RATIONAL WAGES SYSTEM

Grey River Argus, 29 March 1948, Page 8

RATIONAL WAGES SYSTEM

Recommendations by General Council (From Herbert Tracey, of Britain’s Trades Union Congress) With only two dissentients votes, the General Council of the Trades Union Congress has reached conclusions on the wages policy of the United Kingdom trade union movement which a conference of the trade union executives will be called upon to implement. The General Council’s recommendations are a notable step in the development of a rational wages system. The United Kingdom wages system is full of structural anomalies. Side by Side with wages based on minimum time rates and piece rate wages which have binding legal force in the trades to which they apply, thpre are complicated wage agreements reached in voluntary negotiations which vary from industry to industry, from place to place, and from one plant to another. To bring this complex wages system to a standstill with the object of “freezing” wages at their present level, is from the trade union standpoint an utter impossibility. The T.U.C. General Council has not interpreted the Government’s injunctions against any general increase in individual money incomes in this empirical way. The Council’s special committee has examined the aims and intentions of the Government as set forth in the recent White Paper on Personal Incomes, Costs and the Prices, together with statements from Britain’s Prime Minister, Mr Attlee, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Stafford Cripps, in particular. On its examination of the problem in all its bearings, the General Council’s • special committee reached considered conclusions which the General Council itself adopted as its view with virtual unanimity, and is now asking trade unions to accept them. Nearly A Year’s Work

The General Council has been working on the problems with which its present decisions are concerned for almost exactly 12 months. It appointed its special committee in February last year to deal first with the fuel crisis then reaching its maximum intensity, and thereafter to' consider Britain’s growing economic difficulties in the light of a succession of Government White Papers on the situation. At last year’s Congress the General Council reported fully to the delegates of all unions on the situation as it then stood. It placed on record the fact that assurance had been given to the Government “of the determination of the trade union movement ’to do all in its power to assist the country in this time of crisis.”

The subsequent discussions and consultations into which the General Council has entered have been guided by this declaration. The stage has now been reached at which positive decisions have to be taken by the Trade Unions themselves. The General Council’s conclusions and the recommendations it is making to the affiliated unions are based upon its own interpretation of the principles embodied in the White Paper. It has approached it definitely from the trade union standpoint, having obtained what it felt to be a clear indication of the Government’s policy, on the general question of stabilisation, and the measures it proposed to take to deal with both prices and'profits. Undermanned Essential Industries There is a very close correspondence between the Government’s White Paper and the T.U.C. General Council’s Statement on the issues it raises. The T.U.C. attaches high importance to the Government’s recognition, in the White Paper, of the necessity of retaining unimpaired the well tried system of. collective bargaining and free negotiation. The necessity of adjusting the wages of workers whose incomes are below a . reasonable standard.' of subsistence, is also recognised by the Government and this, too, is welcomed by the T.U.C. Agreement is also recorded in the view that it is necessary in the national interest to establish . Stan- 1 dards of wages and conditions in undermanned essential industries in order to attract sufficient manpower and to counteract the attraction of labour to better paid occupations. But there is a controversial point upon which the Government does not seem to go as far as the T.U.C’. consider it necessary to go with regard to the maintenance of wage differentiations between one occupation and another. In the view of the T.U.C. it is necessary to safeguard those wage differentials which are an essential element in the wages structure of many important industries, and which are required as a means of sustaining standards of craftsmanship, training and experience, which contribute directly to industrial efficiency and higher productivity. On this matter the hard-headed and experienced trade union leaders, who composed the General Council, speak with authority. They know that the unions will l have to take account of existing wage differentials in framing their wages policy. The General Council’s recommendations do not in any sense relieve the trade unions of their individual responsibility in determining , their own wages policy. Inflationary Dangers The T.U.C. General Council is not in possession of the authority to instruct the unions to withdraw current wage claim, or to suspend current wage negotiations. What the General Council has done is to call upon the executives of unions to examine all wage claims, including current claims, with a view to' bringing them into conformitv with the facts of the situation; holding steadily in view the over-riding necessity of meeting the Government’s considered statement that any further rise in the level of personal incomes would have seriou inflationary dangers and must be for the time being restrained.

The final justification for the T.U.C. prooosals to the unions is that any further general rise in the level of money incomes will accentuate an already ’ dangerous situation. On March' 24, therefore, the conference of trade union executives will be called upon to accept the T.U.C. proposal to keep their wage claims within the terms of the stabilisation policy, and to accent the responsibility of,guiding the action of their members on these lines.