BRITAIN SETS AN EXAMPLE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20500, 30 August 1928, Page 2

BRITAIN SETS AN EXAMPLE.

A VITAL INDUSTRIAL CONFERENCE.

Special to the Otago Daily Times,

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 promises to yield such a tremendous success is of vital imterest to every member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. We refer, of course, to the conference between a representative group of employers and the General Council of the Trades Union Congress, usually 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. 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 1926 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, ’tills is proved not only by the speeches of prominent employers and trade union leaders, but by actual experience in tho works and factories themselves.

It was to reap the full benefits of this new spirit that Sir Alfred Mond, now Lord Melchett, took the courageous step of inviting a group of representative employers and the Council or 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 instil them into the ranks of industry, but the intelligent men i 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 Ihe conference is “ Tho Conference on Industrial Reorganisation and Industrial Relations.” Tho whole field of modern industry is its province. Its importance is further emphasised by tho fact that over £1,000,000,000 of capital and over 4,000,000 workers are represented at the joint sittings. We are now in a position to understand how epoch-making are thp 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 ©ra. In any case it will stand permanently as a guide and precedent for ail 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-rate moment because the council will be the legitimate child born within industry itself, and not the bastard offspring of political interference.

From the idea of this council comes the second important resolution dealing with conciliation machinery in case of disputes. This machinery will take the Form of Join Conciliation Boards on a totally voluntary basis. Tile advantage of these boards is that they will enable the dispute to bo thoroughly and impartially discussed before any appeal is made to force in the shape of strike or lockout. Above all they will tend to make public opinion the true and natural ■rbifer in such disputes. The question of disputes, however, Is oot the main problem of the conference, ; >ut rather the whole field of industrial

■ ficiency. Other resolutions, therefore, ■ teal with trade union recognition, victim, s'dion, and that scientific trend of modern business which is now known as “ rationalisation,”

A clear lead and an impartial judgment are given on all these questions, and the proposals are the biggest step forward yet made to a solution of these thorny problems. On rationalisation the conference endorses the resolution of the World Economic Conference at Geneva, which aims at securing that manufacturers, workers, and consumers shall all gain the maximum benefit and suffe r 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 scheme is the setting up of the National Industrial Council—a son of Parliament of industry—and the broad basis is the full and authoritative recognition of trade unionism as a helpful factor in modern business organisation. A new machinery is thus created for the whole of 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’ associations. It will constitute permanent 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 long discussion, the' element of compulsion was found neither acceptable nor desirable. Some will think that the most important point of the whole report it that, for the first time, trade unionism is recognised officially and ui'iCategorically 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 sol* and primary aim of the conference, yet we now have the biggest contribution to that ideal v,hich lias been irridc fOr a century. Our friends have cause for gratification and relief, our enemies for regret, de mmciation, 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 wagc-eSrnerS, of strikes and lockouts as effective weapons, are in a State of violent flux and change. Something new is emerging, something

more scientific and yet, at tne 5a..,time, more humane and more democratic. So far, only the broad outline of the new order of things is discernible; the ( details have still to be crystallised out, resolved and made clear. It is the function of th© conference to assist in this process from the amorphus and chaotic to the orderly and definite. It is in fact not an inquest on industrial strife, but an inquiry into industrial co-operation. Such an inquiry involves deep research, information on scores of subjects, the compilation of statistics, and the general scientific organisation of the whole investigation. Consider a few of the points on the agenda of the conference. These include the costs of production, the effects of rationalisation, the general scientific organisation of industry; the exact position and responsibilities of the three partners in industry,—labour, manage, nient, and Capital; labour’s share in the profits and losses of industry, trade union restrictions and the general question of artificial restriction of output, piecework, profit sharing and payment by results; unemployment and the migration and mobility of labour. They include also scores of other questions from foreign competition and world-trade 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 be ratified firmly by tho employers’ associations and by the trade unions in due course. 'l'he signs are that they will. Otherwise, indeed, a wonderful chance for the benefit of all engaged in industry will be missed. The work of tho 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 thi~g, but previously they have suffered from several defects. In the first place they iave 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 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, bo recognised as something in the nature of n revolution, a revolution of science, and not of polities.

The 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 newlyeducated masses of che workers how to take their port in and make fullest use of that education for the strengthening and advancement of notional and Imperial industry. Not merely Britain, but tho whole Empire must hope that this new mission will end in something more than tho eyewash and smoke which the limelit extremists predict.