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From International Socialism (1st series), No.51, April-June 1972, pp.5-8.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Karl Marx wrote in Capital that ‘piece-wage is the form of wages most in harmony with the capitalist mode of production’. By providing the capitalist with an exact measure for the intensity of labour, it would enable him to extract maximum output for minimum cost.
In the nineteenth century, engineering workers strongly resisted the introduction of piecework. The absence as yet of mass production meant that price lists, as existed in other industries, were impracticable. Piecework in engineering would thus lead to individual and not collective bargaining. As the Amalgamated Society of Engineers declared: ‘it is well known that piecework is not a bargain, but a price dictated by the employer, and lowered at will’. The 30-week engineering lock-out in 1897-8 culminated in the notorious terms of settlement which stipulated the right for piecework to be established in any federated engineering establishment. Prices were to be mutually agreed between the employer and the individual workman. While this clause was intended to by-pass the union, it led to a rapid growth in workshop committees and in shop steward bargaining over prices.
The rapid extension of piecework, especially in the munitions industries, during the first world war, coupled with the temporary legal shackling of the unions, further fostered the growth of shop floor representation. The right of workers in federated engineering establishments to be represented by shop stewards was accepted by the employers’ federation during this war.
In 1919 an agreement established the criterion that piecework prices should allow the average workman to earn at least a certain minimum percentage above time-rates. But the mass unemployment of the inter-war years, with the diminution of strength of the shop stewards movement, meant that if you didn’t like the rate, there were plenty outside the gate who’d jump at it.
During the inter-war period the British motor industry grew up. It was the ‘hire and fire’ era. with regular seasonal lay-offs. The American companies Ford and Vauxhall (General Motors) were violently anti-union as was. for instance. William Morris the well-known philanthropist. Piecework was the system for production work in all motor plants except Ford who paid by the hour. The second world war began a long spell for Britain of relatively full employment and labour shortage. Under such
conditions piecework could be turned to the workers’ advantage, assuming they had the shop-floor organisation necessary. Piecework earnings consist of the nationally-negotiated award – known as the piecework supplement, now worth 3s 10.65d per hour – plus the earnings for the particular job. Jobs are rated to produce a minimum figure per hour. Timing takes place when the worker is relatively inexperienced at the particular operation. Once he has learnt the short cuts, then an increase in schedules will allow him to ‘pull’ more work and thus increase his earnings.
Whenever the material, means or method of production is changed the job has to be re-rated. Many agreements stipulate that there shall be no reduction in earnings as a consequence. Changes in production thus lead to rising piece-rates. The biggest increase in rates come when new models are introduced. The employer is under pressure to get the model out, and can be effectively pressured into conceding high prices. The small modifications that often crop up can, with strong organisation, lead to odd coppers being added on to the rate. A foreman whose main worry is to keep production going will be anxious to avoid or settle quickly disputes over prices and times.
Not all workers can be paid by the piece. Those who service the production lines are traditionally paid a time rate, as are the more obvious maintenance men and electricians. To compensate them for their lack of opportunity to approach the hourly earnings of pieceworkers, they are paid various bonuses, often linked to average piecework earnings, on top of their national minimum rate.
Such a national minimum rate was only established in 1948 in the engineering industry. The increasing gap between this and actual earnings is known as wage drift. This is fostered partly by increasing rates for the pieceworkers, but also by increases in the rates of hourly-paid workers. The latter takes two forms – firstly, the bonus linked to the pieceworkers’ earnings, and secondly the pressure to restore differentials which occurs every time a section gains any increase independently of the others.
Wage drift becomes much more serious for an employer when he faces increased competition. He needs some method by which he can obtain production and yet keep down his costs. Piecework, with no interference from trade unions, once filled the bill. But with the consolidation of shop floor organisation over a generation, it will take more than heavy unemployment to intimidate a well-organised workforce into accepting managerial dictatorship.
Fords ascribed their ability to keep wage increases down in the mid-sixties to two factors – one was their hourly-paid system of payment which stopped wage drift, and the other was the dramatic change in labour relations after 1962. They never stressed that this change was the sacking of 17 shop stewards from their Dagenham site, with an accompanying 33 per cent rise in productivity in the next year. It was not until 1967 however that Fords went over to the measured day work system, where all their manual employees were divided into five grades, abolishing their previous four grade structure, with its proliferation of merit payments.
Vauxhall changed over from piecework to measured day work in 1956. And Chrysler (formerly Rootes) made the transition from piecework in the late 1960’s. The aim of measured day work is the measurement of tasks which are then imposed on the workforce. It attempts to remove the mutuality element in piecework. By establishing a company-wide wage structure, which is negotiated at long intervals by full-time union officials and not the men on the shop floor, it destroys the negotiating power of the shop steward and halts the constant fight over differentials. By abolishing mutuality on work-loads, it imposes the company’s standards – to do this, supervision is increased and shop stewards are often severely limited in their functions. While forcing those directly involved in production to work faster, it seeks to cut down the amount of indirect labour by the amalgamation of job categories.
When British Leyland was formed in 1968, it was the result of a series of mergers, none of which had substantially altered the constituent companies. Its three rivals were all American-owned, and had the advantage of having their production concentrated at a few sites. British Leyland embraced some 70 factories, all with their own unique payments and labour relations systems. It produced vehicles from the Mini to the double-decker bus and larger. Large numbers of its models were in competition with each other. The need to rationalise was paramount.
On the production side, models had to be cut, and facilities reorganised. The increasing capital expenditure necessary for new models and the cost of retooling meant that body shells and engines would have to be standardised. The high-volume Austin-Morris division, successor to the old BMC, was by far the biggest earner, but not of profits. If British Leyland, helped by £25m of public money, could not make the Austin-Morris division profitable, then it would be ripe for takeover from a foreign enterprise or it would have to be nationalised. As British Leyland is the country’s largest exporter, its importance in the British economy can be appreciated.
The two sites where production was to be concentrated were Longbridge in Birmingham, and Cowley on the outskirts of Oxford. The most up to date machinery would be of no use if the ‘inflationary’ system of payment could not be changed. The company first flexed its muscles at Cowley. The Cowley complex consisted of a body plant (the largest in Europe), the former Pressed Steel Co, and an assembly plant, the former Morris Motors. Although Pressed Steel had merged with BMC in 1965, for several years they continued to act as before. Most of Pressed Steel’s bodies were transported outside Cowley, and most of Morris’s bodies came from outside – thus leading to the much heard complaint about the phenomenal cost of transporting air across the countryside in steel boxes.
Investment to the tune of several million pounds led to the rebuilding of substantial sections of both plants, and the construction of an integrated production line. Pressed Steel had introduced job evaluation exercises in 1965, and finally after a strike it moved to a 6-grade structure for indirect workers in 1968, replacing the previous 21 grades. Soon afterwards it attempted to introduce the Maxi on measured day work. But with a lot of resistance and ‘ca-canny’, including ¼-hour strikes every hour, the model was finally priced on piecework. The prices negotiated explain very well the tenacity with which piecework was held onto. Given 40 hours work a week, the men could earn £60-70. A substantial face-lift to the model a year later led to a further increase in the rates. But the company restricted the schedules despite a waiting-list of several weeks for the revamped model. This was part of a subtle propaganda campaign to link short time, lay-offs and so on with piecework, and not with the state of the market. Meanwhile work in the rest of the plant was being run down, partly due to the reorientation of production of British Leyland, and partly to soften up the workforce.
The workforce next door suffered three disadvantages compared to Pressed Steel. Firstly they had not been fully organised till the late 1950’s, while Pressed Steel was unionised in 1934. Secondly, while the body plant had been traditionally able to pass on costs to the assembler, the final assembler was less able to pass on costs to the public. Thirdly, the models were much older, and gave much lower rates. The Minor had been going since 1948 and was now on a ‘controlled’ piecework system; other models were being phased out in 1970-71.
In August 1970 a strike took place over the interim rate to be paid to the workers coming off the Minor who were scheduled to work the new model – the Morris Marina. The company were intending to pay them their previous rate of some 16/10 per hour instead of the shop average of 18/6 or 19/-, as was custom. This would greatly jeopardise the price of the new model.
The company intended to bring the new model in on measured day work. They took the issue through procedure at both plants and registered a failure to agree at York. Meanwhile they were conducting a big propaganda campaign by sending letters to individuals’ homes talking about old-fashioned piecework, and how measured day work would bring them security of employment.
Finally on 13 January 1971, the day after both plants had struck for the 12 January demo against the Industrial Relations Bill, the company moved. In both plants the key stewards were called up to the management in the early afternoon and kept there till nearly the final bell. Meanwhile supervision were busy distributing letters to those workers who would be initially working the new model – 160 in the body plant, and 560 in the assembly plant. The letter stated: ‘Having exhausted Procedure we must therefore exercise our right to introduce the new payment system.’ It laid out the conditions; among them ‘This will necessitate the full and proper use of modern industrial engineering techniques including Work Study. The use of these techniques which are already accepted in the National Agreement is necessary if we are not to fall behind our competitors.’ It ended by saying that the company would not produce the new model on piecework, and stated: ‘The Company will be making the above terms and conditions operative on the ADO28 facilities as from 7.15 am tomorrow morning, Thursday 14 January 1971’. The company’s offer was a flat rate of £1 an hour. At the assembly plant the tactic worked after some initial resistance. The leadership of the dominant T&GWU in the plant were members or close sympathisers of the SLL. They had campaigned consistently for a number of years through leaflets and their branch bulletin against MDW and they now refused to sign an agreement. Their message for management had been ‘We’re not having it!’ Once it was imposed on them however they had no alternative but to recommend a return to piecework, which was not exactly feasible under the circumstances. Refusing to sign an agreement meant that the individual terms of employment stood, including provision for the use of industrial engineers.
At the body plant these Ford-style tactics of individual intimidation backfired. So entrenched was the peaceful tradition of labour relations in the plant that a mass meeting the next morning threw the deal out because management had bypassed the official union channels. A working party was set up to look into the possibility of retaining piecework at one end of the production line while measured day work was on the other.
The attitude was different from a few years earlier. The 1968 package deal in the engineering industry allowed, as the company fully recognised, the use of work study techniques, job evaluation etc. And the immediate reaction of Jack Jones on hearing about the men’s resistance was that a strike would cost his union in the order of £30,000 a week. On 5 February a mass meeting of all 6,000 T&GWU members in the plant met to discuss the company’s latest proposals. The local officials stated ‘The Officers have been in touch with the Union’s National Officials whose advice is to see if better conditions and full ‘Mutuality’ can be obtained with a high hourly rate. The officers obtained from the Union some draft proposals on mutuality. After lengthy discussions these have now been included in the company’s present proposals.’ By emphasising that the alternative to acceptance was an all-out strike, the local district secretary sold the deal. It gave 21s an hour, and did contain substantial mutuality but it was nothing like piecework which would have given the men in the region of £70 a week for the job. The March edition of the T&GWU Record gave a thoroughly misleading account of what had happened. It talked about ‘this history making agreement’. It bluntly stated that ‘the greatest significance of the new deal is the introduction of the principle of mutual agreement on a wide range of issues’. It neglected to say that mutuality over job prices had been sold, and that wages were to be tied to an annual review. A strange omission, one might think, considering that Jack Jones was an official in Coventry in the 1940’s – an area where piecework, high wages, and strong shop floor organisation went hand in hand.
With this relatively easy success under their belt, the company turned on the Maxi body-line. The company was not constitutionally able to change the payment system on existing models without mutual agreement. As this was not forthcoming, the company threatened to move the work elsewhere in the plant. Finally the workers accepted the company offer with a buy-out of £225 (before tax). Before the new system could be implemented, the schedules for the model magically went up, and there were some sections earning up to £100 for a 52-hour week on piecework.
The body plant management have been unable to budge the remaining pieceworkers in the plant though they are not so important. However the fact that the pressings for the Maxi and Marina bodies are produced in the main on piecework in the Cowley plant and at Swindon contradicts the management’s claim of the impossibility of producing the new model on piecework.
At the assembly plant, the remaining pieceworkers capitulated in June after another heavy propaganda campaign by management. As no deal was yet signed there, the company attempted to bring in industrial engineers to measure the work. After nearly a year a deal was eventually signed which allowed industrial engineers on the line. Some of those who had refused to sign the original MDW agreement put their signatures to a document which superficially gave mutuality over work standards before implementation, but in fact allowed the management to impose its standards if there was any delay. The agreement at the body plant, however, did not allow any timings at all, and effort was merely visually assessed with the stewards in fairly substantial control. While this was going on, the pieceworkers at Longbridge were pursuing a factory policy of resistance to MDW. This had been made mandatory on the Austin Works Committee by the Joint Shop Stewards and covered all 12,000 pieceworkers in the plant – probably the largest single concentration of pieceworkers in the country and therefore of symbolic significance.
The Austin Works Committee of 7 contained two members of the Communist Party, led by Dick Etheridge, Works Convenor since 1952 and soon due to retire. He was the man who took tea with Harold Wilson when 10,000 BMH workers were sacked in 1966, and refused to use the Combine Committee, on which he held a leading post, to fight back. He was also the signatory to a model MDW deal negotiated behind the backs of the green labour recruited to man the highly automated new Cofton Hackett engine plant. And the Works Committee, having accepted job evaluation in 1968 made no attempt to explain to the shop floor what the implications were. With the backing of the AUEW district committee, the Works Committee forced the tool room to drop their resistance to the deal, despite the fact that they would lose their existing bonuses which could guarantee them much more money than being part of a factory wide agreement. After their refusal to be job evaluated had been to York twice. it was Hugh Scanlon who insisted they drop their resistance, and that a payment system to replace the toolroom bonus was negotiable. Eventually a deal was signed in April 1971 which reduced the 150 grades of indirect workers on the site to just 7, with their wage increases planned ahead for two years – the top grade only getting something in the order of 3-4 per cent per annum. The Sunday Times knew who to give credit when credit was due, and stated ‘As at Cowley, much of the credit must go to the local T&G official’. The deal runs out in May 1973 and stipulates that a new agreement will then be brought into operation. The company then refused to negotiate further piecework price increases anywhere in the plant, in an attempt to force workers to accept MDW. Where a majority of pieceworkers earn less than the figure quoted for MDW then there is great pressure to accept – as in the assembly plant in Cowley. Where the pieceworkers earn more than the figure quoted then the management are forced to resort to threats – as for the Maxi body line at Cowley. If the men chosen to work MDW are green, as at Cofton Hackett, or have been doing ‘trucking’, as the Marina body line, they are easy prey and only a factory stand can defeat the management’s proposals. At Longbridge the management calculated on picking off the men section by section, and exploiting the particular weakness of each. But a factory wide policy of resistance was forced on to the Works Committee. And it met with substantial success. A six-week strike among a section of engine assemblers brought them an increase in piece-rates. When 134 sewing room women struck for a 15 per cent increase in piece-rates, the company offered them an increase in the order of 25 per cent if they would accept measured day work. But they stayed out because it was the factory policy. Then, with obvious fear of impending confrontations, the Works Committee called a special meeting of the Joint Shop Stewards on 21 January 1972, declared it mandatory (breaking the custom for special meetings) and put forward proposals for an alternative system of payment to piecework. The Works Committee got their mandate to go ahead, and the sewing room women were forced to go back on an interim payment system. Thus collapsed one of the best organised plants in the country. Whatever alternative system is drawn up, it will involve the removal of mutuality over job prices, and will be merely a stepping stone in the direction of formal MDW. Without a fighting strategy to counter British Leyland’s plans to introduce measured day work, then the best organised workforce can be taken. And this is much more so the case in a large combine where work can be moved around.
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