Not All Right, Jack

The industrial revolution was born in 18th century England, and British working attitudes hardly seem to have changed since. Nowadays petulant, cosseted and truculent, British labor will down tools at the merest hint of any slight or insult. It will jealously defend a host of obsolete prerogatives and work practices that are the despair of man agement efforts at efficiency--and often of labor union leaders themselves. This year alone, Britain's auto industry, main stay of Prime Minister Harold Wilson's export push to bolster the sickly pound, has already been hit by 109 separate strikes equaling 645,000 lost work days-- nearly every one an unauthorized, wildcat strike.

Last month, in an auto-parts plant in Wales, a workman walked off the job because he felt his foreman lacked training. He was suspended; 400 fellow workers then struck in sympathy, and eventually 20,000 workers were idled. When two car bodies came off the Jaguar line poorly polished and were sent back to be redone, polishers said no, and Jaguar was shut down for four weeks. Nor is the auto industry unique. Last week thousands of London commuters were fuming over a railroad slowdown called against the union leader's orders.

Precarious Stability. The British public has had just about enough: a National Opinion Poll showed last week that four out of five Britons would go so far as to favor tough government legislation outlawing unauthorized strikes. Harold Wilson, for all his dependence on the workingman's vote, has had enough too. Knowing that Labor's work stoppages, coupled with wage gains running an inflationary 6.3% so far this year, threaten not only the precarious stability of sterling but also the precarious two-vote majority by which his socialists rule. Wilson demanded that the Trades Union Congress, meeting in Brighton this week, agree to voluntary controls in tune with his impending income-regulating legislation. His alternative: use of compulsory government controls in the bill, due in the next session of Parliament.

For the delegates to Brighton, representing nearly 9,000,000 union members, it was an odious choice. But in the end, Wilson's urging carried the day by a margin of 2,000,000 votes: local unions bound themselves to submit in advance all demands for wage increases to the T.U.C.'s General Council, not to press them on management until--and unless--the T.U.C. approved the wage claims as within the government's anti-inflationary guidelines. The margin was thanks largely to T.U.C. General Secretary George Woodcock's plea that Wilson's demand was the lesser of two evils. But Woodcock also observed that, in any case, voluntaryism might well prove "impractical and unworkable"--precisely what most Britons gloomily suspect.

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