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The thorny problem of differentials
Page 151
Page 152
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A RECENT Civil Service arbitration tribunal award dealing with the pay of technical assistants employed in the motor transport organization of the Post Office is interesting for a number of reasons. It highlights the fact—obvious to some of us for years but still only grudgingly accepted by many employers—that white collar and supervisory grades in industry and transport are concerned to preserve the "differentials" when the pay of the manual grades they supervise is increased as a result of productivity bargaining.
It is often assumed—quite wrongly—that salaried status makes employees immune from the sordid pressures of materialism. The growing militancy of professional workers—doctors, teachers and Mr. Clive Jenkins come to mind—suggests that employers who embark on productivity schemes for sections of their staff, particularly the manual grades, such as drivers and fitters, should consider the effect on excluded employees.
Civil Service arbitration awards are noteworthy for the extreme thoroughness with which the issues dividing the parties are ventilated. As such they are an object lesson to management for whom fact-finding and the subsequent careful weighing of the facts is axiomatic.
The 108 technical assistants concerned in this pay dispute are members of the Society of Telecommunication Engineers. They are employed mainly in the regions, a few of them working in central repair depots and at the Motor Transport training School. Their responsibilities, under the general direction of Regional Motor Transport Officers, include "the general direction . . . of the workshop staff, with responsibility for ensuring satisfactory workshop efficiency and standards of work".
To arbitration . .
The dispute went to arbitration because the Post Office offered the technical assistants a 3 per cent rise from July 1 1968 against 6 per cent claimed by the men. For most of the years between 1932—when the• grade of technical assistant was introduced —and 1960, their pay was adjusted broadly in line with pay movements of the main engineering supervisory grades in the Post Office but an Agreement of 1960 meant that the technical assistants' pay was governed by percentages agreed centrally for most of the non-industrial Civil Service. (This was in contrast to the rank-and-file grades where pay adjustments were on the broad basis of general movements of pay in the relevant sectors of industry.) The present dispute began when the Post Office agreed on a 6 per cent increase for workshop grades in the Post Office Engineering Union. Announced in September 1968, it was to be effective from July 1 1968 and it took into account increased productivity arising from changes in duties and working practices among the grades concerned. Six per cent more pay was also offered by the Post Office to assistant executive engineers and inspectors "in recognition of the contributions to increased productivity made by those grades in the implementation of changes in working practices and organization among the rank
and-file grades . ." The A.E.E.s and inspectors were also members of the Society of Telecommunication Engineers.
Sharp reaction
It would have been most extraordinary if the technical assistants, offered a mere 3 per cent pay increase, had not reacted sharply when colleagues in the same service, on related work, as well as the rank-and-file employees, both won a 6 per cent increase. A reference to the Arbitration Tribunal was a natural outcome. And as can be imagined both sides made most detailed submissions. Whatever faults our trade unions have in this country they do not suffer from a short memory: the Tribunal was given details of the conditions of service, numbers, duties and recruitment of technical assistants; a Table showing pay relativities since 1938 between them and the workshop grades they supervised; information as to the structure and pay of the grades in the Post Office motor transport organization; and—naturally—copies of correspondence relating to the claim and minutes of meetings between the parties.
The Pay Research Unit of the Civil Service had investigated the pay of technical assistants on two occasions previously so that the Tribunal was in no doubt at all of the detailed background. The Society quoted from the report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service 1953-55 which had been accepted as the agreed basis for regulating Civil Service pay. The Royal Commission said, inter alia, ". . . we consider . .. that particular attention should be paid in negotiation to the problem of differentials and that care should be taken to avoid any marked narrowing or widening on a percentage basis unless it can be. fairly shown to be justifiable on fair comparison".
The Society submitted that a reasonable interpretation of that recommendation was that the onus of providing evidence rested upon the party seeking to disturb existing percentage differentials, and that these should be maintained until evidence to support a change was available.
It was argued that percentage increases of the order claimed (6 per cent) were not unparalleled: an 8 per cent pay rise had recently been recommended for doctors and dentists. The Department of Employment and Productivity had issued figures showing that the earnings of all employed persons at July 1968 showed a rise of over 10 per cent since January 1967, and of 7 per cent since July 1967, while wage rates had increased by 9 per cent and 6 per cent respectively during those periods.
The Society brought out the significant fact that though it was provided that 20 per cent or technical assistant posts should be filled by open competition the Post Office had been unable to recruit from that source. Nor had it been able to attract the agreed proportion of suitable candidates for promotion from the higher workshop grades (40 per cent) but had to rely on special selection arrangements, offering £1,360 a year at the age 27 pay point. This salary was less than workshop supervisors grade I received, and it was stressed that the technical assistants —who did not qualify for overtime—could earn less than their immediate subordinates.
Post Office claims
The Society objected to the Post Office claims that the planning of new workshop maintenance programmes would be undertaken by the workshop supervisor rather than by the technical assistant. Productivity schemes, it was said, "required changes in the nature of supervision, involving a general tightening of control to ensure the effective implementation of new procedures and a more economic use of resources both of men and material. In the motor transport maintenance field the new procedures had to be planned, introduced and implemented by the technical assistants . . Although there might not be detailed changes in the technical assistant's stipulated duties, he was the link between the policy and theory set out in written instructions and the practice on the workshop floor, and he would have to adapt his role to the new and more exacting requirements".
Evidence was given of a scheme recently introduced in the Midland Region, "apparently as a prototype of the national scheme, whereby vehicle maintenance was carried out on a mileage basis instead of on a monthly basis as before. An account was given of the changes involved in the operation of the scheme which, it was submitted, depended on the technical assistant at least as much as on the workshop supervisor, since the unit of operation had become the area covered by the technical assistant rather than each individual workshop within his area. The technical assistant had to use the resources of his area flexibly, and to illustrate the work involved details were placed before the Tribunal of transfers of vehicles and staff between workshops which had been necessary in one technical assistant's area during 1968 as a direct result of this scheme."
Not sacrosanct
As might be expected of a major department of the Civil Service, the Post Office management brought up some heavy guns to rebut the claim of the technical assistants. There was no formal link or consistent relationship between the pay of the technical assistants and that of the grades they supervised, it was argued. Pay differentials could not be regarded as sacrosanct, and the fact that all pay increases had to be justified against the criteria laid down by the Government's incomes policy could itself lead to the disturbance of differentials as between workers who qualified for such increases and those who did not. The notorious phrase from Report No. 36 of the Prices and Incomes Board: "It should be shown that the workers are making a direct contribution towards increasing productivity by accepting more exacting work or a major change in working practices" was quoted in support of the management.
The Post Office did not dispute that, in principle, productivity payments could be extended to supervisory grades, and this had been done in a number of cases. But they did not accept "that as a general principle supervising staffs should automatically benefit from productivity deals for rankand-file staff, or that where a consequential increase for supervising staff was justified it should necessarily be of an equivalent amount. each case had to be justified on its merits, and the justification for increases for each group of supervisors had to be assessed in the light of the degree of their involvement with the particular productivity measures undertaken by the rank-and-file grades supervised."
The difficult point concerning the award of 6 per cent to the assistant executive engineers and inspectors was not ducked by the management, who clearly felt that the technical assistants were less closely involved with productivity. Although each technical assistant in the field controlled on average nine workshops — with supervisors or mechanics in charge at each one—it was submitted that the main responsibility for the success of the new productivity measures in any region would fall on the regional motor transport officer "and that the primary burden of the changes would rest on the individual workshop supervisor or mechanic-in-charge, who would have to draw up programmes for approval on the basis of the revised maintenance arrangements, for their adjustment as necessary, and for the checking involved in their implementation". For good measure, the management pointed out that the technical assistants, as part of their normal supervisory duties, were bound to be concerned with the implementation of the new measures "but they had to spend a good deal of their time in travelling, and could not always be available for consultation': A further management argument made the doubtful point that though the technical assistants would be subjected to some additional pressure and an increased volume of work, in that they would be required to approve new programmes drawn up by officers-in-charge of individual workshops, and to advise the regional motor transport officer where necessary, this short-term burden did not justify a pay increase on productivity grounds since their normal duties called for them to approve new programmes at least annually.
A final point made in the management submission was that the Midland reorganization referred to was not the prototype of the new national scheme but an experiment which would now be dropped in favour of a much simpler scheme. The Tribunal was invited to reject the claim of the technical assistants for the full 6 per cent.
'Holy writ'
I am often somewhat cynical about the merits of arbitration:. the "holy writ" that emerges from arbitration tribunals following prolonged disputes or stoppages can often be criticized by interested parties no less than by the general public.
Arbitrators do not always explain the reasons for their findings and the Civil Service Tribunal, in finding that the technical assistants "will have a direct and con
siderable involvement in the forthcoming productivity changes in the Motor Transport organization" may have wished to avoid too many red faces in the Post Office management. The technical assistants were granted the six per cent they claimed and this award will cost the Post Office another £6,500 a year. A small sum, no doubt, but the principle that back room technicians deserve to share in the gravy awarded to the manual grades will not be lost on negotiators.
In transport there is enormous scope for productivity and efficiency improvements in clerical, accounting and traffic office routines. Some attention should be focused here: drivers and fitters should not get all the productivity limelight.