The key role of the shop steward
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A VERY experienced transport manager said to me once, as we were discussing labour relations: "If my shop steward and I had had a few different 'breaks' in our early years I can well imagine that he would be the gaffer and I would be the shop steward." My friend meant nothing more than that educational opportunities often open the way to the manager's chair; their lack, through no fault of the individual, may mean that the qualities of personality, of drive and of courage that lead to the election of a worker as a shop steward, in a different environment could push the same person through university or make him into a successful manager of people.
It is often pointed out that transport must recruit its fair share of university graduates in the next decade if it is to progress in a rapidly changing technological climate. Expanded educational opportunities today mean that many of those who formerly would have left school at 15 and entered the road transport industry are now studying for degrees. We can be quite certain that some of the youngsters who will one day join the industry are today long-haired rebellious students. The passing of time may alter the hair styles .which many of us deplore; it is unlikely, I think, to change the temperament of the highly trained products of our universities. When the time comes for such. people to join our industry many of them will be seasoned rebels, with a sizeable chip on their shoulders. They will have been conditioned to an environment of participation.
Predictable
In 1968 we saw the passing into law of the contentious Transport Act and the publication of the long-awaited Donovan Report; 1969 may be remembered as Labour Relations Year. As the Government nerves itself for the kind of industrial relations legislation which has been needed for the last 20 years debate will flourish. Many timid trade union leaders will shy away from the radical legislation that is necessary. It is equally predictable that fire-eating trade union officials will bitterly oppose any legislation designed to restore industrial discipline, which is needed in transport perhaps more than in any other industry, because of the immediate impact of strikes and go-slows on the life of the community. It is not to be expected that road transport management will be able to divorce itself from general trends towards workerpartipation, That is not to say that every employee or even a substantial minority of workers will wish to exercise management functions. It does, I think, mean that managers must be prepared to divulge much more information on the factors leading to decision making.
Sir Reginald Wilson referred to "participation" in his recent Spurner Memorial lecture to the Institute of Transport. It was not a new subject, he stressed. It had been discussed and considered for the last 40 years but the first question was, participation in what?
"I have always been in favour of participation", said Sir Reginald. "People ought to participate as much as they can in all kinds of things. It widens the horizon of the individual; it increases his worth and it raises his standing with himself. But one cannot participate in the life of some particular family, for example, unless one participates in the sorrows as well as the joys. Likewise a man cannot participate in management unless he is participating in the failures as well as the successes, or in the duties and responsibilities as well as the power. So if we are thinking primarily of workers' participation, it is at this point, of course, that matters begin to be difficult."
Participation, said Sir Reginald, must also be founded in both a desire to participate and a capacity to participate. And he added a warning. "It is a fact, perhaps unfortunate, that many people do not particularly desire to participate in things that may be troublesome, or which may be remote from their own level or their own immediate interests. It is also true that there are many things in which participation — constructive and effective—calls for special training, education and experience. To take an absurd but striking example, one cannot participate in an orchestra if one plays no instrument of the kind that it uses.
"And yet, having mentioned all these difficulties, I am sure that nothing could make more for the efficiency of a concern than to find proper bases for genuine participation at the different points and levels — with and from each man according to his interest and his ability. This applies not only at ground level, but at the various levels higher up." Sir Reginald went on to discuss participation beyond a sharing of policy and responsibility even to the lengths of sharing the financial results of the enterprise. There could be participation in the capital. Profit-sharing schemes, he felt, had made little impact in general and had been suc cessful only rarely where the organization was not of very great size.
There was a pointer here, he believed, to the problems of even non-financial participation. It would not be effective unless, right from the beginning, the structure of the undertaking was such that the persons concerned were able to identify themselves with units sufficiently distinct and sufficiently small to mean something in human terms; "each of us must be able to 'identify' before we can 'participate'. Primarily, therefore, we have a problem of structure."
'Worker directors' In Germany, a good deal is heard of their "worker directors". Sir Reginald could not see that putting a workers' representative —from a trade union or otherwise—on the main board of a large concern as offering any real participation to the thousands of employees involved. "No doubt it is an excellent thing to do for other reasons, but in my view it is no substitute for participation of the kind that I pei-sonally would like to see, and which I think is so important to the efficiency of large undertakings in this new society."
Many people will agree with Sir Reginald that "identification" is essential for "partici
pation". But if we accept the argument a very comforting one from the point of view of a top managed—it raises almost as many problems as it solves. Enterprises today are very large and are tending to become still larger. Transport organizations are not only inter-modal; they stretch across the world. What is the use of telling a lively minded shop steward who is employed in a small unit of a world-wide container service that he should only concern himself with the small depot he knows about? It may be very arrogant of him to claim to be interested in the whole organization and in all its problems but that at least is an improvement on a "parish pump" mentality.
We can all point to some shop stewards who have so impressed senior management that they have rapidly been promoted away from the manual grades to middle or eventually higher management. The capacity for imaginative thinking is not an exclusive management preserve—if it were, life would be very simple. In a large transport organization the shop steward who has been encouraged to learn about many of the problems that exercise top management will be in a much stronger position to influence his fellow workers than the shop steward who is in effect compelled to wear blinkers.
Before long there may be further developments in company law in Britain, paralleling events in Europe. The French Vallon amendment not only compels some share-out of profits; company chief executives must hold a question-and-answer session with employee representatives twice a year. In Germany, a worker director sits by law on the management board of any company in the iron, steel and coal industries, and in other industries the supervisory boards have a proportion of worker directors on supervisory boards.
Four regional boards of the British Steel Corporation have had worker directors appointed in consultation with the Trades Union Congress. Fairfields shipyard has been treated the same way. The use of nationalized industry as a laboratory for experiments in worker participation was urged in a report of the national executive committee of the Labour Party recently. As the Liberal Party have long been in favour of legislation it would be surprising if the Conservatives do not work out a platform on this matter before long. Robert Carr, Opposition spokesman on employment and productivity, has said he is "open to ideas".
Change of climate
It has been suggested that the Common Market considers employer-employee relationships as part of a community-wide company law; and some British employers believe that these fermenting ideas for more genuine worker participation can be exploited to transform the climate of industrial relations in this country. Norman Ross, senior lecturer in employer-employee relations at Birmingham University, has published suggestions for producing a controlling company board representative of employees as well as shareholders.
Some road transport managers will have noted with surprise that the Prices and In'comes Board have called for joint management /trade union efforts to build up work study teams to implement work measurement schemes within the BRS maintenance organization. The unions were told, in effect, to allow some of their members to be selected by management for training courses or themselves to undertake the necessary training. (In the latter case the trade unions would be saving management Money!) The days have long passed since the word shop steward caused employers to tremble. The Donovan Commission noted that shop stewards were often responsible for collecting union subscriptions and were almost invariably responsible for communications between unions and members. But most important of all "is the service which he performs by helping to regulate workers' pay and working conditions and by representing them in dealings with management".
More than half of the 175,000 shop stewards in the country regularly deal with managers over some aspect of pay, and about half of them deal regularly with questions relating to working hours, such as the level and distribution of overtime. Large numbers of stewards handle disciplinary matters on behalf of members and such questions as the distribution of work—allocation of vehicles—the pace of work—the details of productivity schemes—the setting on of new labour, and redundancy matters. No one could seriously doubt the conclusion of the Donovan inquiry that Britain's 175,000 shop stewards handle many times the volume of business than that of the 3,000 full-time union officers.
The Royal Commission found that most British managers preferred loose understandings with shop stewards to formal agreements. Where managers had a choice of dealing with full-time officers or shop stewards, three ,quarters of them chose shop stewards. The reason given by employers for this was "the intimate knowledge of the circumstances of the case possessed by shop stewards".
It is beginning to look as though managers as well as shop stewards will have to depart from the informal agreements that both have favoured hitherto for much more detailed agreements spelling out just what is involved for both sides in productivity agreements. Although a minority of shop stewards were rightly censured by the Donovan Commission it is significant that their general conclusion was favourable to a body of men doing an uncommonly thankless task remarkably well.
". . . It is often wide of the mark to describe shop stewards as 'trouble makers'. Trouble is thrust upon them. . . they may be striving to bring some order into a chaotic situation, and management may rely heavily on their efforts to do so. . . The shop-floor decisions which generally precede unofficial strikes are often taken against the advice of shop stewards. Thus shop stewards are rarely agitators pushing workers towards unconstitutional action. In some instances they may be the mere mouthpieces of their work groups. But quite commonly they are supporters of order exercising a restraining influence on their members in conditions which promote disorder. To quote our survey of shop stewards and workshop relations: 'For the most part the steward is viewed by others, and views himself, as an accepted, reasonable and even moderating influence; more of a lubricant than an irritant'."
My conclusion from this is that road haulage employers would do well to encourage the maximum possible education and training of their shop stewards. This should not only encompass training in labour relations and in the drafting of fair and comprehensible agreements; it should also include training in costing and in the interpretation of company accounts. The RTITB should be encouraged to promote special training courses for shop stewards who should be given every facility for doing a crucially important job.