Whatever Happened to Productivity Bargaining?

“A genuine productivity agreement offers solutions to many of the typical problems of industrial relations. It raises standards of supervision and of managerial planning and control. It closes the gap between rates of pay and actual earnings. It enables demarcation difficulties to be eliminated or reduced. It concentrates decisions at the level of the company or factory. It formalises and regulates the position of the shop steward” (Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, 1968, para. 325, p. 84). “At the negative end of the range, a general restoration of productivity bargaining should be resisted like the plague. Indeed, it was this contagion which destroyed the pay and prices policy of the late '60's; and subsequent research confirms that it is a loophole so wide that even the most superannuated team of cart‐horses can draw even the most rickety coach through it” (The Times, 10 May 1973).