Efficiency for what?

At a time when efficiency is increasingly being equated with socialism, it is especially useful to read the liinistry of Labour's latest contribution to socialist thegry*. Labour's new ideology differs in some respects from the old,"A contented worker is not necessarily an efficient worker, A man with a skill in some traditional craft may derive satisfaction from a job which is not economically justifiable or may prefer to work far more painstakingly and carefully than is necessary or, from the point of view of speed, desirable." No stone is left unturned by the authors in their search for the formula of efficiency, Joint consultation is considered and the, rejected, "It may help greatly to improve efficiency in the right conditions byt it cannot change the fact that the interests of managements and workers do not wholly coincide." Quite Soe However, satisfactionism, consultation about and control of work is incidental to a higher purpose= "Payee. is the most important thin, for the great majority of workers, It is after all what most people work for." The discussion of method of payments spreads over several pages. Fowley is the inspiration and ‘incomes policy' the watch=word, Piece rate encourages wages drift and therefore should be changed for a variety of incentive schemes, fringe benefits are welcomed as they raise the worker's status and make him feel intejrated, The resort comes out strongly for fostering the shop-steward movements, Stewards are "often not sufficiently apsreciated", Nanagement should help their workers! representatives by providing facilities for proper elections and enhancing their prestige by takin, them on trips to look at new machinery installed in different parts of the country,etc, The stewards should be given opportunities to report back to their constituents, This paternalistic approach should not be too blatant, lanagement should “avoid putting on workers' representatives the responsibility for explaining and justifyin; management policy; it is not their job, they are unlikely to do it well and they may well lose the confidence of their constituents in the process", The final recommendations of the report are few. Profit-sharin, is rejected as is codetermination, The Ministry of Labour should increase the pronotion of sensible labour management, examine the possibility of producing statistics giving a guise to labour management relations,etc, The authors have prowled around for 35 pages firmly within the cage of capitalist assumptions and have got nowhere, Their chronic myopia is seen in the discussion of workers! control(all six lines of it), Yugoslavia is discussed: "This system is very much the product of particular historical circumstances" ," *"Attitudes to Efficiency", H.M.S.0. 1/6d.