Bernard Franks looks at the National Economic Council report on large industrial sites Devlin for bulldina sites

last December, the Development Council report on large industrial sites aims another blow at construction workers.

Measures which lay the basis for use of 'predetermined' work-study systems, for Measured-Day Work and for a giant reduction in the overall labour force of the industry are proposed.

Planned shift work, a 'rationalized' pay system, increased output using workstudy systems based on information from a 'data bank', ., decasualization based on registration of workers and increased control of workers by employers and unions through a national agreement and a national joint council, are some of the proposals put forward in the final report published this month. (Large Industrial Sites'. HMSO £2 2s.)

Working Drawn up by a working party made up of employers, government officials and union leaders, the report covers work done by 50,000 workers, spread over some 40 to 50 major sites throughout Britain.

These are mainly involved in power station, steel works, chemical plant or oil refinery construction.

Significantly, the working party estimated that at any one time, 12 per cent of the total labour force is without work.

Another fact discovered was that by far the major cause of delays in construction are not due to labour disputes, but to late changes in design, with late delivery of materials and plant running a close second.

One of the chief worries of employers has been the increasing size of building operations which has led to work forces of 2,500 to 3,000 workers being gathered together on a single site.

The cost of hold-ups of work on projects of this size is enormous. The report puts the capital cost alone of one week's delay in the completion of a 2,000 megawatt power station at about £100,000 and the cost of a month's delay in the completion of a £15 million refinery "might amount to f2t million'.

No mention is made of the position of mates and labourers, who at present number 15,000.

Presumably it is expected that these will have been almost completely eliminated from the industry on the basis of the government's policy of ending pair working and of mechanization reducing heavy labouring to a minimum.

The only 'permanency' that is being proposed here is permanent unemployment for a large section of the workers at present in industry.

For those remaining, the working party makes it clear what sort of registration it is advocating when it speaks of the 'promising example of the Electrical Contracting Joint Industry Board's labour pool'.

Police clash with strikers outside the giant BP refinery site at Grangemouth last November.

The JIB is the body which combines employers and union leaders in the drive for 'greater productivity' and 'profitability" in electrical contracting and which can withdraw welfare benefits, and impose fines on workers up to £100 for various so-called misdemeanours.

Another advantage seen for permanency is the breaking down of demarcation practices, which, it is claimed, are mainly a product of insecurity of employA fight against this break-up of demarcation was one of the features of the violent Grangemouth dispute in Scotland.

Five hundred boilermakers were on strike for nine weeks, but were sold out by their executive, which had agreed to the new working system.

Only 253 boil taken back aftery being pronouncer requirements'.

Work study ON WORK STUDY, the working party wants to see such methods spread throughout industry and says:

We recommend the greater use of work study to improve working methods and to assist in establishing planning and This is based on the claim that on the sites: 'men are actively working for about half of their working day' and is just another way of saying that work study is expected to make operatives work twice as fast as at present.

The proposal to set 'data bank' of work-study information is no more a proposal to introduce a system of predetermined times for all operations.

Workers on any one site would be presented with times for jobs which had been obtained 'else. where' and which are claimed as national averages for any particular task.

This is to link up with the proposals on pay.

The working party considers the existing pay situation as 'chaotic' with 'absence of control' on many sites:

the real bargaining in earnings is a constant conformation between shop stewards and managers. This incessant bickering over targets is at the root of many labour disputes and contribute to the anomalies and disorder we deplore.' Of course, what is really 'deplored' here is the system by which workers continually fight for, and win increases in pay, or what the 1968 PIB reports on the building industry referred to as 'wage drift'.

One employers want an er controlled payments.

The report sets out a system which prepares the way for new methods of payment.

It advises, as a first step, the fixing of "(a) a national time rate, and (b) either:

(i) incentiye payment earnings derived from a bonus scheme agreed formally at site level; or where incentive schemes do not apply, a productivity allowance' agreed at site level, containing specinakers were rds, the : rest 'surplus to fic provisions for the more effective use of labour' The control over bonus would be based on the 'gearing' of bonus payments to the informaion of the 'data bank'.

This section adds that:

*Provision should be made under either arrangement for the control of unnecessary overtime.' ' With regulation of bonuses and cuts in overtime, the employer could bring about substantial cuts in take-home pay for all workers. 7.10 NEAREST AND DEAREST: 'When You've Got To Go'. 7.40 ACTION FILM: 'Scalplock'. With Dale Robertson, Sandra 9.30 and it would also mean that the authority of the official leadership of the unions would be strengthened'.

The national agreement would lay down guidelines where bonus systems were in operation covering 'The method of "gearing" the system of work measurement, and the total earnings to be expected for standard performance.' The report also suggests setting up of a national joint council made up of employers and union officials to regulate the working of the national agreeThis would have the backing of the Department of Employment and Productivity (DEP) and the TUC and the clients' council previously mentioned. It is quite clear that major attempts to control and discipline the industry's labour force are being 3.30 p.m. Mad movies. 3.45 Skippy. 4.17 Flipper. 5.20 Magpie. 5.50 News.

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THIS WEEK. 10.00 NEWS.

The report forecasts that the total manpower requirements in ten years time will be some 10,000 fewer men than now, i.e., will be 40,000 workers if productivity continues to rise.

However, no analysis is made of the level of development of modernization and automation entire inn work basis ot such entirely on the developments that huge reductions in the number of jobs is taking place in several industries.

Also no mention of the crisis state of capitalism is made or effect this must have on the 'expansion' of industry.

They should reject entirely the NEDC report and take up a fight in the unions against the "leaders' who have collaborated in its production.

E. Marsden general secretary of the Constructional Engineering Union, H. Weaver general secretary of the National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, and E. Patterson, former CEU general secretary, were all members of the NEDC working party.

It was Patterson who wrote to Workers Press earlier this year objecting to an examination of what would be in the NEDC report on the grounds that 'it is not yet finalized'.

Of course, anyone who has