The Employers’ Offensive - Productivity Deals and how to i:ght them. by Tony Cliff
Pluto Press, paperback 6s.
Tony Cliff has done a very thorough and well documented job :. exposing the dangers and pitialls inherent in the present ‘save of productivity deals that is being unleashed. This isa pook of over two hundred pages, the bulk of which deals in same detail with various aspects of productivity bargaining. As the 'blurb’ on the front says - "A concise and thorough explanation of the many pitfalls which exist for workers under the guise of praductivity bargaining. A book that every trade unionist ought to read.'' This is an opinion that I would agree with,
Cliff deals with Measured Day Work, Greater Flexibility in the Deployment of Labour, Job Evaluation, Time and Motion Study, Redundancy and much more besides. This gives one an idea of the scope of the book. In particular his exposure of the so-called 'science' of time and motion study is a very valuable addition to any shop stewards armoury. His quotation from the ‘father’ of time and motion study is a gem -
"Now one of the very first requirements for a man who is fit to handle pig iron as a regular occupation is that he shali be so stupid and so phlegmatic that he more nearly resembles in his mental make-up the ox than any other type."
(F,W, Taylor, Principles of Scientific Management, 1911} It is precisely the hope of the bosses to reduce their employees to this bovine state by productivity deals, not in such a crude or blatant manner perhaps, but nevertheless they want workers who are amenable as oxen,
One of the other valuable features of this book ig the large aumber of workers who have given evidence directly to the author, 2s well as his quotations from official documents and agreements, Many of the comments in these items from shop floor workers are revealing in more ways than one, Firstly, many of them reveal the worsening of conditions where productivity deals have been in operation, and secondly they show
that the workers may have to work like oxen, but they don't think like them,
The picture emerges of an overall offensive by the employers to prop up sagging profit rates, at the expense of the workers. Peter Jay, who gave a lengthy review of this book in The Times Business Section, tries to pass off the evidence presented as so much “drivel”, but it is noticable that he makes no attempt to challenge even one item of fact in the whole book, This either means that he has not done his home work or could not come up with anything worthwhile. However, the fact that The Times chose to pay so much attention to this book means that it views the contents seriously, and so should every worker.
Cliff has made and excellent job of cataloguing the many pitfalls in this field for the unwary worker. However, when he comes to attempt to prescribe an answer he is not so successful. Quite correctly he says -
"In productivity bargaining the traditional form of
negotiations - workers making demands on their employers for better wages and conditions - is reversed. Now it is the employers who are demanding changes, and in doing so try to force the workers into taking a purely passive role and simply responding to these demands." {1)
This sums up the position very well indeed, but what is Cliff's answer?
"Now comes the 64 thousand dollar question - haw do we fight a productivity deal? I hope no one who has read this book so far will be in any doubt where I stand on the question of Productivity Dealing - bitterly and unalterably opposed to it. But this does not in itself solve the problem of developing a strategy for fighting them. Any fool can denounce a Productivity Deal and say we should have nothing todo with it. It is an entirely different matter to leada group of workers in successfully resisting such a deal’. (2) That is clear and to the point, and eminently sensible, because it is not an easy task to fight the present methods of employers attacks, when they are so well gilded with what seems to be large increases in pay. But we turn over the page and Cliff says this -
"We must always start by opposing the Productivity Deal completely and then later, if necessary, retreat to a position where we try to get the best out of the deal we can." (3) 11
And on the next page we have -
"_,.any steward has to remember the first rule of negotiation the girl who starts by saying NO gets a higher price for her virtue than the girl who talks money at the outset." (4)
In other words if you camnot beat them join them! Despite all the good intentions Cliff is unable to come up witha
coherent counter-strategy. True enough that he has some very useful ideas about productivity deals should be dealt with once they are entered into, but he presents no overall strategy Which will take the workers onto the offensive before the bosses make their move. This is the missing Tink, since right “ere and row thas is precisely what workers need. The rising tide oj militancy will be beaten back unless sucha strategy is adopted. The only concrete answer that Cliff comes up with is to sell the ‘rule book' as dearly as possible, despite his good intentions and protestations, That is exactly what the employers want, He explains this himself in earlier sections of the book, so that his alleged answer is a let down.
However, despite the grave shortcomings of the last chapter, this book is still worth buying, because it can supply a great deal of ammunition to those who care to extract it from its pages.
(op. 2lt (2} p.215 (3) 216 (4) 9.217
a.W,
The Explosion. Marxism and the French Upheaval.
Henri Lefebure. Monthiy Review Press, 1969,
Is the effort of concentration, which is required to read this book, proportionate to the insights to be gained from it? I'm not quite sure, The effort is certainly great. There is no shortage of anecdotal journalistic accounts of the May Days - this is not one of them. It was written at the end of May 1968 and reads like (perhaps it is) the private jottings of a subtle mind seeking the mental categories with which to start interpreting momentous events, ihe contents of which it would be redundant to describe. Less than 25 pages (out of over 150) involve any concrete content: names, dates, places, (The name of De Gaulle does not appear at all, not to speak of Cohn Bendit or Seguy. No party or organisation or newspaper or factory; no place other than Paris and Nanterre is named), This abstraction, was perhaps intellectually necessary in the midst of events, but at this distance it is confusing and disconcerting. Yet there ARE numerous insights and suggestions for mental orientation on a subject of such crucial importance that probably 2a major effort to extract what one can from it is well worthwhile.
Lefebvre considers it essential to differentiate old and new contradictions in society - those which have been analysed by Marx and Lenin and those which are specific to France and to latter day capitalism. He argues for a careful analysis of the relationship between these and of the effects of the lags produced by uneven development of different aspects of society. But he himself does not make this analysis - concentrating entirely on suggestions about the nature of the new contradictions, He discusses, for example, modern 'urbanism' (theory and practice}, as the destruction of the city - 'Past, absent and future’ - by the projection of the functional dissociations and fragmentations of the division of labour onto terrain. Segregation is the ultimate logic of capitalism; the movement from Nanterre - 'deurbanised', marginal, a void - to the Sorbonne is seen as follows ‘In March 1871 as in May 1968 people who had come from the outlying areas into which they had been driven and where they found nothing but a social void, assembled and proceeded together loward a reconquest of the urban centres", which with the movement onto the streets, he interprets as involved with the breaking of barriors and as steps to the reconquest of the wholeness of man". Strangely, he tries to describe some of these new contradictions as an ‘internal colonisation’. “Organisational capitalism now has its colonies in the Metropolis... Groups
i"
that are semi colonial or view themselves as such, and are distributed as dependancies of the centres of power: ghettos, suburbs, outlying areas, the youth, students,"
Similarly he says it's important to discuss the relationship between market forces, economic and elags interests and state and bureaucratic power. But he fails to do so, concentrating on the characteristics of the modern state. He describes its strategy of 'absolute politics‘ which destroys 21l intermediate structures (parliament, the judiciary etc.) as live forces and creates a void around itself; spontaneity arises within and to fill this void of boredom and humiliation.
Again, he objects to the description of the student revolt as ‘detonator’ to the workers which "assumes that analytical problems - especially that of juncture - have already been solved. What happened when the student movement began to penetrate the working class? How did the workers view this movement before joining it? What was the role of working class youth?" Yet he himself devotes all his enquiry to the students, none to the workers or to 'problems of juncture’, 1 think this work should be read as notes towards a book (or a series of books). If il were to be taken as an analysis of the May events or of the social crisis preceding them,
(however sketchy), it would lay itself open to severe crilicisms for an imbalance in its stress on new contradictions, on the state, on students (at the expense of the old, the economic, the working class} which was probably tar from the intentions of the author himself. Ifthe writer himself considered it to be notes towards, then we would wait keenly for the work itself to appear. Since there is no guarantee of this, we must make as much of what we have as we can. (And others might well be able to make more of it than this reviewer).
Constance Lever Available from BMS Publications The Making of Revolutionaries - Cadre or Sect
Ken Tarbuck 10pp
Workers' Control - What Next?
Chris Arthur and Ken Tarbuck
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“The Rise of Enoch Powell" - Paul Foot,
Penguin Press 5s.
In hig introduction, Foot states that he has not set out Lo provide a biography of Powell, or a fact by fact account of his speeches on race and immigration, but rather "It is an attempt to trace the development of Enoch Powell's thinking and speeches on immigration and race - and in doing so to provide ammunition for a counter attack." Or in the words of the blurb on the back cover "Powell's views on race have shifted significantly in the past few years. In this Penguin Special Paul Foot shows how and why they have changed - and launches a devastating counter-attack,'' Without doubt Foot has done a magnificent job on the first theme, showing how and why Powell's views on race have changed, but the “counter attack" is not so much ‘launched" as "slipped in’ and while it is penetrating it is not dealt with in sufficient depth to make it devastating.
The characterization of Powell is excellent. His idiosyncracies as a politician are not allowed to disguise the fact that he can be located specifically on the far right of the political spectrum - a process which justifiably deflates the imawe that Powell has of being wholly original, atypical. and some kind of demon intellectual power-house. The danger that Powell represents is not underestimated in any way by revealing the somewhat pathetic figure of a man wallowing in the filth that Smethwick generated in an attempt to fulfil his frustrated ambitions. Foot devotes the great bulk of his book to documenting Powell's shift on race from a man who, in the first reaction to Smethwick was still described by the Observer as “extremely hostile to bringing race into polities” (pg 70) toa man whose speeches on race are virtually indistinguishable from those of the National Front ip¢g U9}. Powell's claim to consistency on race is utterly destroyed: his claim that immigration was the principle political issue in Wolverhampton from 1954 to 1966 is carefully and systematically torn to shreds by Foot's detailed investigation,
In so far as Foot set out to prove that Powell had ‘embarked on one of the most dangerous and opportunist escapades in the history of British politics'' (pg 128); that he is exploiting the race issue for the political gains that both he and the right wing of the Tory party might hope to pick up, he succeeds admirably. The point is driven home with an account of the Powell/Heath maneuvers to out bid each other for right wing support while attempting to discredit each other, with the
Labour party in the background mouthing moral condemnation while capitulating in panic and confusion. Ina limited sense then Foot does indeed provide the ammunition for a counter attack - in go far as his thorough investigation reveals Powell stark naked as an unscroupulous political opportunist and however much this may seem like old hat to marxists it is both useful and necessary because it is documented and proved. However, this is not enough and for this reason the book will be greeted with sceptism on the Marxist left. It is not enough to reveal Powell as opportunist, tunscrupulous, and fascist, one must as Foot says on the last page "mobilize the masses". That means as analysis must be provided which is fundamentally relevant to the working class. The frustrating thing about Foot's book is that he neither satisfies nor ignores this necessity. The class analysis which locates racism in relation to capitalism's labour demands and its inability to cope with the problems which this demand creates, is virtually limited to the last eighl pages of a book which is 143 pages long. ft is not totally ignored however, as in chapter two Foot shows quite clearly that immigration to Wolverhampton after the war followed the demand for labour and that racial conflict was a consequence of recession. But il is only in the last chapter that Foot turns his attention lo a serious analysis of racism in relalion to Powell's politics. The result is a penetrating put all too brief examination of Powell the champion of an uneontrolled, rampant capilalism, finding in racism a way out of the chaos which is free market economy creates,
“These facts leach us something about Mr, Powell's free market economy. It delivers workers to the employer - any number of workers he requires; but it does not deliver the services for the workers, Full employment, expansion, a booming capitalism still does not provide decent housing, schools, welfare services for its workers."
It is such shortages that people like Powell have to explain and they do it by finding a scapegoat - immigrants, Powell himself and the free market economy he prays for are neally linked and demonstrated to be the root cause of racial conflict in Powell's championship of the 57 Rent Act which in re-establishing [ree market relations and housing havoc also ereates racial conflict.
Paul Foot's book is uselul and illwninating but if suffers considerably in the relative weight allotted toplotting Powell's course on race and the analytical theme taken up in the Inst chapter. The latter must be the focul point of any attempt to understand and destroy Powell.
Kevin Whitston
New Left Review
Issue number 60 will contain -
The New Soviet Opposition Tamara Deutscher
An Interview with Georg Lukacs
The Revolutionary Party Lucio Magri
The Fatal Meridian Tom Nairn
The Specificity of US Imperialism Gareth Steadman-Jones Issue number 59 contained -
USA - The Universal Contradiction Marlin Nicolaus Armed Struggle in Brazil Joao Qaurtim
The Laws of Uneven Development Ernest Mandel Prison Notes on Gramsci Regis Debray
Issue number 58 contained -
Interview With Jean-Paul Sartre Itinerary of a Thought Spain - A Weak Link? Ricard Soler
The Problems of the Capitalist State Nicos Poulanizas Fighting to Win Ben Brewster
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