Incomes and Productivity: Planning for Growth?

The reorganisation of 1957 unseated Citrine, but it left his successors with all the strengths and weaknesses of the industrial relations machinery which he had created. The unions had wanted to retain this machinery at the national level (including Scotland), and the Electricity Council’s role in pay bargaining and joint consultation was therefore retained. It was the only policy area in which the Council had clear executive authority over the CEGB and Area Boards. They found a wide variety of views in the Boards on the reforms which were needed to improve labour productivity in the industry. Self, like Citrine, tried to suppress discussion of pay incentive schemes, feeling that any local bonuses would lead to wage drift and increase the number of parity disputes between groups. The industry thus remained committed to what was essentially highly centralised, company-level bargaining rather than individual plant bargaining based on local performance. Hinton also opposed pay incentive schemes, though the CEGB did want to improve the status and pay of their workers generally without productivity strings. Some Area Boards, by contrast, wanted to pursue experiments with work study and individual incentives more vigorously.