'Results through people' is the motto of a former union man
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RETIRED KEN SORTS OUT THE PROBLEMS
THE PHILOSOPHY of the life of former Transport and General Workers' Union national organiser Ken Jackson has always been 'results through people'.
And that is a philosophy that even now in retirement he is carrying on as he acts as part time industrial relations consultant. "Don't just tell the men that as from Monday they will be doing X," he says, "tell them the problem and ask them which way they would do it."
He spent 25 years with the TGWU retiring in June due to ill health. "I always said that I would not work until I was 65 and when I began to feel the effect on my health I packed it in," said 63-year-old Ken.
Ken Jackson comes from a family where trade unionism was a way of life. Born in Durham the son of a dedicated trade unionist he left home and the dole queues for Slough and the promise of at least a temporary job.
But the temporary job arranged by the Ministry of Labour as it then was, with the promise of at least six months work and the possibility of a permanent job led to his first experience in a dispute.
And the dispute was with the Ministry. When the job ended with a lay-off after only three months he claimed the cost of his digs from the Ministry who refused to pay — but they finished by paying both unemployment money and the rent of 17-year-old Ken.
"My father told me then that I had done it right. I played it by the rules and beat them at their game — he said I must have learnt something from home."
Transport has been in his blood for over 40 years. Ken is a former long distance UK lorry driver who left his reserved occupation job when war came to volunteer for the Royal Army Service Corps as a driver.
"I went and volunteered once but they said it was a reserved job and to go back to it. I went back the next week and they said 'why are you back?' I told them I had packed in my job — there were no rules about being unemployed and not getting in."
After the war he went back to transport and worked as 4 driver until 1951 when he joined the TGWU. Since then he has never looked back.
The former district officer from London's Tooley Street office of the union fought out pay deals and disputes with the operators in his Covent Garden and Smithfield patch and it was here that Ken learnt the wiles of negotiating and diplomacy.
It was the move to Transport House, the union's headquarters in 1961 that brought him into contact with the major issues and disputes of the day.
And it was under former general secretary Frank Cousins, now Lord Cousins, that Ken Jackson gained the reputation as probably the first official of the union to speak to a mass meeting at the Liverpool football stadium and come away with what he considered the right decision having been made by the members.
Overnight allowances, the dispute that dragged on for four months earlier this year was another of Ken's cases. And it is with a slight trace of annoyance that he speaks of the militants who tried to tag other issues onto the dispute.
Then the attempt was made by the Drivers' Action Committee to add a whole mass of other issues to the subsistence claim and the row over the form that threatened to disrupt the whole industry.
"There was a bunch of militants who tried to confuse the whole issue by adding on these other things — but that was a dispute over the subsistence form — nothing else, and that's what I told them after they marched on Transport House back in the summer."
Among the issues that they attempted to add was the whole question of tachographs.
And that is a question that Ken sees being settled very soon. "Already the EEC transport committee, part of the social committee has recommended that they be used only on international journeys and the ILO (International Labour Organisation) has agreed that they should be used only on a voluntary basis in Britain."
It was to set the ILO decision that he attended meetings with TGWU general secretary Jack Jones to get pushed through. Now he tells stories of the diplomatic twists and turns that were necessary to get the decision passed.
"I know there is still some action being taken by some people but I think this one will be settled quickly now — we'll just have to wait and see what the social committee says won't we?"
He has a distinct message for not only the men on the shop floor when it comes to industrial relations but for the managers too. "Some of the managers are industrial illiterates, they don't know the first thing about industrial relations," he said.
"Consultation is the best way. I know a tale of a manager who had the best efficiency rates within his company who introduced a new trunking system.
"He told the shop stewards that he had the traffic to fill it and it was up to them to make the new service work. They went away and came back with a scheme to make it work, and it worked."
Now he is helping to set up courses to teach both men and managers the best way to conduct their relationships. He uses the title of Results Through People for his courses — "It covers everything and saves changing titles for different courses," says Ken.
His job is to go into a company and tell them what i: wrong with their set-up. Tr establish communication: between men an c management.
Ken's experience wit' industrial relations and th( solving of disputes is, after 2f years in the business, vast am he is now putting that exper. ience to good use. Among is latest projects is lecturing tc various seminars on tacho. graphs.
"This consultancy busines5 is proving to be a very good way of running down gradual. ly. I am 63 now and I will not be doing much except fishing and gardening after I'm 65, that's for certain," he says.
In any conversation with Ken Jackson about industrial relations he will keep plugging away to get his message of .people and consultation across.
He says that this is the only way that management and men will ever be able to learn to live together in peace.
Ken believes in positive results and positive thinking. He says that even in negotiated agreements between the union and a company he has always taken care to say that there is a procedure "for the avoidance of disputes and not a procedure for disputes."
But he also says that being a union official is as much about man-management as about negotiation. "The paid officials cannot vote at a meeting — the decisions must be those of the members but I found that I could influence them to produce the right decision."
And if the men did not produce the right decision then it was up to him to go back to work and talk and reason the members into acting in the right way.
"But consultation would have produced the right answer in the first place in the majority of cases. If a problem is put in the right way then 12 in 20 men will agree with you," he said.