British Strikes Don’t Signal Replay of ‘70s
For those who endured the paralyzing effects of Britain’s trade union battles in the 1970s, a flurry of recent strikes has evoked an ominous sense of deja vu .
In the auto industry, Ford Motor’s British subsidiary was recently forced to make important concessions to end the first major strike in a decade by its 32,000 production workers only to face the threat of another walkout by 12,500 supervisory staff members next week.
Production at the Land Rover subsidiary of the government-owned Rover Group halted earlier this week when the company’s 6,000 production workers rejected a 14%, two-year agreement. General Motors’ Vauxhall subsidiary, meanwhile, has been wrestling the unions since last August for a new contract.
Elsewhere, nurses employed by the National Health Service have staged a series of one-day protest strikes for the first time. Seamen manning the country’s ferry services walked out earlier this month, tying up British ferry ports for several days. And coal mining supervisors conducted two one-day strikes.
“Britain is still suffering from industrial disease,” lamented the Times of London in an editorial.
Not Always for Money
Others have openly worried that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s apparent cure for the so-called British Disease--tough legislation that effectively undercut the power of union leaders--may not have cured Britain’s industrial troubles after all.
However, those who monitor labor relations in Britain claim that the wave of recent labor unrest, while unsettling, does not portend the start of a slide back into the shop floor anarchy of the 1970s.
They note that the present spate of disputes appears to have neither a recognizable pattern nor is it characterized by the massive wage demands that were a common thread in the late 1970s.
The nurses’ strikes, for example, were directed primarily at pressuring the government to arrest the decline of the state-funded health service. The seamen struck to protest plans to eliminate jobs, while mining supervisors halted work because productivity bonuses in some instances had placed their pay behind that of ordinary workers.
Even in the auto industry, money has not always been the key issue.
While Ford conceded 14% in increased pay and had to settle for a two-year agreement rather than the three-year pact it initially proposed, union concessions to drop longstanding demarcations between production and maintenance tasks and between skilled and unskilled jobs are viewed as a major breakthrough for increased productivity.
Although another strike, centered on the same issue of greater job flexibility, still hangs over Ford, company officials say the labor relations climate is less heated than during the 1970s.
“The basic mood is different today,” noted a spokesman at the company’s British headquarters east of London. “Trade unions are much more willing to adapt (to) new practices and shop floor methods because they know if they stand still, they could lose their jobs entirely.”
Certainly the number of disputes remains far smaller than a decade ago. In 1979, the economy lost nearly 30 million man-days because of strikes, compared to 3.5 million last year.
Despite the number of highly visible stoppages, labor relations specialists believe that there has been no major jump in the volume of man-days lost since the turn of the year.
“Stoppages are still running at a very low level in the country,” stated John Carhill, senior policy adviser at the Confederation of British Industries, Britain’s largest association of employers. “Overall, industrial relations have improved dramatically since the 1970s and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.”
He noted a gradual trend toward multi-year settlements as one important element that has helped to stabilize labor relations. Virtually unknown in the 1970s, such agreements last year constituted 7% of the total.
Stephen Wood, a lecturer of industrial relations at the London School of Economics, said the increased importance of productivity bonuses and the effects of recent labor relations legislation also tended to reduce the prospects of widespread crippling industrial unrest.
Laws implemented since Thatcher became prime minister nine years ago outlawing both secondary picketing and strikes without a secret ballot of a union’s membership have played a major role in reducing strikes.
The growing popularity of productivity bonuses in the 1980s has also meant a far sharper financial penalty for those engaging in work stoppages than in the past.
“A lot has changed in recent years,” said Carhill.
“We’ve had some visible disputes, but there’s nothing to indicate we’re headed for a return to the bad old days.”
