Industrial relations are the relations between those who own and run industry and those who work for the owners. Industrial disputes arise from the conflict of Interests between these groups, a conflict which is aggravated by the alienation of the worker.
Workers are deprived of control over their own work, and, so become alienated from it. This alienation is heightened by the use of production technologies which make many jobs oppressive and meaningless. All this leads to growing dissatisfaction which takes many forms; staff instability, absenteeism, lack of interest in the work, indifference to quality, a fall-off in production and an aggressive attitude.
What is more, these things are not limited to blue collar workers. White collar employees and management staff in industry, banks, insurance, and public service are also finding their work becoming monotonous, fragmented, depersonalised and failing to offer sufficient opportunity for the use of judgement and initiative.
Despite all our “progress”, working hours remain long and sometimes excessive with often very inadequate time for rest and leisure. Long hours not only contribute to the oppressive nature of work but also to strain on family life and the breakdown of community interaction.
The Values Party supports a cut-back in working hours and the length of the working week and believes we should begin with the reintroduction of a 40 hour week which returns a living wage.
Work should respect the workers’ life and health, leave free time for rest and leisure and enable workers to serve society and achieve self-fulfilment by developing their personal capacities, as well as providing a satisfactory, secure income.
The Values Party believes that the best judges of these things are the people involved in the work.
Workers must be given their rights in the management and control of industry; to be instrument- ally involved in the decisions affecting their working lives. In addition we must make progress on the development of more human technologies. (See Technology.)
Thousands of members of the New Zealand work force do not achieve any real satisfaction from their work.
Vague talk about “better communication” between workers and management fails dismally to come to grips with the need to humanise work, to make it more worthwhile, more satisfying.
There is an urgent need for government initiatives to encourage job satisfaction through work-place innova- tions such as the rotation of jobs and the broadening of tasks, including allowing workers to finish a whole job and to work in independent teams.
However while many overseas “job satisfaction” experiments have been successful, none constitutes a complete solution to the problems of industrial relations.
In his report to the ILO conference held in Geneva in June this year the Director-General of the ILO said “the question must be considered of the participation of workers in decisions affecting conditions of work and the working evironment in general”.
People must be given a greater say in the running and organising of their work. Industrial Democracy means that all the staff of an enterprise, either directly or through their elected representatives, are instrumentally involved in the decisions relating to the operation of that enterprise.
As well as direct moves towards industrial democracy, the Values Party believes that the development of co- operative enterprises (see Economics) would lead to a much greater degree of democracy in the work place. Critics who say that New Zealand workers do not seem interested in sharing in the responsibilities of management and workshop supervision ignore the fact that a large part of the work force has been trained to expect, and adapt to, an authoritarian work environment, to regard their employers as simply providers of wages to whom ‘loyalty’ - if any, is due only until the whistle blows.
The Values Party realises that its policies to encourage a movement towards a co-operative economy will have an effect on employment patterns and opportunities.
As the transition towards a stable economy progresses more attention will have to be paid to helping people adapt to the tasks of the new economy, especially where old jobs are being phased out because of their incompatibility with community objectives. Elected bodies at all levels, as well as individual enterprises, will become involved in retraining and redeploying some members of the workforce (for example into the field of recycling).
The problem of industrial relations is compounded by the disturbing situation regarding occupational safety and health. In New Zealand there are some 65,000 industrial accidents a year, about 75 of which are fatal and some 1,000 of which result in permanent disability.
Chemicals and other pollutants are causing health problems, mechanisation and automation are causing mental health problems and often the growing complexity of tasks faced by managerial and technical staff is causing exhaustion and breakdown. All this adds to the picture of modern industry as an extremely unhealthy activity.
The problems of industrial relations will not be solved without the progressive introduction of cooperative community control of enterprises, or government, community, union, employer and individual efforts to increase job satisfaction and make industrial democracy effective.