DISCUSSION GROUP A3
Professor
B.
C.
Professor of Industrial
ROBERTS,
MA(Oxon)
Relations,
Social Change
Cushioning a man or woman financially is necessary, but not sufficient. Most of us need to work, since
idleness is unbearable. We must, therefore, provide
the educational and training facilities necessary to
equip everyone who desires to work with the skills
that are required under the prevailing technical conditions. This may well mean that in the future a
large part of the working population will have to
spend a much longer period of time at school, university or other educational or training institution. Retraining and refresher courses will probably become
of far greater importance as a normal feature of
working life. In these respects we have a long way
still to go. A large section of our population, in
terms of modern technology, is profoundly ignorant
and this includes a good many who occupy important posts of responsibility in management and the
professions, who have not learnt a thing since they
left school or college a long time ago. Technical
incompetence has been masked by a layer of smug
social superiority and protected by an uncompetitive
economy. As a society we will have to spend a much
larger proportion of our national income on educational, training and informational activities than we
have been accustomed to spend in the past, and even
than at present projected. We will also have to
sweep away the restrictive attitudes to training and
retraining which are a product of the 19th Century
thinking and which have no relevance to the contemporary situation. In this respect the Industrial
Training Act was a step forward, but a real breakthrough has yet to come.
Although we are likely to be short of manpower
during the next 10 years, it may be confidently predicted that the hours worked per week will tend to
fall and over the longer run the fall may be considerable. This will, of course, also offset the displacement effects of technological advance. I do
not think, however, that the fall will be dramatic
in the immediate future. It is likely that for some
time we are going to continue to prefer income to
The Production Engineer
problems of leisure
The system of industrial relations which had become firmly established by the end of the 19th Century, and has remained almost unchanged until the
present time, is now clearly no longer appropriate
to the needs of our times. Technological advance
has made long-term planning not only feasible, but
a vital necessity. With the aid of the computer it is
possible to reconcile and harmonise investment programmes, income flows, import and export requirements and all the other ingredients that make up the
modern economic complex.
In this type of environment collective decisionmaking can no longer be a laissez-faire process. The
function of unions must, therefore, change. In the
future they have an important role to play, along
with the employers' organisations, in the process of
arriving at a national consensus on issues of economic
and social policy. This does not mean that the
unions must jettison, or even subordinate3 the interest
of their members to the interests of other social
groups; on the contrary, it is only by recognising
that under modern circumstances the bargaining role
of the unions must be exercised within the limits
imposed by the logic of the economic goals they have
accepted that they can maximise the interests of their
members.
If the unions are to discharge their functions
effectively they must create the organisational structure that will make this possible. At the one end
of the scale, they must make effective the ability of
the TUC to enter into national agreements relating
to economic development and incomes policy that
will be carried out by the constituent unions and the
rank and file membership. At the other end of the
scale, room has to be found for local bargaining and
participation in the achievement of enterprise objectives without destroying the basic requirements of
national policy.
control of wage drift
We have recently seen the TUC take a hesitant
step to meet the challenge presented by the Prices
and Incomes Board and the National Plan, but the
unions have a long way to go before it can be said
that they have developed a co-ordinated and effectively enforced national wages policy. Moreover,
little has been done so far to face up to the challenge
that comes from below. Control of "wage drift" at
the plant level has now become a major problem
that must be solved if the chronic wage-price spiral
is to be stopped. I expect, therefore, to see more
experiments in the working out of the implications
of the prices and incomes policy at the enterprise
level. Wage systems developed to reward individual
effort have now become a significant source of wage
drift and the cause of much industrial conflict. Under
modern technological conditions what are required
are wage structures and incentives that facilitate
change, adequately reward the learning of new skills
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that plans and policies in which they have participated are carried out. The new model therefore
assumes that employers and unions, management and
workers, can significantly narrow their area of conflict and that this can be done to the advantage of
the interests of both sides as well as to the advantage
of the community as a whole. The new pattern of
industrial relations involves a good deal more than a
new legal framework; it also involves a new style of
trades unionism and management, and a new style
of politics.
Automation is likely to make the enterprise much
more significant as a social unit in the future. Technological advance is making possible much larger
units of organisation and capital employed is leading
to a growing emphasis on the unity of the enterprise. The authoritarian style of management is
less likely to be successful under the technological
and social conditions of the future than it has been
in the past. Better educated, economically more
independent employees, whose actions are of critical
significance to the achievement of the goals of the
enterprise, will have to be given an appropriate
recognition of their role and an opportunity of selffulfilment.
In short, technological advance is making industry
less like the classic mass production plan satirised by
Chaplin in his film Modern Times, in which man is
completely subordinated to the conveyor belt. Technological developments are eliminating much of the
moronic repetitions and drudgery, and freeing
workers for more responsible and more demanding
jobs. Some of the new types of work will involve
less physical, but more mental, stress and strain. However, workers are in a far better position under the
new conditions of employment to ensure that their
role is appreciated by management. This means, to
use the terminology of Douglas McGregor, that the
advance of technology is pushing management from
style X to style Y8. That is to say, management
will only be able to secure the effective co-operation
of subordinate employees by recognising that they
must be granted a status that is related to their
function and responsibility. I therefore expect to
see a substantial development of "status agreements"
which give workers long-term security of employment, the fringe benefits enjoyed by the staff and a
share in the capital accumulation of the enterprise.
joint consultation
I also expect to see a revival of interest in joint
consultation. Interest in consultative committees as
a means of softening the exercise of managerial
authority by the provision of more information has
greatly declined since it reached its high point in
the immediate post-war years. The cause of this
decline has been twofold. On the one hand^ full
employment has greatly enhanced the power of the
shop steward and stimulated a tremendous growth
of plant bargaining. On the other hand, management has become much more conscious of the need
to consult continuously and to improve the quality
of supervision and personnel management. Thus
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political effects
The changes that technological advance and associated economic developments are having on our
system of industrial relations will also greatly alter
the pattern of British politics. There are already
clear indications that the relationships between the
unions and the Labour Party and the employers and
the Conservative Party are no longer as close as they
used to be. Nor are Party differences as wide. The
problems that confront Britain today and tomorrow
will not be solved by the nostrums advocated by the
doctrinaires of either party. Modern technology is
producing a consensus over a growing area of decision-making in the fields of economic, industrial and
social policy-making. At the same time, the class
structure of society on which our party system has
been based is being rapidly eroded by the factors
that have made modern technological development
possible. The line is no longer to be drawn, as
Marx drew it, between those who own property and
those who do not. The social problems of technological change are remarkably similar in all advanced
industrial societies, whether the system of property
ownership is mainly private as in, Western Europe
and America, or public as in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. Ideological and social conflicts are
now taking a new shape as we struggle to master the
consequences of modern technology, but the basic
issues remain the same. What we are concerned with
is to define anew the extent of liberty and regulation;
the rights of the individual and the institutional
arrangements necessary under modern conditions to
maintain a healthy society.
The full effect of the factors discussed in this
Paper on social change will only be apparent a century from now. We shall then be able to look back
and see clearly the social impact of the computer
and associated technology on our economic, legal,
political and industrial relations systems. At the
present time it is difficult to do much more than
hazard guesses. What is necessary now is a considerable technological advance in our ability to
predict the rate and direction of technological change
and its social consequences. We are putting a far
greater research effort into developing technological
hardware than we are into the social response this
will evoke. The social costs are rarely taken into
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REFERENCES
1. JOHN T. DUNLOP (Ed.), "Automation
and
Technological Change", p. 1.
2. " Monthly Labor Review", Bureau of Labor Statistics,
U.S. Department of Labor.
3. "Manpower Report of the President", March 1964.
4. R. A. GORDON, "Has Structural Unemployment
Worsened?" Report No. 234, Uniyersity of California,
Institute of Industrial Relations.
5. HERBERT A. SIMON, "The Shape of Automation for
Men and Management", 1965.
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