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Industry
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The Importance of Industry
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Its Growth and Development
The Job
3
4
10
The Organization
A Career in Industry
Industry in a Wider World
For further reading
14
22
30
32
PROBE is a series of short booklets which have been designed to provide
school groups and teachers with information about important topics, as a
basis for discussion.
No attempt is made to explore a topic exhaustively, nor do these studies
claim to be any more than pieces of ‘occasional’ writing, to serve the needs
of the moment. Their aim is merely to open up a particular subject and
raise a few relevant questions. The title PROBE is meant to convey, not
what the booklets do, but what its readers will want to do when they have
read them.
Ackno wledgmen ts
We are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce photographs:
Camera Press: 6, 13, 20, 21, 30
Central Office of Information: 24, 28
The Office of Public Information of the United Nations: 25
Science Museum, London: 5
Standard Triumph Motor Co Ltd: 10
The Trades Union Congress: 19
COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
{i~4 r a : r! o o r; S t.
; i-ufl c!
B A N G A L Q rl E - 5 G
334 00676 7
Text by Keith Denerley
Edited by Ian Bimie
Published 1972 by SCM Press Ltd, 56 Bloomsbury Street, London WC1
in conjunction with the Christian Education Movement
© Christian Education Movement 1970
Printed in Great Britain by Martin’s of Berwick
The Importance of Industry
In Great Britain, out of a total population of 66 million, there are
22 million employed in industry. These work in different sections as
follows:
Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing
Mining and Quarrying
Manufacturing
Construction
Gas, Electricity and Water
Transport and Communication
Distributive Trades
Insurance, Banking etc.
Professional and Scientific Services
Miscellaneous Services
Public Administration
345,000
401,000
8,432,000
1,429,000
369,000
1,564,000
2,582,000
971,000
2,904,000
1,794,000
1,416,000*
For manual workers, the average working week is 38 hours, paid
at 37p per hour. Clerical and administrative workers are paid by
the week, the averages being £22.50 for men and £17.49 for women
(1971 figures).
Moreover, this country depends for between a quarter and a half of
its food on industrial exports to the tune of some £5A million every
month (and it is well known that this is still not enough to clear our
debts).
♦These figures arc taken from Table 103 of the DE Gazette, February 1972
3
Its Growth and
Development
ORIGINS
Our picture
An early steam engine. Our present industrial civilization can be
thought of as beginning with the discovery of how to harness the
power of steam. Previously the limits had been those of muscle
power of man or horse or elephant, or the power of waterwheels or
windmills. What further developments have there been in power
engines? It could be said that man has always been industrial ever
since he hit on the idea, for instance, of using one stone to chip another.
Tools and machines are ancient, the hammer, the loom, the file, the
grindstone.
Division of labour
From very early times there have been those who do not make their
food directly, either by hunting it or by rearing it or by growing it.
Maybe in the beginning it was the same man who chewed the skins of
the beasts he had killed in order to make his own clothes and the same
man who chipped out his own flint arrowheads to go hunting again.
But the weaver and the toolmaker soon emerge as full-time specialists.
The family which can make the best cloth produces it for a whole
village and the village in turn supplies food in exchange.
Commerce
In the 7th century bc money was invented, with two important con
sequences:
4
(a) Saving was now possible. Instead of having to barter a jacket
every time you wanted a joint of meat, you could sell several
jackets, save the money and buy the meat as you required it.
(b) You could also lend money and/or borrow it.
Credit was now
possible.
For discussion
Suppose you own and work the village flour mill.
1
For whose benefit do you run it?
2
How much should you charge?
3
Maybe there’s too much work and you take on an assistant.
much do you pay him?
4
Maybe there’s still too much work and you need another set of
grindstones. You haven’t enough money yourself so you borrow
some to buy the new machinery. Should you pay interest on this
loan?
5
What docs ‘Loving your neighbour as yourself’ mean in this
situation?
How
5
FACTORY AND CITY
Our picture
A typical town in the industrial north of England. The availability
of new resources of power and materials enabled a concentration of
production with corresponding efficiency.
Large towns are nothing new. The population of ancient Rome
was 1,000,000 spread over four square miles. The traffic problem was
so great that Julius Caesar prohibited the delivery of goods to shops
during the hours of daylight. But what has been happening since the
beginning of the 19th century is that more and more cities all over the
world have been mushrooming in size. On the one hand, modern
factories need thousands of people to operate efficiently; on the other
the birth rate seems to ensure that there are always people to fill these
jobs. The human race, the more it produces, the more it reproduces.
For discussion
1
List the relative advantages of living in a town or in a village.
2
Would you rather work in a factory or on a farm? Why?
3
What steps are being taken to preserve a balance between town and
country?
4
Compared with medieval towns such as York or Ludlow, the
industrial town in the picture is thoroughly drab. The rows and
rows of houses lack beauty and colour and the factories are con
glomerations of mere functional sheds. Need this be so? Would
it cost more to design well? And if it did, would it be worth it?
Who would pay?
Draw a series of maps showing the rapid growth of the town or city
in which or near which you live. Suggested map dates: 1350 ad,
1600 ad, 1750 ad, 1800 ad, and each succeeding 50 years.
7
FINANCE
In the section on ‘Origins’ we supposed that the miller decided to float
a loan in order to increase his capital investment. The cost of a
modern production line runs into several millions of pounds which
has to be raised by loan: you are invited to purchase a ‘share’ in the
company, usually of between 25p and £1, in return for which you
are paid a part of the profit the company makes.
Suppose you lend £1 and the company uses it. They might well
pay you 7J% annual interest on your loan (or 7Ap), though you would
only actually receive about 5%, since the state would require the rest
in tax.
Of course if the company makes no profit, you get no interest on
this sort of ‘ordinary’ share. You may decide you want your money
back. How could the company pay you? Only by‘going bankrupt’,
selling off all its equipment at whatever price it can get and giving you
and the other creditors a proportion of the amount realized. This
way you might get say, 30p of your original £1 share.
More commonly, what you would do is to get someone else to take
on your part of the loan. He would ‘sell’ your ‘share’. If people
thought that the company had a reasonable chance of recovering, you
might get 75p for your ‘£T share and if in the next year the company
recovered and did make a profit, the new owner of the share would
be paid his 7.J% on the original amount of the loan, namely the £1
(and not on the 75p which he actually paid for it).
If a company is doing well, of course, there will be many people
anixous to ‘buy a share’ in it, so you might be able to sell your £1
share for £1.50. This way, as well as any interest you may have been
paid, you would make 50% profit on your original loan, though again
the state might well take a proportion as ‘capital gains tax’.
£1 invested
£1 invested
£1 invested
£1 invested
8
Company uses
Company collapses
Company struggling
Company prospers
Dividend 5p
Dividend nil
Dividend nil
Dividend lOp
Share worth £1
Share price 30p
Share price 75p
Share price £1.50
Thus shares can be bought and sold, on the stockmarket or stock
exchange. The most famous is in the City of London and runs as a
sort of auction in constant telephone communication with stockbrokers
and banks all over the country.
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Our picture
Is part of the finance page of a typical national daily newspaper and it
quotes the prices at which you could buy shares in the companies
stated, together with notes as to whether these prices are rising or
falling.
Most of the shares in British industry are owned, not by private
individuals directly, but by insurance companies, pension funds, banks
and so on who consider it wiser to make use of their clients’ money
in this way than to keep it in vaults.
For discussion
1
If you have savings should you
(a) give them to someone in need, here or abroad
(b) lend them without interest
(c) lend them for the most profit?
2
You expect to pay rent on a flat or a house which is not your own.
Is it right to consider interest as rent which a company pays for
money which is not its own?
3
Some people speak of dealing on the stock exchange as gambling.
Is this so?
4
The state provides schools, hospitals, roads, pensions, defence and
so on, and pays for them by taxation. If you receive interest
would you like it heavily taxed? Would you like others’ interest
heavily taxed?
5
Certain industries in this country are not financed by such public
loans as we have described. Which are they? Should these also
be made to show a profit?
9
The Job
MASS PRODUCTION
Our picture
Assembly line workers in a typical car plant. Their day begins at
7.30 a.m. and finishes at 4.15 p.m. with 15 minutes for breakfast at
9.30 a.m. and half an hour for dinner at 12.30 p.m. A typical job is
to fix the wheel hub on the front axle. It takes a man about two minutes
and he will usually repeat it 130 times a day. For this he is paid
anything between £20 and £30 a week (less tax and so on).
Henry Ford was the first man to mass produce the motor car. The
thought is something like this: if it takes one man a month to put
together the ten thousand or more parts which go into a motor car,
then one hundred men can put together two hundred cars a month, if
they are organized so that each puts together only a hundred parts.
The result of such mass production is more products, more profits,
more prosperity on the one hand but on the other, a supremely boring
job where it is easy to feel that the individual is nothing more than a
machine himself.
There are many other boring jobs besides those on assembly lines,
such as copy typing, being a guard on the underground, operating
punch cards for a computer or being a booking clerk. Although the
old agricultural jobs might have had little interest, for example harvest
ing a hundred acre field with hand tools, at any rate they did not
continue all the year round.
For discussion
1
Which would you choose, a highly paid boring job or one with
more interest but less money? Remember that if you choose the
first you will get used to having the money and it will be difficult
to change your mind.
2
How far is boredom a mere attitude of the mind? What can you
do to make a job less boring? If you can’t be interested in your
work, are you content to be interested in out-of-work activities?
3
Is there any job which is never boring?
4
Are there any alternatives to this sort of mass production?
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COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
47/1, (First Floor 13... Marks Road
BANGALOnE - 5u O 00'1
PAYMENT
12
The old Coventry method is payment by results: a skilled man on
piece work is timed. If this particular job takes him exactly two
minutes, he haggles with the ‘rate fixer’ for a price. They may agree
he is to be paid 2Jp for each article he produces. By common consent
a percentage would be added to this basic rate to allow time for personal
breaks, adjusting the machine and so on, say 20% in all. If then on
average he works 50 minutes in every hour he will make £6 in an
eight hour day (less tax). If of course he now finds ways of working
more quickly his pay will increase.
Piece work in fact often operates on a gang basis, whereby a dozen
or so men all working on the same sections, say on the production line,
pool their earnings, then share them out equally. This means that
they are all interested in the price bargaining and all interested that
every member of the gang should keep up with his work; no ‘pass
engers’ are tolerated.
Others in the factory are ’on the clock’. They are paid not for
what they actually produce but for the time they spend at work, down
to the nearest quarter of an hour. Hence the rows of time clocks and
cards in so many factories, by which each employee registers his time
of arrival and departure. A typical rate for a labourer may be between
40p and 75p an hour. Most factories now, however, use the
‘measured day’ work system, in which the employer virtually buys the
employee’s time at, say, £1 per hour, and can then say how he uses it.
Thus the wages are not in dispute. The haggling here comes over the
speed at which tasks are to be performed.
Many factories use a combination of systems. Employees will be
guaranteed a certain minimum, say £13 a week for a man down to
£5 for a girl of fifteen based on the hours they put in, and then they
are given a bonus over and above this, according to their actual
production.
If the demand for a company’s products falls off, or if there is some
interruption of essential supplies, ‘short time’ working is introduced to
compensate for the loss of earnings; and in bad cases, numbers of
workers may lose their jobs. Similarly, if you are off sick you receive
no pay from the company.
Office workers, supervisors and managers, however, are paid by
the week or the month. They may well earn less per hour, but are
largely unaffected by short time or sickness.
In the vehicle industry in October 1970, average earnings per week
for hourly paid manual workers was £32 for men, £17 for women, and
for technical and clerical workers was £37 for men, and £17 for women.
For discussion
1
Which do you prefer of these three ways of payment?
2
Is it right that
(a) others should be paid more than you or
(b) you should be paid more than others? If you think it is,
what reasons have you to support your view? Find further
examples of wages of people you know and say whether
you think they are fair.
3
Have you any objections to being timed at work or to ‘clocking in’?
4
Should a single man be paid as much as a married man with several
children?
5
Should women be paid the same as men for equal work?
6
How is it that housewives and children are not paid for the work
they do about the home?
7
Find out from your local Ministry of Social Security the basis on
which sickness and unemployment benefit is paid by the State.
13
The Organization
THE MANAGER
14
The first grade of manager is really the charge-hand who works at the
same job himself as those under him, usually a group of about a dozen,
and is paid in the same way, with about £2 per week extra. Next
comes the foreman who spends most of his day on the shop floor
but has an office nearby. His hours are similar to those of the shop
floor worker. The manager at ‘middle’ or ‘higher’ level spends most
of his day in offices or at conferences. His hours are usually from
9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., though he will sometimes have to work late at the
office. Unlike an hourly paid employee he is not paid overtime nor
is his job over when he leaves the factory gates for there are often
evening meetings to attend and much ‘homework’ to do in the form of
preparation, reports and so on.
He has helpers in the form of a secretary, typists, filing clerks and
so on, to assist with the more routine operations.
His job is to see that the company runs smoothly and that the
different interests of production workers, sales staff, consumers and
shareholders are kept in balance and satisfied.
There are two basic types of manager. The one sees himself as one
who gives orders which are to be instantly obeyed without question
like those of an old military commander on the battlefield. The other
sees himself as one who takes the responsibility for final decisions
after he has consulted all concerned about what ought to happen.
‘The good leader has a genuine, genuine not professed, interest in the
improvement and advancement of the people who are working in his
group’—Dennis Head, Director of Personnel, Aero Engineering
Division, Rolls Royce Limited, Derby.
The manager, like everyone else, is an employee of the company.
Although not affected by sickness or short time, he may well find
himself out of work if the company hits bad times or if, as a result of
a merger, it transpires that there are too many managers.
For discussion
1
2
3
4
What do you expect of those who are set above you?
What may your managers expect of you?
Where should a manager’s loyalty be in the first place?
Could industry do without managers - could the workers manage
the factory?
COMMUNICATION
In any sizeable community, ‘keeping in touch’ is a problem. In a
small firm, everyone knows the boss (for better or worse), not so in a
school or a company of say a thousand employees and upwards.
All too often the impression is allowed to grow that the really vital
decisions are made by faceless ones. Decisions about mergers,
closure of plant and redundancies. ‘We never see the managers, they
don’t understand us’, is a typical shop floor cry.
Ignorance of what is going on produces rumours and fear. Many
strikes are the result of bad communication. Indeed, sometimes the
only way a worker has of finding out what is going on is to down tools.
An example of what perhaps ought to happen is given by Harry
Moore, an industrial psychologist, who says that the general manager
of Vauxhalls, Sir Charles Bartlett, used to talk directly to the whole
of the works over the public address system. When a radio announce
ment was made shortly after the war, that the factories in the country
would have to go on short time because of a fuel shortage (the fuel
crisis), you can imagine the impact this had on the employees. Within
half an hour of the broadcast, Sir Charles announced his policy over
the public address system; he would give full pay for two weeks to
everyone and joint consultation would take place that day to decide
on future policy after those two weeks.
THE SHOP STEWARD
Although one hears of trade unions in the news and in the papers, if
you work in industry the most likely form in which you will meet
trade union activity is through the shop steward. Each group or
‘gang’ of about a dozen elect one of themselves as steward whose
function is to look after their interests in cases of dispute and to
improve the wages and conditions of those he represents. Three
typical cases would be:
15
If a piece worker disagreed with the rate fixer over the amount
fixed for his job.
2 If an employee was dismissed by the supervisor for persistently
coming late, but felt he had a good excuse.
3 If a worker had complained to the foreman about a draught (or
fumes, or the heat or oil on the floor) and nothing had been done.
1
Then a recognized ‘procedure’ would begin. The first step would
be for the complainant to go, together with the steward, to see the
foreman. Most grievances are in fact dealt with at this level, but if
not, there is a series of steps to be taken culminating with several
full-scale conferences.
The shop stewards of the factory usually have a meeting of their
own once a week in their own time to discuss affairs of work. They
elect one of their number as chairman, often called convenor or chief
shop steward, who is a key man in a factory and who will spend quite
a lot of his time in discussion or negotiation with managers.
There will often be many unions in a factory, for instance skilled
men might belong to the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers
(the AUEW), and labourers to the Transport and General Workers
Union (the TGWU), and there will be a corresponding number of
shop stewards. It is often suggested that there are too many unions,
but where there is a good shop stewards committee, this matters little.
Even if craftsmen and labourers are in the same union, they still have
differences.
Shop stewards are not paid any extra for their work as shop stewards
and it is sometimes hard to get a responsible person to take on the
task. ‘It’s a dogsbody job’ said one; ‘you’re just a can carrier, you
get shot at from both sides, if you insist on the mens’ demands with
management, they say you are a troublemaker and if you accept a bit
of the management’s point of view, the men accuse you of selling
them down the river. You can’t win, but I suppose somebody has
got to do it’.
For discussion
16
1
What qualities would you look for in a good shop steward?
2
What responsibility does the group have to the man they have
elected?
3
In what circumstances might the steward find himself in an
impossible position?
TRADE UNIONS
In the 18th and 19th centuries it happened all too often that even those
who were lucky enough to have work were paid barely enough to live,
and certainly not enough to support their families unless the children
too went out to work. Add to this the existence of deplorable working
conditions and very long hours. A 14-hour-day was not at all un
common. Makers of matches were poisoned by phosphorus, calico
bleachers were overcome by ammonia fumes, quarrymen died from
the accumulation of dust in their lungs, miners perished through
inadequate safety precautions. If anyone complained there was
always another man out of work ready to take his job. Since all that
a worker has to sell is his labour, the only pressure that workers could
bring to bear was to band together and each agree not to work until
conditions were improved. The bosses could reply to such a threat
by a ‘lock-out’. They would close the factory until such time as
people were prepared to work on the bosses’ conditions. Meanwhile,
the strikers could starve (to this day a man on strike is not eligible
for social security benefits, though his family may well be).
In this way trade unions were born. Their purpose was to unite
members in their fight for better conditions and to collect funds in
order to support them when it was necessary to strike. A typical
union pays its members £5 a week when they are on official strike.
It was an uphill struggle against successive governments who saw in
them a threat to national security and prosperity in a day when only
the propertied classes sent members to Parliament.
But none of these organizations formed by angry and desperate
men left anything permanent behind it. The beginnings of our
permanent trade unions structure must be sought elsewhere amongst
the intelligent men of the skilled crafts being created by the Industrial
Revolution. A few of these unions still survive today relatively
unchanged, such as the Birmingham and Midlands Sheet Metal
Workers Society, formed in 1859.
These unions were precisely the kind which are most looked askance
at in certain quarters today. The members were craftsmen who had
served an apprenticeship and in order to maintain or increase their
own wage levels, one of their principal weapons was what we should
now call ‘restrictive practices’. They restricted apprentices and
17
rigidly guarded the demarcation of jobs which their own members
alone were entitled to do in a factory.
They had faults. What were the benefits that they brought?
1
A permanent and coherent leadership. Unlike the early trade
unions, these had regular subscriptions, rules and minutes and paid
general secretaries who were eventually responsible for the first
Trades Union Congress (TUC), in 1868.
2
They had a responsible attitude towards strikes. They did not
avoid them but approached them with great caution, realizing the
difficulties involved, and placed their main reliance on negotiation.
3
They realized the importance of public opinion and the necessity
of proceeding in a democratic manner through the channels of
political pressure in order to get Parliament to pass laws for the
trade unions’ benefit. They were amongst the agitators for the
Second Reform Act of 1876 which gave the vote for the first time
to many of their members.
4
It is largely as a result of trade union pressure that we have today
such benefits as factory standards of safety, maximum permitted
hours of work, redundancy pay, unemployment benefit, sickness
benefit and a more humane legal code.
Our picture
An individual’s union membership certificate. These documents, usually
about twenty inches wide and printed in colour, were clearly intended
for display. They show something of the pride felt in membership.
For discussion
1
8
I
If employers in the past had ‘treated others as they would have
liked to be treated themselves’, would trade unions have been
necessary?
2
How far are many labour troubles a direct consequence of faults
in the past?
3
Many factories operate T00% shops’, which means that all who
work in particular sections must be members of particular unions.
This ensures that all who enjoy the benefits gained by the union in
the past contribute to its future. It also reduces the possibility of
‘blacklegs’, men who go on working when the union is on strike.
Frank Taylor, Chairman of Taylor-Woodrow, talks to a striker at the Barbican
site in London.
When there is a strike the factory is usually ‘picketed’, guarded by
strikers to try to persuade others who are trying to go into work,
to join them. Do you agree with this practice?
20
4
The position of the British trade union movement has been changed
with the passing of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. What arc
the provisions of that Act, and how justified is the reaction of the
trade unions towards it?
5
There have been many strikes recently in which a small number of
men, by stopping work, bring to a standstill tens of thousands of
other workers who depend on them. Are they right to do this or
should they ‘keep their grievance to themselves’?
6
It is quite common for there to be inter-union disputes when the
interests of different classes of workers are at stake. Who, for
instance, should deal with electrical conduits, a pipe-fitter or an
electrician? Note that such questions usually only flare up into
an open clash when one or other is afraid of losing his job. How
do you feel about this?
7
Read 1 Cor. 12 and relate it to the above. In what ways can our
modern industrial society be described as sick? What general
remedies can you suggest?
CONFLICT
Just as different people have different interests, so do different groups
of people. In the flour mill, for example, with which we began, the
miller and the labourer, the farmer and the buyer of the flour all have
their points of view, to some extent in conflict. What the miller gains
in higher charges, the farmer loses; what the housewife gains in lower
prices, the miller loses, and so on. Nevertheless, they all have an
interest in keeping the mill going. So, when considering the manager’s
role, we pointed out that it is in everyones’ interest to keep the balance a balance between employees, consumers, sales staff and shareholders.
It is not often appreciated that (except in very enlightened firms) the
best industrial relations occur when there is both a strong management
and strong unions, that is, when a balance of power obtains. If the
unions are weak, wages and conditions can be held down unreasonably;
if managements are weak, unions can press immoderate claims which
the company, however efficient, cannot in the long run afford.
Our picture
A mass meeting of strikers at Liverpool Docks being addressed by a
trade union official. The convenor and shop stewards stand around
him. Note that no representative of the management is present. Why
not?
For discussion
1
List the senses in which people are equal and unequal.
2
Say when conflict has good results and when bad.
3
What is the responsibility of unions in industry?
A Career in Industry
BEGINNINGS
Four case histories
Tony Raskin left school with few qualifications but at his school they
did have an ‘Enterprise’ course, in which the pupils set up their own
companies which were models of normal business ventures. Largely
due to this, Tony did so well in his first year as a craft apprentice that
he was promoted to a higher grade full apprentice; but Tony stresses
that ‘success or failure depends solely upon your attitude to work’.
Christine Day is 20 but has responsibilities far above the average for
her age, being a staff trainer in a large retail store. T enjoyed being
a trainee here when I first came and I found the supervisors helpful
and sympathetic. They made me feel accepted and wanted and this
gave me tremendous encouragement. Then 1 had the chance to go on
several short courses about leadership and these showed me how to
take the same responsibility for those I now train as my own super
visors took for me. 1 try to give my trainees a pride in their work
and a sense of efficiency.’
Twenty-year-old Norman Stevens began as an engineering craft
apprentice, but those who were supposed to train him were too busy
doing their own jobs. He started taking books to work, but the
foreman complained and he had to learn how to look as though he
was working without actually doing anything. The grievance pro
cedure in this company took such a long time that people hardly ever
used it. He got the impression that the managers who should have
been in charge of his training were more interested in their own pro
motion than him, and when Norman finally gave in his notice, his
manager asked him who he was.
22
Diana Lynden found difficulty in finding a job because of anti-feminine
prejudice. ‘When I did find one, the work I was given was far below
my capabilities and I was restless and bored. I asked for something
could get my teeth into but they told me I would have to wait until
was trained.’
She was a member of the trade union but their shop steward neither
came round to ask opinions before she attended a meeting nor did
she report back afterwards. Diana had been promised a meeting with
the manager but after six months nothing had come of it, so she left.
I
I
For discussion
1
Do you agree with Tony that ‘success or failure depends solely
upon your attitude to work’?
2
What do you expect to
(a) put into your job
(f>) get out of your job?
3
Here are some things to think about when choosing a job. Number
the items according to how important you think each is and compare
and discuss your list with others
(a) Liking the job
(b) Good conditions, holidays, etc.
(c) A good boss
(d) Security and a pension
(e) Chance of promotion
(/) Good pay
(g) Feeling the job is useful
(/i) Pleasant workmates
TRAINING AND RETRAINING
Everyone is familiar with the idea of specific training before you can
actually start a job, whether through apprenticeships, induction
courses, day release or evening classes. But as more and more techno
logical discoveries are made, so the availability of employment alters,
and many skills become redundant while other, newer skills may need
to be acquired.
Perhaps your school runs courses in shorthand, but how many
offices want shorthand typists now that there are cheap tape recorders
and dictation machines?
23
Printing used to be a highly skilled job, but now there are machines
on which all you need to do is type what you want on the keyboard
after pressing the appropriate button to show the size and type of
printing you require. The machine does the rest.
And it is technically possible (though very expensive at the moment)
to do away with the keyboard all together and simply have the micro
phone of a writing machine into which you will speak and the machine
will of its own accord print what you say.
Our picture
This looks like an apprentice in the training section of any sizeable
factory, but he is in fact at a government training centre run by the
Department of Employment for the specific purpose of retraining those
whose skills are now not required in the area where they live. Like
any younger student, these course members receive an allowance to
cover their cost of living and that of their dependants.
For research and discussion
24
1
Make a list of redundant skills and add to it those you think will
join it during your lifetime.
2
Do you think redundant people should be paid to retrain?
much, and by whom?
3
Would you feel a sense of shame at going to school again, or a
sense of adventure?
How
AUTOMATION AND REDUNDANCY
I suppose the flour mill, with which we started, was the earliest form of
automation. Wind or water power was used and a pair of mill wheels
so driven could do the work of half-a-dozen grinding women. Ob
viously the discovery of steam power and electricity increased the
development of this process greatly, but later windmills had an equally
important idea. A sort of rudder was tucked behind the main sails
and this ensured that they were always facing into the wind. This
means that the mill adjusted of its own accord to changes in its power
supply.
‘Automatically’ means ‘of its own accord’. Modern machines,
instead of having buttons for someone to press, are told what to do
simply by signals on a piece of magnetic tape or holes in a card. In
other words, they are fully automatic. So, instead of having say,
twenty button pushers in a factory, and one maintenance engineer, all
that is now necessary is one punch card operator and one maintenance
engineer.
Of course this means that most of the sweat and drudgery has now
gone from work, but it also means that many of the workers have
gone too.
For research and discussion
26
1
What automatic machines do you have at home?
2
Find out who the Luddites were.
3
A firm that makes plastic mouldings which they sell to car companies
at 25p each has 50 men who together produce 24,000 a week.
The men are paid £25 per week in wages. The firm now has the
chance of introducing automatic machines at the cost of £100,000.
These would be able to produce twice as many mouldings in a
week and would only require 10 operators. The firm can:
(a) give 40 men notice, together with redundancy pay (this is
required by the government and is paid for by tax on all
companies) and use the wages saved to pay for the new
machinery. Once this had been paid for the profit could go
to the shareholders.
(6) as (a) but with the profit going to the ten men still there, in
the form of higher wages on account of their increase in
production.
(c)
keep on the 50 men, pay them the same as before but reduce
their hours from 40 per week to 8.
(o') reduce the price of the mouldings.
Do you agree with them?
Imagine that you are, in turn, a shareholder, a director and a
worker. What should the firm decide to do and who should make
the decision?
4
In the case of (a) or (b) above, the government could of course
intervene by placing a heavy tax on the profits and then using the
money to make payments to those who are still out of work.
Would this be right? How much tax do shareholders have to pay
on interest'at the moment?
5
In the case of (c) above, if you were one of the workers what would
you do with the rest of the week. Would you be glad or bored?
THE END OF IT ALL
The last question about automation, concerning the case when one
has more leisure than working time, is serious, because most people
eventually reach retirement age when indeed there is nothing but the
rest of the week. Here is a picture of a typical works presentation to
an employee who has reached the age of 65. His mates stand around
while the supervisor says a few words and presents a certificate and
perhaps a gold watch. Soon he will pack his mug and his overalls
and pipe and join the home-going rush at 4.15 for the last time. How
does he feel? Glad to be free? Pleased not to have to get up at six
the next morning? Or sad to have nowhere to go? How much de
pends on his own attitudes?
For research and discussion
1
How many retired people do you know and how do they feel about
being retired?
2
How should retired people be paid, by
(«) their own contributions in the past, or
(b) the company they worked for, or
(c) their relatives, or
(cZ) the state?
How are they paid today? Where does the money come from?
3
‘I’m going to take a well-earned rest and spend some time in the
garden and read all the books I’ve never had time for.’
‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, I feel like a bit of worn out
machinery nobody wants anymore. They call it retirement but its
just the scrapheap really’.
What do you think?
27
THE DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT
Our picture
The section of this department which most people come across is the
Employment Office. This is one of the interviewing rooms. An im
portant part of the department’s function is to help employees to find
the work they are suited to best and to assist employers to obtain
suitable workers. This particular man is looking for work in the
engineering industry but he might just as well have been a builder,
a draughtsman, a wool spinner or a displaced manager seeking an
executive position.
School leavers will come across the department, not at the Employ
ment Office, but through the Youth Employment Service which also
deals with young people up to 18 and those from further education.
The DE also operates the government training centres where
redundant workers can learn new skills, administers the Industrial
Training Act by which companies are encouraged to provide further
training schemes for their own employees, and provides a disablement
resettlement service which helps disabled persons to secure employment.
The department is obviously well placed to collect statistics on the
availability of jobs and the level of wages in all parts of the country.
It can be used by the government in considering national policy, for
instance, that companies should be encouraged by incentives to open
factories in areas of heavy unemployment. It attempts to administer
the government’s general policy that wage increases should be paid for
not by increasing the price of the goods produced, but by producing
and selling more of them. Other functions of the department include
the supervision through factory inspectors of the laws on the safety,
health and welfare of workers in industry and commerce: attempting
to mediate in cases of dispute between different factions in industry;
the administration of the law concerning payments for redundancy;
the payment of certain social security benefits such as those for un
employment and (strangely enough) the issue of passports.
For research and discussion
I
What connection do you see between the function of the DE and
the causes of the rise of trade unions?
2
What sort of opinion do people have of your local Employment
Office?
3
Many people find jobs, not through the Employment Office but
because they know someone, or their father or a friend takes them
along to see his foreman who has the responsibility for hiring. Is
this right?
4
One of the causes of bad relations and strikes is lack of security,
fear of losing one’s job. Should everyone be ‘guaranteed’ work
or only guaranteed an allowance to live on?
5
‘And who is my neighbour?’ (Luke 10.29).
as a sign of a Christian country?
Do you see the DE
29
Industry in a Wider World
Our picture
30
A sugar plantation in Cuba. Sugar is one of the few things Cuba has
to export in exchange for the lorries, medicines, radios, fabrics that she
needs. Yet the demand for sugar is hardly increasing, partly because
Britain produces a certain amount herself through subsidised sugar
beet, and partly because of the growing use of artificial sweeteners.
The price the British housewife pays for sugar has remained pretty
steady for years. The same story might be told of many commodities;
of jute from Calcutta or sisal from East Africa, once used to make
sacks and rope, now overtaken by plastic and nylon, of cochineal from
Mexico, which until the middle of the last century was in great demand
as a cloth dye until various artificial chemicals were discovered.
So the problems of redundant skills are world wide, and world wide
too is the drift of labour from the land, where increasingly one tractor
does the work of half a dozen men and oxen.
In all the cities of the world, therefore, there is pressure to introduce
industries in order to provide jobs for new immigrants. Yet this in
turn produces problems, for when Hong Kong entered the cotton trade
and exported to South-East Asia in order to buy rice, Lancashire mills
which used to export there had to close down.
For research and discussion
1
What are the primary commodities for which there are no sub
stitutes? Which countries produce these?
2
As the whole world becomes more and more industrialized, so it
becomes more inter-dependent. Malayan tungsten goes in a
British engine for a Swedish car which carries a German executive.
List some of the imports which you come across today. What are
our main exports?
3
Should Britain try to help foreign nations or get her own house in
order first? If British industry is not thriving how are we in any
position to give help? What do we actually give at the moment
as a percentage of our total national budget?
4
Which is the best way of helping?
(a) to give grants of money
(6) to give equipment, wells, tractors and so on
(c) to lend money at fixed interest
(d) to invest money at no fixed interest, but with the possibility
of a share if the foreign companies make a profit
(e) to lend money interest free
(f) to buy foreign manufactured goods whenever possible from
the poorer countries and force British companies to con
centrate on advanced technological goods which the poor
countries cannot produce
5
‘And who is my neighbour?’
COMMUNITY
4771, (r>rst i ioo.'1 J-. MarltJ
BAWG^.iO ... ■ bo-.- t-sT
v\-
For further reading
J. A. C. Brown, The Social Psychology of Industry, Penguin Books 1970.
S. Phipps, God on Monday, Hodder 1966.
H. Symanowski, The Christian Witness in an Industrial Society, Collins 1966.
E. R. Wickham, Church and People in an Industrial City, Lutterworth Press
1969.
COMMUNITY HEALTH CELL
■5
326, V Main, 1 B'°Ck
Koramongala
Bangalore-560034
India
32
1 Population and Family Planning
2 Drugs
3 Racial Discrimination
4 Human Rights
5 Protest
6 Pop
7 Housing
Revolution (Probe Special)
8 Industry
9 Conservation
334 00676 7.f'
Position: 2612 (2 views)