hailed on all sides as a landmark in British industrial history. CLEARING THE AIR. To understand the vital nature of the report we must first know something of the history of the conference itself. It is idle to deny that during the years following the war there was a spirit of unrest and obstruction in British industry. This culminated in the folly of the general strike and coal dispute of' 192(1 which, disastrous though it proved, had at least the one good effect of clearing the air and opening the way to a better state of affairs. Since then there has been an infinitely better spirit abroad. This is proved not only by the speeches of prominent employers and trade union leaders but by actual experience in the works .and factories themselves. It was to reap the full benefits of this new spirit that Sir Alfred Mond, now Lord Melchett, took the courageoue step of inviting a group of representative employers and the Council of the Trades Union Congress to meet in conference. He did this because there was no single existing organisation of employers which could take the initiative in inviting discussions to cover the entire field of industrial reorganisation and industrial relations. Lord Melchett is head of the great Imperial chemical combine. The conference is not primarily a “peace” conference, as many people think. Much of its initial popularity may have been due to the fond hope that it would by some magic process produce peace and goodwill from nowhere, and instill them into, the ranks of industry, but the intelligent men on both sides who attended the conference did not go there to do spectacular conjuring tricks. They went there to help to formulate a definite policy for the future of British industry. The official title of the conference is “The Conference on Industrial Reorganisation and Industrial Relations.” The whole field of modern industry is its province. Its importance is further emphasised by the fact that over £1,000,000,000 of capital and over 4,000,000 workers are represented at the joint sittings. EPOCH MAKING REPORT. We are now in a position to understand how epoch-making are the provisions of the report issued after six months hard work and hard thought in hammering out and seeking an agreement upon the mutual and pressing problems of industry. They represent in short a scientific attempt to solve problems which have hitherto been left to those joint incompetents, muddle and drift. There is no exaggeration in calling the report an historical document. If accepted and put into operation, as it should and will be, it will represent a new charter for British industry, a new hope and the dawn of a new era. In any case, it will stand permanently as a guide and precedent for all future investigation in the same field. The keystone of the edifice is the proposed setting up of a national industrial council which will hold quarterly meetings and will appoint a standing joint committee for consultation on the widest questions of industry and industrial progress. This proposal is of first-class moment because the council will be the legitimate child born within industry itself and not the illegitimate offspring of political interference. Eroin the idea of this .council comes the second important resolution dealing with conciliation machinery in case of disputes. The machnery will take the form of joint conciliation boards on a totally voluntary basis. The advantage of these boards is that they will enable the dispute to be thoroughly and impartially discussed before any appeal is made to force in the shape of a strike or lock-out. Above all, they will tend to make public opinion the true and natural arbiter in such disputes. The question of disputes, however, is not the main problem of the conference, but rather the whole field of industrial efficiency. Other resolutions, therefore, deal with trade union recognition, victimisation, and that scientific trend of modern business which is now known as “rationalisation.” A clear lead and an impartial judgment is given on all these questions, and the proposals are the biggest step forward yet made to a solution of those thorny problems. On rationalisation tho conference endorses the resolution of the World Economic Conference at Geneva which aims at securing manufacturers; workers and consumers shall all gain the maximum benefit and suffer the minimum disadvantage from the inevitable growth of a more and more highly scientific and highly systematised industry. It requires little imagination to grasp the great importance of this new move in industry. As has been said, the root of the whole is the setting up of the national industrial council —a sort of parliament of industry—and the broad basis is the full and authoritative recognition of trade unionism as a helpful factor in modern organisation. NEW MACHINERY CREATED. A new machinery is thus created for the whole of the British industrial relations. The national industrial council will be equally drawn from the General Council of the Trades Union Congress and from the appropriate employers’ association. It will constitute premanent and direct machinery for continuous investigation into the widest questions concerning industry and industrial progress. The joint conciliation boards will constitute an emergency machinery for dealing specifically with disputes. They will in no way replace or supersede existing machinery, and they are purely voluntary because, after a long discussion, the element of compulsion was found neither acceptable nor desirable. Some will think that the most important point of the whole report is that for the first time trade unionism is recognised officially and uncategorically as an integral and useful part of modern industrial organisation. This means that in the highly scientific, thoroughly “rationalised” industry of the future the trade unions, far from being eliminated or weakened, will have a definite recognised function, and will, by being more systematised, gain an added strength. In this new development Britain has set an example not

merely to every part of the British Commonwealth of Nations but to the whole world. Although industrial peace is not the sole and primary aim of the conference, yet we now have the biggest contribution to that ideal which has been made for a century. Our friends have cause for gratification and relief, our enemies for regret, denunciation and further venom. British industry is undergoing a tremendous process of transition. All the old ideas of fierce competition, of trade wars, of masters as opposed to men, -of owners as opposed to wageearners, of strikes and lock-outs as effective weapons, are in a state ot violent flux and change. Something new- is emerging, something more secientific and yet at tho same time more humane and more democratic. So far, only the broad outline of tho new order of things is discernible ; the details have still to be crystallised out, resolved and made clear. It is the function of the conference to assist in this ’process from the amorphous and chaotic to the orderly and definite. It is in fact not an inquest on industrial strife, but an inquiry into industrial co-operation. DEEP RESEARCH. Such au inquiry involves deep research, information on scores of subjects, tho compilation of statistics, and the general scientific organisation of tho whole investigation. Consider a few of the points on the agenda of the conference. These include the cost of production, the effects of rationalisation, the general scientific -organisation of industry; the exact position and responsibilities of the three partners in industry, labour management and capital; Labour’s share in the profits and losses of industry, trado union restrictions and the general question of artificial restriction of output, piecework, profit-sharing and payment by results; unemployment anil tho migration and mobility of labour. They include, also, scores -of other questions from foreign competition and world wide aspects to such domestic details as housing, pensions and sickness, insurance, and arbitration machinery. , Obviously, the function of the conference is not to dictate but to indicate. It is earnestly to be hoped that its indications will he ratified firmly by the employers’ associations and by tlio trade unions in due course. The signs are that they will. Otherwise, indeed, a wonderful chance for the benefit -of all engaged in industry will be missed. The work of the conference will carry on. The interim report, significant as it is, but touches a few of the many and vital problems still needing solution. National conferences on industry are of course no new tiling, hut previously they have suffered from several defects. In the first place they have been due to Government action and interference, a primary and fatal defect; in the second, they have been too general and airy in scope, avoiding concrete and essential details; in the third, they have been called in times of industrial stress under the direct menace of deadlock and strife, and in the last place they have not sufficiently considered the new' and changed industrial conditions which must, in fact, he recognised as something in the nature of a revolution, a revolution of science and not of politics. Tho whole key to the present conference is knowledge, knowledge of the new scientific organisation of industry. It is in effect an attempt to show' the newdy-educated masses of the workers how to take their part in and make fullest use of that education for the strengthening and advancement of national and imperial industry. Not merely Britain but tho whole Empire must hope that this new mission will end in something more than the eyewash and smoko which the limelit extremists predict.