Labor-management Relations in the Metalworking Industries of Three Countries

The origins of this article go back to a six-month study of the British "engineering" or metalworking industry which I made in 1954. In 1961 I briefly reviewed, first-hand, developments in this industry and then conducted a five-month study of metalworking labor relations in Israel. In 1968 I revisited England to interview some key people in the engineering industry and to gather primary and secondary source material which had become available in recent years. I also devoted a significant part of three months in Israel to inquiries on labor relations in metalworking. In the spring of 1969 I spent three additional months in Australia where another sector of metalworking was available for investigation. A final note: In October, 1968, I served in a consultative capacity to Dr Kenneth Walker of the International Institute for Labour Studies during his preliminary planning of a cross-country project on strategic factors in industrial relations systems. The first of the industries in that project is the metalworking industry. The findings of the 1954 and 1961 studies appeared in the following publications: Labor-Management Relations at the Plant Level under Industry-Wide Bargaining (Champaign: University of Illinois, Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, 1955); "Adjustment Problems of a Long-Established Industrial Relations System: An Appraisal of British Engineering, 1954-61", Quarterly Review of Economics and Business, Vol. 3, No. 4 (Winter, 1963); " Plant Labor Relations in Israel", Industriat and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 17, No.1 1 (October, 1963) ; "Worker Participation in Israeli Management", Industrial Relations, Vol. 3, No. 1 (October, 1963 ).

See, for example, John Dunlop , Industrial Relations Systems ( New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1958 ), and Bernard Karsh and Robert E. Cole , "Industrialization and the Covergence Hypothesis: Some Aspects of Contemporary Japan", Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XXIV, No. 4 (1968), pp. 45-64.

Ministry of Labour , The Metal Industries: Manpower Studies No. 2 ( London: H.M.S.O., 1965), p. 8.

Report (London: H.M.S.O., Cmnd. 3623, 1968), Chapter III.

The main agreement deals with manual workers. Separate agreements are negotiated by the E.E.F. with individual staff unions (notably the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union, the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs, and the Draughtsmen's and Allied Technicians' Association). In addition, special sectional wage and working conditions agreements have been negotiated for lift erection and maintenance, outside steelwork erection, and several similar categories.

Report of the Royal Commission, p. 203.

Ibid., p. 14.

See, for example, Arthur I. Marsh , Industrial Relations in Engineering (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1965), and Dispute Procedures in British Industry (Parts I and 2), research papers published on behalf of Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations (London: H.M.S.O. , 1967).

Proceedings of Special Conference, April 16, 1970, and E.E.F. News, Vol. 1, No. 9 (May, 1970), p. 1.

Report of the Royal Commission, pp. 15-16.

Ibid., pp. 266-7.

This subject is discussed in Nora Stettner , Productivity Bargaining and Industrial Change (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1969).

Histadrut officials are selected through the same kind of political party procedures and arrangements that prevail in government.

Central Bureau of Statistics , Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1968, No. 19 (Jerusalem : Government Press, 1968), pp. 292-3.

Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics, Employment and Unemployment, March, 1968, Canberra, Australia, p. 14. One union offircial estimates that between 300 and 400 thousand employees are covered by the Metal Trades Award.

This view is stressed in Donald Horne , The Lucky Country: Australia in the Sixties (Victoria: Penguin Books, second revised edition, 1964) . The weakening of this ethos is noted by Craig McGregor Profile of Australia (Victoria : Penguin Books, 1966).

For experience prior to 1967 an excellent source is J. E. Isaac and G. W. Ford, editors, Australian Labour Economics: Readings ( Melbourne: Sun Books, 1967). For subsequent experience, see the brief discussions in A.E. Woodward , "A Review of Developments in Industrial Relations 1967-68", The Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 10, No. 2 (July, 1968), pp. 104-15; and "A Review of Industrial Relations 1968-69", The Journal of Industrial Relations , Vol. 11, No. 2 (July, 1969), pp. 89-97.

However, the 1967 work-value decisions had a three-year duration and the 1964 long-service leave award a five-year duration.

A study up to 1955 is Frank T. de Vyver's "Australian Boards of Reference", in Ford and Isaac, op. cit., pp. 472-94.

The Federal Constitution inhibits the Commonwealth Government from enacting substantive labor laws.

The Clerks (Oil Companies) Award, 1966 (C. No. 1413 of 1966), (C. No. 1522 of 1967), and of Federated Clerks Union of Australia v. Golden Fleece Petroleum Limited and Others (C. No. 127 of 1968), pp. 6-7.

Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics , Labour Report No. 52, 1965 and 1966, p. 171; Employment and Unemployment, March, 1968, p. 14.

Australia and New Zealand Bank Limited , Australia's Continuing Development, sixth edition, 1968, p. 36.

"Earnings-Drift in Australia", in Ford and Isaac, op. cit., p. 245.

Ibid., p. 32.

The strong opposition of the unions to this procedure came to a head in a national wave of strikes in May, 1969, over the imprisonment of the secretary of the Victorian branch of the Tramways Federation. In September, 1969, the Commission rejected a union request for the elimination of the ban provision in the Metal Trades Award, but it revised the existing clause to require notification to the Commission of a stoppage so that it could consider the reasons and responsibility for it and try to bring it to an end. Court proceedings against the stoppage would be allowed only after the Commission inquiry. In June, 1970, the Commonwealth Minister for Labour and National Service announced a new procedure whereby not only must every effort be made to settle the dispute but also a certificate must be issued by a member of the Commission before court proceedings can be begun.

Both the arbitration award and the law came in 1970.