I.C.I. deal: grim reality behind fine talk

By our industrial staff WORKERS at Imperial Chemical Industries' plants up and down the country are rapidly coming to realize the grim reality behind the fine talk as the management gets down to the job of implementing its new weekly staff agreement (WSA).

The agreement, signed in July by representatives of nine unions (including Hugh Scanlon of the AEF, Leslie Cannon of the Electrical Trades Union, Dan McGarvey of the Boilermakers, and J. Miller of Transport and General Workers' Union) gives sweeping powers to the ICI management to implement flexibility, job evaluation, Measured-Day Worktype payments systems and reductions in the workforce. Couched in the carefully bland language beloved of work-study experts and pubit was not a police state under the pro-British segregationist, Smuts, or the British conquistador, Cecil Rhodes. by books like 300 Years' by This has long been proved History of South Africa' Mnguni (Cape Town, 1952). This was the first anti-apartheid history written from the viewpoint of the oppressed.

The present company-wide agreement grew out of an earlier deal which allowed ICI and payment structure' This scheme, known as MUPS, was introduced 'for a trial period' in various key plants to sound out the ground for the overall introduction of productivity proposals.

Though the MUPS deal met with resistance in some of the it was sase to ts, ahead with the next stage.

The WSA sets out what the next stage involves.

The aim of the agreement, the preamble states, is to develop and obtain maximum efficiency in the company's operations by more effective use of people, plant and material . . . employing each person to the full extent of his time and capabilities and by field by that time (1837-1842).

In return for fixed annual salaries (the rates to be determined by job-evaluation), together with overtime payments (at overtime rates fixed slightly above the normal hourly rate) and certain special payments, the unions have conceded "some' flexibility between craft employees and between craft and non-craft employees.

Since decisions. as to the degree of flexibility are to be taken locally, this in practice gives the management a free hand to impose as much flexibility as they can.

In line with government policy-and perhaps in preparation for introducing 'disciplinary agreements later— union membership is to be made compulsory.

The agreement states that there 'will be no enforced redundancy at any location as a direct result of this Agreement and any necessary reductions in numbers of people will be achieved by normal turnover or other locally agreed means'.

(Our emphasis.)

In other words, the onus preventing redundancies

Already workers at the Pontypool ICI factory fear the workforce may be cut by more than 20 per cent. Similar fears have been expressed by workers at the Huddersfield plant.

The method to be used in ers plants to determine worknew scheme fall into the familiar psuedo-scientific work-study pattern.

Union leaders and management agree 'that the results of work-measurement and method-study techniques appropriate for establishing and maintaining correct manning levels at standard performance (in work-study terms) ... need to be openly used and applied in each situation' Jobs will be graded by 'a specially selected team of Company or inter-Divisional assessors' trained in the assessment procedure in the course of the MUPS trials.

In the usual manner of such assessments, 'points' are allocated on a scale under four headings: mental; personality; physical; and skills and knowledge requirements. Typical of nationalist (racialist) you'll find a socialist'.

ONE of th sections of i TALK the questions used in assessment is: 'Is it a requirement of the job to think consecutively and coherently and to place the right inference on happenings which have been observed?' On the basis of these and similar 'objective' questions, grades are established and the workers paid accordingly. Annual salary' in the various grades runs from £950 in grade two to £1,450 in grade 7.

Most of the workers, of course, will find themselves in the lower grades, their jobs speeded up to the maximum efficiency' and their annual pay fixed in advance: Far from enhancing their 'status' • as the agreement claims, many will find their craft status seriously eroded by the 'flexibility' terms in the deal.

Many ICI workers correctly consider the deal will endanger union organization at local level and drive wedges between different sections of workers. Workers must organize to fight against these deals by building a revolutionary alternative in the unions to the present leadership.