Strikes: are we really as bad as we think? Going on strike is not the British disease, but only a symptom The two industrial disputes at Birmingham and Bathgate which have cast another serious doubt over British Ley- land's future will only confinn the belief of a legion of observers at home and abroad that "the British are always on. strike ". BL's latest indus- trial relations disaster is a clas- sic case. The British are on strike again. It is their motor industry again. It is British Leyland again. It is the tool- makers (in one case) again. It is unofficial again. It is about pay parity again. The word "strike", its deri- vatives and its synonyms once more dominate the headlines. There could hardly be a better time to consider whether Britain deserves its reputation. The seeker after t-uth wvho- sets out to find an explanation for the British strike syn- drome, if such it is, faces an extraordinarily nebulous assignment. Generalizations abound but patterns are all but im,possible to discern. It soon becomes clear that there are lies, damned lies, statistics and strike figures. Theories are more plentiful than facts, and the most consistent and easily identified sound to be heard is the muffled beat of logic being chopped. There is a case (albeit not a strong one) for saying that a layman interes- ted in looking for reason in British industrial relations wvould be well advised to find something more constructive to occupy his time. For the record, my researches took me from the in- dustrial relations summit at Warvick University (which has a reputation second to none) to the TUC. from the CBI to ACAS (the Advisory, Concilition and Arbitration Senrice) and the Institute of Personnel Manage- ment. Further comfort in this lonely task was provided by years of intermittent reporting of many kinds of industrial dispute and considerable fir.st- hand knowledge of labour rela- tions in West Germany, con- A decision to strike: the workers wait. stantly (and, I fear, wrongly) held up as an example to us all. The first conclusion the un- daunted observer is obliged to reach is that the British are obsessed by strikes, rather as the West Germans are obsessed by inflation. One of the great British folk-memories of this century is the General Strike of 1926, perhaps because it happened only nine years after the Russian Revolution. The workers involved in it amounted to only about one- seventh of the number of French strikers who brought their country to a standstill for weeks in the summer of 1968- but the French are not obsessed by strikes. Rightly or wrongly, but cer- tainly faithfully reflecting the level of public interest, British newspapers, radio and televi- sion devote enormous amounts of space and time to strikes. Since the principal media are national rather than regional, a strike in Caithness is common gossip in Cornwall, and it is all too easy for foreign correspondents to report British strikes abroad. It is for this reason, presuma- bly, that Mr Kenneth Graham, assistant general secretairy of the TUC, usually finds, as he told me, that visiting North American trade unionists are better informed about the latest British strike than they are about a quite savage and protracted dispute in Canada or the United States. An American labour relations expert told rwe: " A Califor- nian just doesn't want to know about a Pittsburgh steel strike." Mr James Mortimer, chair- man of ACAS, pointed out that it is the period betwveen the wars, from which the generally inaccurate public conception of the nature of strikes still Ilargely derives, that was the departure from the norm, not the present. 'Then, wage outs produced a series of confron- tations between capital and labour on a national scale un- known before or since. Nowa- days a nationwide strike is an extreme rarity. Where it occurs, it is almost always in a nationalized industry where the Government or a state agency is the sole employer. The accompanying table, which I compiled from the latest statistics published by the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency, reveals almost as much as it conceals. Strike figures must be treated with caution. Many stoppages are not counted because they in- volve only very few workers or do not last a full working day, or simply because they are not reported. Thus the traditional West German wage-bargaining tactic, - the warning strike of a few hours or less, perhaps in- volving hundreds of thousands of workers, does not appear in the figures at all. Nor is any one year typical, and comparisons between coun- tries are always traps for the unwary. For Britain, 1976 was a comparatively trouble-free year. Last year was worse, and this year is already much worse still. The Italian figures reflect the local custom where- by millions of workers award the nation an extra public holi- day by striking for 24 hours, something the French do too, though on a smaller scale. A close study of such figures over a period of years does however permit one clear con. clusion: that the British, when it comes to strikes, have nothing to boast about but also are nothing like as bad as they (and many foreigners) like to think. Insofar as our reputation for striking is undeserved- Dan van der Vat because it is at variance with the facts-it can only be our own fault. Even in a bad year for strikes, we lose rather more working days through in- dustrial accidents, 10 to 20 times more through sickness and 20 to 40 times more through that great unsung curse on industry, absenteeism. there is no ground for compla- cency in these comparisohs, however, because they over- look the uniquely disruptive effect of strikes, w-hich the present' extreme examples at British Leyland show. While it is difficult (if not impossible) and dangerous to generalize about strikes, they are invariably based on a grie- vance which is real *to the strikers and invariably occur after a breakdown in communi- cation between management and workers. They are almost always local, small and of short duration and, despite all the publicity, they usually come as a shock to both sides. Pay is the usual visible issue, but there is overwhelming evi- dence that the British worker attaches more importance to the way he is treated than to his pay. Boredom, lack of con- sultation, unfair dismissal, fear of redundancy and even of change, bad working condi- tions, outmoded union organi- zation, managerial remoteness in large companies and govern- ment policy are all far more important than is usually admitted. They are also far more im- portant as causes of strikes than agitation and 'bloody min- dedness which, though they exist, are nothing like as com- mon as many people would like to think. Fast and flexible response at the workplace based on good communications is widely held to be the only answver to disputes. Strikling is not the British disease, but only a symptom. Low producti- vity and low investment consti- tute the real bane of British industry. Strikes: are we really as bad as we think?