The current issue of the Transport & General Workers' Record contains an extended report of a speech on productivity bargaining and industrial dem ocracy, delivered by Jack Jones to some 200 personnel officers who had been brought together by the Manchester Institute of Personnel Management, This is an unlikely platform for socialist utterances, but nonetheless socialists would be well advised to study carefully the main points made by Jack Jones in this conference, The publication of the Labour Party NEC's statement on Industrial Democracy, which was presented to the Easter Conference of the Young Socialists, has raised numerous rather tricky problems for the workers! control movement, in that it mixes up some very important control demands with a whole battery of "participation" devices, the total effect of which would be to increase the pressure of corporatist forms of association, menacing trade union independence in a very serious way. It is in this context that Jack Jones! remarks are very important: although he does make use of the misleading formula of "workers' participation" in management, he clearly interprets this formula in a sense which is much closer to the school of supporters of workers' control than to the Labour Party 's corporatist fringe, Here are some examples:
"In the first place", says Jack Jones, "we must see an end to so much
negotiation in the dark, The provision of information is essential
to proper functioning of an effective body. In the private section
we recomend tht the Companies Act should require disclosure to rep-
resentation of recognized trade unions information on the financial
position of the firm and other essential details." Of course, it is important to define very csrefully the extent of ‘this disclosure, and to ensure that union representatives remain completely accountable to their members, and able to report on any information they may receive, Only in this way will the experience of the workpeople be able to check the claims of their employer against their own practimlexperience, But it is pweisely in this field, of the respon sibility of workers' representatives to their constituents, that Jack Jones! arguments are very much more advanced snd clear than those of the Labour Party Study Group on Industrial Democracy as a- whole.
"At workplace level", he says "the managers would sit with an agreed
number of elected shop stewards, who would primarily represent those
on whose behalf they were appointed. Their main role would not be
to accept joint responsibility but to ensure that the workers! voice
was heard," (my emphasis) That is to say, the conflict basis of such "participation" would be unimpaired, There could be no question of the workers representatives being implicated in "the responsibility for the unpopular decisions which have to be taken", as the Director recently delicately described the corporatist design. This, clearly, is a vital principle, and it is very important to explain it very precisely to the thousands of workers who have begun to take interest in the campaign for workers! control,
Jack Jones also stakes out some of the claims which workers would expect to make in this fields they include the use of manpower and equipment, pay
cortinued on previous page/