MAKING CAPITALISM WORK AND MOTORS IN MINES DOCKS

SINCE its election in 1964 the Labour government has systematically encouraged the development of every method of exploitation known to the employers.

Further, it has set out to transform these methods from measures used by individual managements to raise output, into major weapons of the government and employers in their political struggle against the entire working class.

The passing of the Prices and Incomes Act in 1966 instituted the wage freeze which held down workers' pay while the cost of living rapidly rose. At the same time, the Act put on a statutory basis the National Board for Prices and Incomes.

This body consisting of employers' representatives, trade union officials, and labour relations professors from the universities was to examine wage claims and to report as to whether or not they were justified.

REJECTED

DEMANDS In each case the PIB rejected the demands for basic increases on the basis:

• That they did not conform to the wage freeze. They did not conform to the ruling of the Prices and Incomes Board that the workers must either accept more exacting work or major changes in working practice before any form of increase could be paid.

The PIB went on to publish reports recommending the introduction of all the most recent methods of exploitation under cover of 'productivity deals' for every industry.

Railmen were to be prepared to overlap jobs and do any work on railway stations; busmen were to drive faster, spend less time at stops and to agree to one-man operation of buses; all craftsmen were to accept an end to demarcation between jobs and the elimination of mates.

Lorry drivers must accept a tachograph meter in the cab: firemen were to be on call for longer periods; factory and power station workers must accept flexibility and mobility; journalists were to undergo job analysis to increase their efficiency.

Nurses were to be paid on an hourly basis, work revised shifts and accept that numbers be made up with part-time labour; university teachers were to accept a payment-byresults system.

In effect, the Labour government has set out to change the work and increase the speed of the job of every worker without exception. In every one of these reports on 'workers' pay' and in every productivity deal that is put into operation a major emphasis is placed on work-study.

WORK-STUDY

MUSHROOM Over the last five-year period this official government backing for these systems has given immense impetus to the mushroom development of workstudy consultancy firms.

National conferences and seminars are held constantly to devise new methods of regulating the worker at work. This is nothing more than the spreading of intensive methods of working into every aspect of work and into every second of the working day.

Whatever claims are made about the new schemes, about their ability to increase wages and to pay 33} per cent bonuses, under capitalism their real aims are :

To lay down the amount of work a worker must do in each minute of the working day.

Times for jobs are worked out to a hundredth of a minute.

Some methods go so far as to include time for eye movement and eye focusing. 2 To fix manning levels-on the basis of the speed-up.

The same work to be done with fewer workers and the labour force can be cut.

3 To prove ('scientifically) the need to install any methods which will help to increase profits —elimination of tea breaks, introduction of shifts or revised shifts, and so on.

4 is often on the basis of work- To bring about closures-it study consultants' reports that managements decide that it is feasible to close entire factories and to rationalize work throughout a firm. ;0AL COAL BALANCE NOT NO COAL JOLE DOL Labour government encourages wage freeze, speed-up, MeasuredDay Work and productivity deals To install Measured - Day Work (MDW)- to the employers it is essential that greater productivity is not reflected in higher wages. In the short term, they hope to get back the early payments used to get the schemes in by savings on labour costs, on cutting out overtime and on use of shift-work. In the long term, Measured-Day Work is their key weapon.

This is a fixed wage completely tied to the worker's ability to keep to the time-and-motion man's standards.

The worker is then paid not according to production, or, of course, to the cost of living, but only to the amount of 'standard minutes or credits' fixed by work-study.

No matter how large the initial payments may be in the early days of a bonus scheme, the employers know they can recover the lot once MDW is fully operative.

6 To complement modernization-as some new machinery computers are introduced, work study is used alongside to ensure the absolute minimum of workers on the job. This can lead to mass sacking of 80 to 90 per cent of the labour force, depending on the level of modernization undertaken.

7 To break the organized strength of the working class — work-study is used to break up militant shops. To eliminate time available for shop meetings, to move out and to move on militant or powerful groups of workers who have led On the recommendations of the Donovan Report the Commission on Industrial Relations was set up. It was to lay the basis for the anti-strike legislation. Included on the Commission were ex-Communist Party member and mineworkers' leader Will Paynter (extreme right) and ex-TUC secretary George Woodcock (second from right). struggles in the past. A work specification sheet is meant to keep the workers' movements under control and he is answerable on his time-sheet for 'unauthorized movements'.

At the same time, work-study also tries to divide workers into those above average and those below; to turn young against slow against fast, shiftworker against day-workers and so on.

TRICK

These schemes are introduced, not with enforcement, threats and orders from management, but in the form of a confidence trick.

(Lenin, in 1916, examined time-and-motion systems in the early days of their developCOAL!

PAYMENTS iment and declared them to 'under capitalism, a torture a conjuring trick'.)

Large numbers of psychologists and industrial relations professors have been employed by the government to develop ways of talking these schemes in.

(It is all a question of 'communications' they say.)

The government often uses these people to run royal commissions or courts of inquiry on questions of labour relations. They also have evolved the technique of incorporating shop stewards into workstudy.

These are sent on special courses under management or union control, after which they are then expected to sell the schemes to their members on the basis of the large amounts of money to be earned.

JOB REWARD Once the deal is in, the stewards may be rewarded with a job in the management, or he may be sent back to his job.

Anyone who simply looks at the 'bread and butter' issues may be fooled by these schemes during the early stages. But anyone who looks at the wider aspect will see the situation much more clearly.

At the time of the developing capitalist crisis throughout the world, with over-production threatening many markets and with one currency after another under pressure, are employers really falling over themselves to put more money into workers' pockets?

In Britain, within recent weeks, the aircratt and motor cycle industries have been pronounced in dire trouble. Strikes in the steel industry reflect a much deeper crisis of production and sale of steel.

There is also talk of a downturn in car sales. Full order books in some sections of shipbuilding has done nothing to divert the crisis from that industry.

The basis of the Prices and Incomes Board with its particular emphasis on the introduction of work-study makes it quite clear that the Labour government is absolutely dedicated to 'solving this crisis of capitalism at the expense of the working class.

Miners who accepted the drive for higher productivity, who fought to raise the coal output again and again, who accepted modernization (or who had it accepted on their behalf by their trade union "leaders'), found thousands of their numbers thrown out of the new productivity level.

On the docks, modernization, combined with the government - backed Devlin scheme, enables a business consultancy firm to claim that 90 per cent of the dockers will eventually not be needed.

Throughout the car industry the employers' drive to introduce Measured-Day Work is aimed at direct wage-cuts in the car workers' wage packet.

In many social services, fire, ambulance, and other local authorities' departments, sections are under-manned because no real policy of recruitment exists. (In some cases a deliberate policy of no-recruitment has been introduced.)

It is true that in many cases productivity deals have been put into operation and some increases in output have been brought about by speeding-up.

Nevertheless, the plans of the capitalist class have received a severe set-back inasmuch as working-class strength has definitely not been broken. It some cases, workers have been strong enough to force concessions even on productivity deals and have been able to increase wages by this method.

DONOVAN

CONCLUSIONS It was in the face of this 'problem' that the Royal Commission on Trades Unions was set up. Conclusions found in the Donovan Report were that over-full employment gave immense backing to the already powerful position of workers at shop floor level.

It advised the widest possible introduction of productivity deals at local levels which could lay the basis for enforcement of severe measures against workers through law at a later date.

On the recommendations of the Donovan Report, the government set up a Commission on Industrial Relations, a body which was, in fact, to lay the basis for the coming anti-strike legislation.

BASIS

FOR CIR As well as setting out the proposals for action against strikers, the White Paper, 'In Place of Strife', published in January 1969, set out the basis of the CIR :

"The CIR will be concerned with ways of improving and extending procedural arrangements, for example, how to promote suitable companywide procedures, how to develop acceptable rules governing disciplinary practices and dismissals, how to encourage effective and fair redundancy procedures, how to bring shop stewards within a proper framework of agreed rules in their firm, and how to ensure that they are provided with the right kind of facilities to do their job.' (Page 13.)

It is also made clear that what was aimed at was direct state intervention into every aspect of bargaining and workinfighe need for state intervention and involvement in association with both sides of industry is now admitted by almost everyone. The question that remains is, what form should it take at the present time?' (Page 7.)

However, the immediate preparations for mobilization by the working class, as reflected in the support for the demonstration held on February 23 and the May 1 strike showed the formidable opposition facing the government.

(A general strike in Australia over the implementation exactly the same type of legislation at that time also showed the sort of opposition the government could expect from Now the Trades Union Congress (TUC) is straining itself to prove that it can do the job of disciplining the workers through their own organizations, i.e. the trade unions, and that anti-strike legislation is not really necessary.

The union leaders, all along the line, had given full backing to productivity deals and the introduction of work-study systems.

Without their support none of these schemes would have got a foot in the door anyAt the same time union officials were given a 'left' cover for their activities by the Communist Party.

As employers and government agencies combined to spread new methods of working, major re-organization and modernization throughout industry, CP militants told their followers that these were purely local action by employers, 'bread and butter issues' and should be looked at on this basis.

Members and supporters of the Socialist Labour League, who set out to explain the political nature and the universal application of productivity schemes, were directly opposed, in some cases by torce by Communist Party members.

The CP policy of peaceful co-existence with capitalism leads directly to the betrayal of the workers' struggles.

The savage curtailment of the number of working miners and the foothold that employers in the building industry have gained with speed-up methods do not in any way result from the 'weakness' or lack of fight of the workers concerned, but have been entirely due to these betrayals of leadership by fake left-wingers in the face of a major political attack by the capitalist class.

While the 'militants' continue to deny the nature of the political struggle, the employers, the consultants, and the government continue to combine in the development of new extensions to their schemes.

Recent months have seenThe extensive introduction of pre-determined motion-time systems and synthetics.

This means, instead of timing workers on the job with a stopwatch, the consultant simply lists every movement the worker make then looks up times for these movements in a standard list of 'synthetic' times and works out a final time for the job.

The manual of synthetics gives a time for every twist, turn, blink which a capable.

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PERIODICALS and twitch human being The further development of the theory of productive work.

The consultants claim that only work directly concerned with actual production is real work and that all other actions are 'non-productive' and therefore equivalent to not working at all. Some systems only pay bonus or levels above basic on productive work. Many more sections of work are now being declared unproductive.

The emphasis by the Prices and Incomes Board on the fact that productivity deals are a continuous process.

That once signed, they permit the introduction of a never-ending stream of new methods, cuts in manning and revision of work-study times and methods.

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Rods on the shop floor.

An example of this is the introduction by CAV into their factories of tele-control methods, a system by which microswitches on the machines work in combination with a telephone system and a computer to continuously report on the operators level of production.

This ensures that the worker never stops or slows down for an instant and aims to tie the worker completely to the system of production.

The further extension of work-study into new sections of workers.

Judging by the latest sounding off by the PIB a big drive against clerical workers is being prepared.

No doubt all their work will be designated as 'unproductive' and a short-term aim of speedup and cuts in staffing will lead to later attempts to replace large section of office workers with computers.

Also, the specialist magazine 'Work Study' recently reported on a course to train blind work-study officers.

This has been run by Industrial Advisers to the Blind 'in order to improve the efficiency of the blind work-shops'.

The magazine sees this as especially helpful in the workshops which are changing to light engineering from previous basket-making, etc.

A drive to change all incentive bonus schemes and allied pay systems. The main plan is to make Measured-Day Work a universal pay system.

The attempted introduction of disciplinary and anti - strike clauses into agreements.

This was high-lighted by the struggle at Ford over attempts to negotiate no-strike clauses.

The employers are now preParing to take a much tougher They are demanding the right to hire and fire workers without question and to insert disciplining and no-strike clauses into all agreements.

They are also demanding that all agreements be made legally binding, i.e. that once union officials have signed a productivity deal the worker becomes bound in law to accept every method, every change in work and every management-dictated time for a job.

Delegates who attend the Labour Party conference face a government leadership which is not only 'allowing' these measures to be introduced, but one which is actively leading the assault by the employers against every section of the working class.

All talk without action from the Labour Party members is a fraud.

Only the immediate sack for the Wilson leadership and the fight for socialist policies of nationalization of the basic industries under workers' control, for the repeal of the Prices and Incomes Act, for proper housing, rents and wages and for a real offensive against the capitalist class instead of against the labour movement will convince workers that the Labour Party is really concerned with fighting against the return of the Tories.

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