LINE OF ATTACK
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VOLUNTEERS must be few and far between for seats on the employers' panel of the Road Haulage Wages Council. Their task seems . to become more and more like a game of blind man's buff. Many of them have served on the panel for several years, and in comparatively recent times they have seen the familiar landmarks disappear one by one. They may keep to the procedure that they have found worked successfully in the past, but it must be with less and less conviction that they now go through the motions.
Meetings of the panel and of the council are held in private, but reports given by members from time to time have helped to provide a reliable picture of what goes on. When there was something that could be described as a wages pattern, the procedure was not unlike a game or a stately dance. The original object in setting up a statutory board, later to become a council, was to ensure that all the workers in a somewhat diverse industry would have the legal right to be paid in accordance with a scale of minimum wages.
In theory, either the employers' side or the workers' side can put forward proposals for a change in the wage scales. In practice, the employers have never found sufficient reason to take the initiative, and have consistently found themselves in the position • of defending a base against attack by the trade unions. Broadly speaking, the line of the attack has been predictable. Whenever the cost of living has risen appreciably, or there have been wage increases in other industries, hauliers have come to expect an approach from "the other side."
Subsequent events have moved to their conclusion in an almost predetermined fashion. The demand from the unions is generally for a larger wage increase than might be thought justified, possibly larger than they expect to get in the end. The initial response from the employers has often been a flat refusal. The way is then clear for the normal process Of bargaining. Neither side readily makes a concession to tilt other, if only because they feel that by doing so they would be letting down the people they represent.
Foregone Conclusion The independent members really make the final decision. After hearing both sides, and perhaps after a series of meetings with each side in turn, they contrive to make understood that settlement they themselves consider appropriate. One side will be found to agree and to put forward that settlement as a definite proposal. With the support of the independent members the result of the vote is a foregone conclusion, whatever the other side may do. Each side has an equal voting strength, and presumably there has never been an occasion when both the employers and the workers refused the compromise finally put to them.
My account may have made the procedure resemble a charade, but there is no doubt that it has been excellent for most purposes. Eac.h side has been able to resolve its inner contradictions in the process of working towards a decision. The employers, from the outset, may have been willing to give a rise in wages, but they were on the council as delegates and had a duty to resist the application. The union representatives have naturally wished to get as much as possible for their members, but have known all along that the possibilities were limited.
Each side has probably had, from the outset, a shrewd idea of the approximate terms of the final settlement. All the values needed for solving the formula were known more or less exactly. The cost-of-living index, now known as the index of retail prices, is published each month, and from time to time elaborate tables are made available covering a wide range of industries and showing such things as the average earnings each week and each hour, and the average number of hours worked. Wage rates have an index figure of their own, which can be compared with the retail price index, and it is easy to work out the figure for road haulage wages alone.
Economists may deplore the fact that there is no national wage policy covering all industries, and protest that it is not a good thing for wages councils to jostle each other in a desperate game of leapfrog, which (say the economists) too easily degenerates into beggar-your-neighbour. These cogitations are beyond the scope of the individual wages council, who can do no more than play the game according to the current rules. They have proceeded along these lines without much difficulty until fairly recently.
Tangled Pattern Many members of the Road Haulage Wages Council that met this week may have regretted the good old times. They cannot have found the old formula of much use, and the history of the past few years has progressively tangled up the wages pattern. The hauliers on the council may be tempted to argue that the rot set in with nationalization, when the wage structure of British Road Services was separated from that governing other hauliers, on the grounds that it was neither appropriate nor .dignified.for a nationalized concern to have to guarantee wages by law.
Whatever the force of this argument, it is incongruous— and has become even more so since denationalization—that separate wages should apply in two sections of the same industry. For a long time the wages paid by B.R.S. and by independent hauliers did not differ greatly, in spite of which the inconsistency upset the smooth rhythm of the Wages Council. The same unions were concerned with both sections, and the temptation could hardly be resisted of playing off one side against the other. Whenever a wage increase was sought, the unions usually found it convenient to make the first approach to B.R.S., perhaps because the largest concentration of union membership was to be found there.
A variety of reasons has been found .by independent hauliers for the apparent ease with which B.R.S. have given way on certain occasions. What was particularly annoying was that the agreement in practice cut the ground away from under the feet of the Wages Council. They might well have come to much the same agreement if left to their own devices, but they disliked finding their procedure was of no more value than a rubber stamp.
The situation has become even more confusing as a result of the decision taken by B.R.S. on wage increases to meet the effect of the increase from 20 m.p.h. to 30 m.p.h. in the speed limit for heavy vehicles, Individual arrangements by independent hauliers-find no place in the wages Orders, whereas the B.R.S. agreement has been welded on to their wage structure and affects all their workers. The main change is an addition of 15 per cent, to the basic rates of pay, and this is combined with a reduction from 11 to 10 hours in the maximum working day. Nothing similar has been proposed by the unions to the Wages Council, but the agreement with B.R.S., whether or not it was raised at this week's meeting, must have lain like a fog over the whole of the discussions.