Security in Post-War Britain

...Will this wartime system of government-employer-worker association be brought to an end when the war is over...

...Renovation, repair and renewal of all this will be one of the first tasks of the immediate post-war years...

...There exists today a National Advisory Council, connected with the War Cabinet through the Minister of Production...

...BBANY of the war factories have generated an insti-tutional life of their own...

...He sees no reason why the services and amenities provided for the workers in the war fsctories cannot be made a permanent feature of peacetime industry...

...Yet its foundations perhaps are already laid in the new industrial order brought into existence to meet the needs of a nation at war...

...The most farsighted of Britain's trade union leaders, and those with most experience of these wartime inrJustrial relationships, wish to see it develop and not scrapped...

...Herbert Tracey, ana af the leasers af the British Trades Uaiea Congress aad Its publicity officer since KM...

...A complicated network of joint consultative and advisory committees, similarly constituted, connects industry with individual Government departments— the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Supply, the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Food, and others...

...What is new is the worker** recognition of its possibilities as an instrument at post-war reconstruction...

...In the grounds outside the factory, hockey, football and other games are played...

...Union-management collaboration has been established on the workshop level...

...Ordinary men and women are thinking more of the vast resources the community wiU...

...Its hostels are brick bungalows', centrally heated, each containing 40 rooms with baths snd showers...

...The workingman knows only too well thst over large parte of the earth food production has ceased, great tracts of fertile soil have been ravaged and destroyed, along with many populous cities, many towns and villages, ports and harbors, railway communications, roads and bridges...

...This project of creating an economic council on the basis of grmiP representation of organized industry and business is not new...

...That is the challenge to industrial statesmanship which the imaginatively awakened working man of Britain will throw down when the war is over...

...When the working man and woman look st the problem in this way, they do not think of the future in terms of scarcity and .shortage...

...The topsy-turvy economics of the inter-war years meant for the great mass of the working people poverty amidst plenty...

...He thinks that the dispersal of the huge aggregations of industrial workers which the war has helped to bring about should not be reversed in the coming years of peace, snd that the relocation of industry and the redistribution of the industrially employed population necessitated by war conditions can be guidod towards the multiplication of factory-communities like the one I have described...

...Security in Post-War Britain By Herbert Tracey U/HAT th« workers want in the post-war world has " not yet been cleaily stated by their accredited spokesmen in other thsn general terms...

...Industrial welfare has acquired in this way a wider connotation in the mind of the working man...

...Post-wsr planning has still to reach the "blue print" stage...

...It has been put forward primarily as a means of ensuring that in th« transition from war to a peace economy, there will bt more consultation, more joint cooperation between tht trade unions, the employers' organizations and government departments than during the war years...

...It could be objected that factory-communities of this kind are the product of war conditions...

...but if they are disappointed, they will leave behind a sense of frustration among the working people, • • • WHETHER the joint production committees will continue to function in post-war industry is a question of policy upon which decisions have yet to be taken...

...During the present war, and despite rta stresses, privations snd hardships, they have seen what can be done to humanize industrial conditions...

...They range from a guarantee of full employment and the maintenance of a high level of wages to the five-day week of 40 hours, psid vscations, good homes for their families, wide educational facilities for their children and full development of the social services which protect them in periods of unemployment snd sickness, when accidents befall the breadwinners, when ok) age lessens or terminates their power to earn, and death invades the home...

...But the workingman realizes also that seed time and harvest have not failed, and that nature's process** of renewal and renovation are still at work...

...Will it be so...

...In the post-war world there will be greater reserves of skilled and competent labor than ever before, accumulations of machine tools and resources in factory equipment, afid transport facilities which can be applied to the uses of peace...

...When the war ends, the workers who have been concentrated in them will perhaps disperse...

...a This war factory, not a dream, but a Irving reality, is a self-contained community...

...He does not want to go back to the gloomy factory towns which remain as the legacy of early nineteenth century capitalism...

...have at its disposal who* the war is over: shortages, yesj but surpluses, too...

...Specific reforms which the workers will claim in the immediate post-war years could be listed without much difficulty in Britain, as, no doubt, in other countries...

...Here, for example, is one of Britain's war factories, employing thousands of men and women drawn together from all parts of the country...

...The two canteens sre a part of it...

...There are lectures, brain trusts, discussion groups, forums of debate, technical cjasses to teach handicrafts, dressmaking and millinery, gardening, cookery, first aid, languages, singing and dancing, symphony concerts, whist drives, and indoor entertainments...

...Developments in industrial welfare have quickened the imagination of the working men...

...The heart of British labor's proposals is the eitension of ladaatrial democracy—joint plaaaiag aad cooperation of labor, management, aad government through a coaacil af industry as an iastrameat of past-war reconstruction...

...is editor af "Labour ladaatrial News" aad "Christian Commonwealth...

...The two great employers' organizations, the Federation of British Industries and the British Employers' Confederation, share a joint representation on this Council equal to that of the Trades Union Congress...

...It has been suggested that the associations can be placed upon a constitutional basis—that is, that the existing joint bodies, together with such important central organizations as the Chambers of Commerce, Chambers of Shipping, the large building societies and friendly societies, and in fact every financial institution and voluntary association which has to do with the building up and the utilization of the country's capital resources and credit for the expansion of national trade and industry, should be constituted as aa economic council, hi a consultative and advisory jjCj tionship with the Government and Parliament...

...each room is tastefully and simply furnished with wardrobe, hot and cold wash basins, snd brightly colored floor coverings...

...If it is terminated, it will disappoint the hopes of many labor people for a New Deal in postwar industry...

...There is s sick bay in the grounds, and there is also a chapel for religious worship...

...The deepest, anxiety of the working people is that these inevitable shortages and economic dislocations of the immediiate post-war years are not accentuated or worsened by an uneconomic and unregulated or inequitable distribution and use of the nation's resources...

...Although much, has been destroyed, there have bees immense additions to the productive equipment—of Britain, at any rate...

...and while this transference is taking place, there will be shortages of raw materials, capital equipment and Consumer good...

...Not a little of the bitterness which sharpened the working class protest sgainst unemployment in the inter-war years arose from the feeling that it was wrong, both in an economic and a moral sense, that the chances of employment should be so ill-shared...

...having produced too much wheat, the surplus had to be destroyed because the market could not absorb it...

...But contrary to the gloomier predictions of the economic experts, the average workingman is not convinced that there will be acute and long continued shortages of the prime necessaries of life snd industry...

...JT is the considered view of the British Trades Union Congress that it will be quite impossible to effect the transition to a peace economy without the maintenance of some measure of public control over prices, production, distribution snd consumption...

...It is undoubtedly the fact that government-employer-worker collaboration has given birth to big expectations which may be disappointed...

...Britain's industrial agreements which provided for the setting up of this joint machinery, both in the Royal Ordnance Factories and in the engineering and allied trades, contains a clause stipulating that they shall be reviewed before they are due to expire in order to give both parties to them an opportunity of deciding whether they shall be renewed and carried forward into the post-war years...

...Advocacy of this proposal to maintain and extent government-employer-worker collaboration has not yet worked out its full implications...

...The factories will be dismantled, the hostels will house cattle, and bats and owls will haunt the ruins...

...When they see in their daily life how natural and national resources hsve been mobilised and utilized in the field of war production, they enn see no good reason why there should be unemployment, poverty or want in the post-war world...

...fa this article ha aaalysos realistically the social aspirations of British labor aad the gains that may be achieved ia the immediate peat-war period...

...He is a special correspondent far various newspapers...

...A lively intellectual atmosphere animates the factory...

...Woiking people regarded technological unemployment with the same embittered view as the intelligent farmer contemplated the deliberate burning of the product of his labor on the soil...

...But the economic frsmework within which this not inconsiderable program of industrial and social reform can be attained is to be discerned so far only in outline...

...It is almost a symbol of the workers' desire for a more ample reward from the technological and scientific progress that industry has made...

...Through such a nationally constituted council of industry, responsible trade union representatives believe, the technical knowledge aad practical experience of the executive leaders of industry and business can be placed at the disposal of the Government to assist it both in the framing of h* economic policy and in the carrying out of its reconstruction program...

...The main prdblem of the transitional period, viewed from the working class standpoint, is to transfer the resources wbich will be no longer needed for the production pf wsr materials to the production of goods and services to meet social needs...

...The workers of Britain do not believe that such a state of things is neeessaiy in sny country...

...Consider the asset the country will have in the multitude of trained operatives, men and women, who have retained and developed thaw skills in the service trades, and in the war plant*, factories, workshops, ships and motor vehicles—*" usable, all adaptable to the requirements of peace...

...It is certain that in the immediate post-war years, their trade unions will seek to obtain the five-day week of 40 hours...

...They will not tolerate that state of things again...

...It is set in plessant surroundings, with flower beds and lawns, and kitchen gardens where vegetables are grown for the two huge canteens that supply meals to the workers...

...It means the organization of the worker's life in terms of more leisare aad greater dignity, freedom, and responsibility...

...Ha has published "Coal War la Britain" ami "Sixty Tears af Trade Uaioaism...

...It means more now than the proviaion of medical service, first aid outfits, nursing units and canteens in the factory...

...This conception of a new order in industry which will accord to the worker a higher status, is to a large extent the outcome of the closer relationship developed during the wsr between the trade unions and the employers'.organizations snd their more intimate association with the Government...

...The life of the factory revoives around its own social center...

...There is a sunny lounge or sun.parlor with about 200 easy chairs, post office, barber shops, stores, a movie theatre where 600 people can sit in comfort, and a library...