Flurry

Alf Elliott peered out from under bushy red eyebrows and a soiled worker's cap. "It's not that we object to the machine so much," Alf said. "We're all for the machine just so it don't replace us and make us--" he groped for a 10-bob word--"and make us redundant. But the guv'nor [the boss] just put it on without consulting us and laid off those men. We can't allow that."

Alf was one of 412 London dockers, employed by Butler's Wharf Ltd., who went on a brief strike last week when the "guv'nor" put to work a British-made forklift truck (a mobile, automatic stacking machine) to help the men unload grapes, lemons and Dutch cheese. Observing that the machine enabled one man to do the work of three, the guv'nor laid off 14 men from a team of 21. The strike followed; the dockers returned only when the machine was withdrawn, pending negotiations.

Tactful Benefits. This little flurry attracted a lot of attention, partly because it happened while the Anglo-American Council on Productivity was thrashing out ways & means of increasing British industrial efficiency. Labor's own Daily Mirror berated the dockers' action as "a strike against prosperity, a refusal to go forward with modern methods." Actually, in this case the employers were much at fault. When they put the stacking truck in, they violated a 1929 law forbidding employers to install labor-saving machines without consulting the workers first.

British employers and working men both are slow to change their ways. Both have become enmeshed in restrictive practices, the employers to shield themselves from the lash of competition, the workers to "spread the work." Sir Stafford Cripps, Britain's economic boss, was well aware of all this last summer when he and ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman cooked up the idea of an Anglo-American Council on Productivity. The main purpose was to give Britain--as tactfully as possible--the benefit of the best U.S. practice. The first British reaction was one of outraged pride and suspicion (TIME, Aug. 9). But British industry and trades unions have decided, in the main, to string along with Cripps and the council.

Model for Laggards. In some cases great improvement has resulted from a change of methods, without any new machines. A textile mill in Bolton rearranged the machines in its cardroom, set workers to acquiring high skill at one job instead of puttering at several. Production per man-hour went up 39%, cost went down 10% a pound, and workers had more free time (for tea, etc.) on the job. Yet in the textile industry as a whole the man-hour output remains abysmally low.

The British contingent of the Anglo-American Council is headed by big, bluff Sir Frederick Bain, deputy chairman of Imperial Chemicals and head of the Federation of British Industries; the U.S. contingent by Board Chairman Philip Reed of General Electric. The council met for the first time late in October, then set off on a whirlwind tour of factories--electrical and mechanical engineering, clothing, tire and radio plants near London, machine tool and auto plants in Birmingham, textile factories in Bradford, pottery works in Stoke, the busy Clydeside shipyards in Glasgow.

Last week the council had ready a 5 1/2-page preliminary report, mainly general recommendations and a chart of the council's future activity. Most important was a provision for British workers of all grades to visit notably efficient plants in the U.S.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.