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Provincial settlement
Page 41
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THANKS for your thoughtful and informative comments and news on wage negotiations for 1980.
May I mention your report of last week and make an observation arising from it? You refer to the Leeds/Bradford settlement (see CM, November 3)as a likely minimum and then later describe groups such as Leeds/ Bradford as a thorn in the flesh to Joint Industrial Councils and (by implication) to some large companies. The observation is this: that JICs and large companies who still have to settle for 1980 are presented with a great challenge and a great incentive. Can they settle independently of Leeds/Bradford? If so, what a leap forward it would be in establishing the principle that negotiators agree what they see as right not what others see as right.
My company is a member of the Leeds/Bradford Federation, but not of its negotiating panel. We have our own wages agreement which already in some ways is superior to the new Leeds/ Bradford deal. No one can predict the outcome of pending wages negotiations, including my own.
Wage negotiations and industrial relations in general do not benefit from people taking up fixed positions. However, to declare Leeds/Bradford as irrelevant would open up negotiating positions rather than closing them down. Of course companies with surplus profits may wish to pay more than Leeds/Bradford, but highly profitable or not, let us unanimously dissent from the lazy, uncritical and counterproductive idea that the results of one minor provincial deal should be allowed to tie the hands of us all. That wouldn't be free collective bargaining, would it?
J. A. HENDRY Chief Executive, Smith & Robinson, Bothwell, Leeds