British Wage Councils, by Bayliss

[p049] British Wages Councils. By F. J. Bayliss. Blackwell, Oxford, 25/-. These books are concerned with two important features which are commonly held to distinguish the ‘mixed economy’ from pure capital- ism and to mitigate the harsher features of the latter system. Both these institutions have, in fact, arisen out of the failure of ‘free enierprise’ and the subsequent need for government intervention in industrial relations; both have been adapted to serve the interests of capital, yet about the functioning of both there is a great deal of mis- understanding based on inadequate knowledge which these books go far to remedy. A large number of books on nationalization has appeared in the last few years, most of them either apologies for the existing nationalized industries or proposals for alterna- tive, more ‘modern’, forms of public ownership. Hanson’s’ book is neither; it is a study in the ideology of nationalization and attempts to trace, by means of representative extracts from books, reports, pam- phlets and speeches, the origin, development and final accommoda- tion of the contemporary confusion of thought about nationalization. It is more than a mere collection of essays; the items included under each topic have been skilfully selected to show how much of the current ‘new thinking’ on nationalization has arisen out of problems unconnec‘ed with, and irrelevant to, socialist principles. An early chapter . on ‘Motives for Nationalisation’ estab- lishes that, with the exception of iron and steel (quickly denational- ized) none of the industries taken into public ownership after 1945 were nationalized from any motive that could be termed socialist; they represented ‘rescue operations’ and the full implications of this, in terms of attitudes to personnel selection, finance, parliamentary = account- ability and industrial relations, are revealed in subsequent chapters. Bayliss’ book is the first full-length study of wages councils — the ‘independent’ bodies which have been set up in 60 or more industries to establish legal minimum wages. The generally accepted theory of wages councils is that they are introduced by a neutral government where trade union organisation is not sufficiently advanced to impose voluntary col- lective bargaining and the negotia- tion of realistic agreements; state support is, in these circumstances, seen as an interim measure in order to make possible the development of negotiated agreements. In fact, as Bayliss shows, wages councils have not infrequently been brought into being because of the weakness of employers’ associations and, far from encouraging the unionisation of workers, such councils have, for a _ variety of reasons which are fully discussed, hampered this. Moreover, govern- ments have been reluctant in recent years to abolish wages councils, even when it would appear that voluntary agreements were viable, since these bodies have provided a useful weapon in the wages freeze, enabling the government to influence the wage rates of three and a half million workers, These are important books in a field in which so much worthless rubbish is now being published; even the busiest trade unionist should find time for the first two and the the final chapters in the former and the last chapter in the latter. All engaged in industries subject to the decisions of wages councils should read the whole of Bayliss’ study. J.P. Prisons and prisoners