(Chairman Rt.Hon.Lord Donovan) Report. H.M.S.0O. June 1968 Cmmd.3623. % Donovan: page 262, paras 1019-1020
The purpose of Donovan's search for Order is quite clearly not the raising of the power of local shop stewards, but their integration into the system, through a combination of consensus and status-appeal, supported by greater legal and managerial discipline. The Donovan formula, worked out An detail within its pages, is in essence: 'decentralise the bargaining machinary, concentrate employers' authority at the level of the firm, support this authority, with a new national "ordér" in legal and institutional machinary, and in these ways, deflate the power of the working-class and the shop stewards’, This concern for order and the consequences of dis-order is apparent in Donovan's treatment also of trade union structure and internal government: "...certain features of trade union structure and government have helped to inflate the power of work groups and shop stewards." (para 1016)
The Donovan Commission is naturally obsessed above all by the problem of strikes, and particularly of unofficial strikes. The growth of strike action in post-war years is,predictably, ascribed to the lack of order in the institutions of industrial relations, and orderliness will, we are assured, go far towards reducing its incidence. But what kind of order should be established? Should it be achieved through the reform of machinary and institutions, or through greater legal sanctions? The Commission's choice is apparently directed towards the former: much emphasis is placed upon the passing of an Industrial Relations Act, and the establishment of an Industrial Relations Commission whose role would be to prod, probe, suggest, and register the new-style collective agreements concluded at factory level. This sounds permissive, but an agency of this kind would greatly strengthen the policing of the incomes policy; the restrictive arm of the state acting in defence of wage restraint and in favour of greater work-intensity (productivity bargaining) would be made vastly more efficient and intrusive.
Tue old Ministry of Labour, renamed under Barbara Castle the Ministry of Employment and .roductivity,police the incomes policy, and ensure the application of the stringent criteria for"@pproved" productivity bargains. There are clearly too few of these Ministry men to cover the whole ground. The proposed Industrial Relations Commission would be a welcome addition to the states.armoury..against wage -Arift en ee oe
At the same time, as we shall see, the Commission docs not neglect the possibilities of extending legal controls over the trade unions, and - over the "temporary combinations of workers" which emerge in unofficial strikes. Before dealing with this section of the Report in detail however, let us first summarise some of the peripheral recommendations.
The Commission proposes that workers should be given the right of appeal to a Labour Tribunal (the present tri-partite Industrial Tribunals, renamed, and with the powers of a Court of Law), in cases of unjust dismissal, (There should be exemption however, from this procedure, for firms with 'sound' private schemes of appeal.) The burden of proof would be on the employer in such cases. But an employer can, by reason of his status qua employer, always find reasons for dismissal which a bourgeois court will accept as reasonable. (The tri partite constitution of ‘the Tribunals should not mislead the unions into supposing that they are not bourgeois dominated. The trade union panels on the Industrial Tribunals are very weak at present, and in any case their verdict, and that of the employer, can be
relied on to cancel each other out, leaving effective power of decision to the chairman - invariably, a lawyer$}) Furthermore, the Commission does not propose that these Tribunals should have the power to re-instate a dismissed worker against the wishes of the employer. (In cases where Labour Courts exist in other capitalist countries, there is a similar limitation on their powers.) We may conclude that in crucial cases, where legal protection may be needed by victimised workers, the Tribunals would prove quite inadequate. Would the seventeen sacked shop stewards at Fords, in the infamous 1963 case, have . received protection from these Tribunals, had they existed? One has only to ask the question to realize that the Commission certainly did not intend that employers' powers to hire and fire should be restricted in that kind of situation,
The Commission rejects the idea that unwilling employers should be compelled to recognize trade unions. The proposed Industrial “elations Commission should confine itself to persuasion in this field. The Commission believes that Courts of Inquiry should be given extended powers to compel witnesses, to enforce attendance, and to commission evidence. Ali Arbitration bodies should be placed under statutory compulsion to observe the government's Price and Incomes policy. The majority of the Commission do not recommend that the law should be changed to compel "worker directors" to be included on Boards of Directors.
Concerning trade union law, the Commission recommends that the definition of a trade union should be altered to exclude "temporary combinations" of workers. Only registered trade unions, in other words, would come under the scope of laws which protect combinations, including strike law. The rules of trade unions should contain certain unspecified requirements relating to discipline, expulsions, "arbitrary" refusal of admission, the role of the shop stewards, etc. A dispute between a union and the Registrar of Trade Unions on these matters should be resolved by an "independent" review body. Many of the customary rules which are here challenged by the Commission relate, significantly, to the job control which workers have established through their trade unionism. On strike law, the majority of the Commission recommend that Section III of the 1906 Trades Dispute Act, which protects strikers against civil action for damages, should apply in future only to registered trade unions. The effect of this would be to place all unofficial strikers at the mercy of the litigating employer. The Commission is involved in an interesting re For they also record their belief | that no new, legal .sanctions/ e introduced against unofficial strikes as such expressing their faith that the institutional reforms which they propose will effectively reduce the incidence of strike action. They argue at length against the wisdom of penal sanctions. (They print as an Appendix the splendid evidence of an ex-Ministry of Labour officiel, who had to prosecute several thousand striking Kent miners during the 2nd World War. The story of that incident and the Sehweik-like conflict between the law and the strikers, is worth all the rest of the Report put together!) Yet the Commission betrays the expediency which lies behind its fine words, not only in the recommendation on Section III of 1906, but in its conclusion that, if the institutional reforms should fail to reduce significantly the number of strikes, then the position would have to be reviewed again!
Reviewed again it almost certainly will be. The press reception of the Donovan Report showed clearly the disappointment of the leader writers
and the labourcolumnists (who merely reflect the heightening tension of the contemporary class struggle) that the Commission failed to "grasp the nettle" of legal sanctions against strikes. The Conservative Party's own policy, contained in their slyly-titled pamphlet, "A Fair Deal at Work", is crystal clear, in all those areas where Donovan is evasive and ambiguous. The Tories promise the most stringent legal restraint upon the independent formation of trade union rules, and working practices. They will make collective agreements enforceable at law, and they will outlaw unofficial strikes. They will introduce American style legislation to order strikers back to work for a "cooling-off" period. They will do all this in the name of those "orderly" industrial relations for which Donovan scarches with such assiduity through the dreary lengths of its pedestrian pages. For although we are likely to see a major political conflict between the impending Tory Government and the working class movement, on the issues of the right to strike and independent trade unions, we should recognize very clearly that it was the Donovan Commission, appointed by Wilson and Gunter, despite the declarations made by Labour Leaders at the time of the 1964 election, and operating in the climate of anti-unionism generated by Gunter,and Wilson himself (remember the seamens strike) which lifted the curtain on that conflict.
The hopes of the Donovan Commission, that formalised, "orderly" factory agreements can accomplish the incorporation of the working class and its representatives, are doomed to disappointment. The move towards factory agreements is already advanced; it is explicit in the drive for productivity bargains. There is little evidence that this is leading towards peace and harmony. In the bus industry, the failure of trade union leadership (and it should be said, the confusion sown by some rank and file delegates at their hastily summoned conferences in recent months) may have avoided a head on clash. But there is no shadow of doubt that the divisive tactics employed by the Government in the bus men's case, the attempt to drive them back onto a productivity bargain which is weightcd against them from the beginning, has produced an unprecedented level of frustration, bitterness, and militancy. The abominable productivity bargain which the Rootes workers "accepted" earlier this year, is already leading directly to intensified conflict in the Midlands car industry, and much more is to come in that region. The I.C.I. Manpower Utilisation and Payments Scheme, an elaborate company level agreement which seems to meet all the ideals of the Donovan Commission, has been held up for nearly three years by important sectionsof that company's workers, and has generated a new level of consciousness amongst them. From all corners for those who listen, comes the angry note of disillusion from shop stewards who have already concluded apparently successful factory-level productivity bargains. ‘
Really, the Donovan Commission's proposed "structural" changes, its suggested reforms of the "institutions" of collective bargaining, are not innovations at all. They are simply the formalisation of a development which is already far advanced. In the 1950's, this development probably benefited the fragmented and a-political tactics of the shop ste-ard bargainers. In the straitened economic and political circumstances of the 1960's, the trend has been seized by the employers and government in an attempt to turn it against the working class. (The reduction of unit labour-costs is the criterion above all by which the employers and Barbara Castile test a productivity bargain. Such a reduction means of course, a shift towards property income, away from income for work.) The Donovan Commission aims
to strengthen this trend. It does so with relative diffidence, when compared with the forthright declarations of the Tory Party. But it does so without any conciliating offer to the trade unions. Its failure to offer anything substantial - however ambiguous in form or content - reveals the serious weakness (indeed the complete bankruptcy) of the reformist stream in British political life today. When the Whitley Commission was established to solve & parallel crisis of "disorder in.industrial relations" towards. the end of the ls} World War, it came up with a variety of proposals, some of which were /concrete though limited value to the unions, ;
The extension of minimum wage machinary in unorganized trades, the provision of a permanent arbitration.Court, and the encouragement.given to collective bargaining through Joint Industrial Councils, coincided at least in part to genuine reform aspirations within the trade unions. And the endorsement of the "advance" practice of Joint Consultation by Whitley offered an ambiguous snare in which the trade unions becameentangled for two generations. The Whitley pattern survives today as that formal machinary which the Donovan Commission believes is preventing the formalisation of the factory bargain. There is of course no reason for socialists to hope or expect that trade unions will defend Whitley against Donovan. But Donovan fails entirely to discover a formula of structural change which offers any inducement to the unions to move on into the new corporate design. The key blunder of the Commission (on its own terms of course) is clearly the failure to take the question of "participation" more seriously. Wilson, learning from Whitley (and de Gaulle?), appears to be shaping up to remedy that omission. Participation is the last shot in the locker of this Government, and for any foreseeable successor. The trade union movement has the potential to withstand that shot; if it does we may look forward to the argument turning to the real issue - that of authority and control in industry and the state.