MEASURED DAYWORK AND COLLECTIVE BARGAINING*
| Author | ALLAN FLANDERS |
| Date | 01 November 1973 |
| Published date | 01 November 1973 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1973.tb00875.x |
MEASURED DAYWORK AND
COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING*
ALLAN
FLANDERS?
THE
purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of introducing
measured daywork (M.D.W.) for the institutions of collective bargaining.
It
is
written against
a
general background of the present state of industrial
relations in this country, but some more explicit assumptions need to be
stated. The first
is
that the decision to introduce M.D.W. will have been
taken by a single firm for one or more of its plants; whether it belongs to an
employers’ federation
is
Ieft an open question. The second assumption is
that M.D.W. will be replacing an existing pay system based substantially
on payment by results (P.B.R.), and that the main impetus for change has
come from the degeneration of this system. The third assumption is that
management is already engaged in some form of collective bargaining,
though this may mean no more than that it recognizes the unions organiz-
ing the workers concerned and deals with their shop stewards.
Given these assumptions, a statement
of
the implications of M.D.W.
for collective bargaining calls for a consideration
of
a) the nature of collective bargaining and the principal features that
may be affected;
b) consequences of the existing pay system, especially how it has
influenced the behaviour and attitudes of the parties to collective
bargaining
;
c)
the arrangements proposed
for
administering M.D.W.
;
d) problems which may arise in negotiating the change in pay systems;
e)
the relationship between the maintenance of the new pay system
and
and the institutions
of
collective bargaining.
*
This
article reproduces a background paper prepared for the Office of Manpower Econo-
mies in early
1972.
It has been amended to take into account the
O.M.E.’s
Report on
Measured
Daywork,
H.M.S.O.,
1973,
but the views it expresses are, of course, my awn. The article takes the
form of a reasoned argument and is not based on any original research.
If
anyone believes that
the argument
is
pushing against an open door they should take note of some
of
the conclusions
of
the O.M.E. Report:
We
found some
firms
where both sides were committed to the new scheme and where great
care was taken in working out and implementing the proposals. By contrast, at other plants
MDW appeared on the scene almost
by
chance with little planning, little discussion and
negligible commitment..
.
.
In only a minority of cases were managers, sometimes jointly
with shop stewards, carefully monitoring performance, productivity and costs, and using the
stability provided by
MDW
88
a
basis
for
improvement. More often, the maintenance
of
the
scheme was to some extent casual and in consequence
MDW
was then as vulnerable
to
decay
as any other form of payment system (p.
52).
368
t
Reader
in
Industrial Relations, University of Warwick
MEASURED
DAYWORK
AND
COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING
369
After dealing with each
of
these subjects in turn, a final section of this paper
summarizes the whole of the argument and presents its main conclusions.
THE
NATURE
OF
COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Collective bargaining, as
I
have argued elsewhere,‘
is
a misleading
term because it fails to convey the true nature of the institutions it is used
to
describe. Although collective bargaining always involves employees
acting
as
a collectivity, by means of their formal or informal organization,*
they do not make
bargains
with employers in the process, since the resulting
agreements do not commit anyone to buy or to sell labour. Rather do the
parties settle
all
manner of conflicts which arise in their relations, princi-
pally by agreeing on rules to regulate them. The substantive rules that they
agree regulate terms and conditions of employment on behalf of those
whom they represent, and
so
define the rights and obligations attached
to
jobs. Their agreed procedural rules regulate the parties’ own relations, for
instance their behaviour in dealing with disputes, and therefore settle their
rights and obligations towards each other.
A
simple way, then, of looking at collective bargaining as a social
process is to note that
it
continually transforms disagreements into agree-
ments in an orderly fashion. Though either side may resort to sanctions to
protect or to advance its interests, the procedural rules are intended to
prescribe the circumstances when this is permissible and to promote the
use
of
peaceful methods. Disagreements may arise over the application,
interpretation or enforcement
of
existing agreements, or out of a desire on
the one side
or
the other to revise them. This corresponds with the distinc-
tion which lawyers draw between conflicts of right and conflicts
of
interest,
but it
is
not one which, as yet, has had much practical significance in this
country. Regardless of the type of dispute the main concern of the parties
has usually been ‘to find an acceptable and, if possible, a durable com-
promise by means of direct negotiation’.*
Joint regulation would be a more fitting term to describe the process
than collective bargaining. This brings out much more clearly the real
choices with which we are confronted in industrial relations. The choice is
not between collective and individual bargaining, at least not for the vast
majority of employees; some regulation
of
their terms and conditions
of
employment is inescapable. We have rather to choose between separate
unilateral regulation either by employers or by employees, as opposed to
their combining in joint regulation, or the other main alternative of
statutory regulation in which their representatives may or may not play
Allan
Flanders,
Managmni
and
Unions,
Fak,
1970,
Chap.
IV
‘Collective Bargaining: A
This can
be
expressed more grandiloquently
as
‘institutionalizing conflict’, see
R.
Dubin in
Managmnt
and
Unwns,
op.
cit.,
p.
99
Theoretical
Analysis’,
pp
213
ff.
Allan Flanden
(ed.),
CoNectiw
Bargaining
Readings,
Penguin Education,
1969,
p.
52.
a
That
is
as
trade unions
or
as
work
groups.
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