Fawley productivity agreements

In July 1960 an elaborate set of agreements was concluded between the management of the Esso Refinery at Fawley, near Southampton, and the local representatives of the trade unions with whom it negotiates the Transport and General Workers' Union, to which most of the wage-earners employed there belong, and seven others representing the craftsmen en gaged largely on maintenance work. These agreements were without precedent or even proximate parallel in the history of collective bargaining in Great Britain. Ignoring for the present their many intricate points of detail, they had two prominent and arresting features.

In the first place they embodied in a practical form what might be called a 'productivity package deal'. Briefly, the com pany agreed to provide large increases in its employees' rates of pay of the order of 40 per cent-in return for the unions' con sent to certain defined changes in working practices that were hampering a more efficient utilization of labour. These changes included some relaxation of job demarcations, the withdrawal of craftsmen's mates and their redeployment on other work, additional temporary and permanent shift working, and greater freedom for management in its use of supervision. The second, equally remarkable,