In their 1963 Report, the General Council of the TUC commented upon the Report of the Jenkins Committee on Company Law Reform, which had been published during the year 1962/3, The TUC had offered a substantial deposition to the Committee, which it had published in the 1960 Report. The central TUC criticism of the Jenkins Report is still, very clearly, relevant to discussion of the new Companies Bill, refurbished after the lapse of the Bill which died when the last General Flection was called, The TUC's complaint, in 1963, was:
"They regretted, however, that the Report did not give explicit recognit-
ion to their central assertion that workpeople had a right to receive
information about the affairs of their company, and that the provision
of the information should not merely be a by-product of obligations laid
upon companies for other purposes." foi Although the new Bill will enable trade unions to make ncre informed guesses than they did before about the economic position of companies with which they negotiate, and although measures to compel publication of private companies' accounts will be particularly welcome, it is perfectly obvious that this central complaint of the TUC loses none of its force when transferred from the door of the Jenkins Report to that of the new Bill. Although the financial colwmists have welcomed the new measure, even they have registered complaints. Margot Naylor, who was a member of the Jenkins Committee herself, wrote in The Observer last weekend that she was sad that there was no obligation upon companies to produce half-yearly reports or to speed up their publication of annual accounts. She also complains:
"T would have liked a blanket compulsion to reveal the methods used to
calculate depreciation charges and the values of stocks and work-in-
progress. And these values should be shown separately, not lumped
together." The city editor of The Times complained about the failure of the new measures to compel disclosure of exact figures for individual directors' earnings:
"Considering that the earnings of any public servant are known, there seems
little justification in this day and age to protect the directors from
having their earnings revealed." Certainly the abortive measure of Peter Shore's to compel disclosure of top management earnings, which was counted out in February 1965, when only some fifty MPs cast their votes on it, went much further in this direction than the present measure, which only compels disclosure within broad incomebrackets, except for the case of the highest paid director or chairman of the Board. Trade unionists ought to notice this retreat. The Sunday Times wrote largely about the fact that "some of the most important items" to be disclosed "are only going to be available in a very limited sense to certain people, at certain times, at certain places." Readers ef the Seamen's excellent pamphlet, "Not Wanted_on Voyage", will be interested to see that although Jenkins recommended that Shipping Companies should not be exempt from provisions about the revelation of assets, and transfers to and from reserves, a large measure of exemption will still be granted to them under the new Act. over /
The New Companies Bill Continued/ O st aggravat roblem, of Company subsidies to the Tory Party, ran ine cin ae ete orebea: : Such contributions are to be disclosed: the TUC'S evidence of 1960 and memo of 1963 argued that they should be prohibited. ‘/orkers are charged personal income-tax on their contributions to the political levy: why should the corporate rich be able to sustain their political organisations without making any personal sacrifices? In short, the new Bill is in marked contrast to the trade union legislation of the present Government. Nothing whatever is being done to provide the kinds of information and access to "business secrets" which would allow workers to police a real incomes policy. Large areas of manoeuvre still remain in the fields which now do qualify for limited disclosure. nd, above all, no steps at all have been taken to implement such obvious demands—~ as those of Prof, Wedderburn, in his Fabian pamphlet on Company Law Reform, that "the next Companies Act should provide that one of the modern conditions for incorporation with limited liability should be a willingness to conduct collective bargaining wherever a company employs a substantial number of workers."" If a moderate demand like this is to be spurned, what then of such demands as those advocated by such sterling spokesmen as Paul Merrick, in "The Company or the Community", or again and again in Union Voice ?
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The new Bill shows beyond any doubt at all that the reforming interest of the Wilson administration is entirely limited to meet the needs of neocapitalist management, and that Mr. ‘lilson only needs trade unions when he is looking for votes, By such acts of omission, as well as by the attacks of Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act, should this administration be judged. If the moderate demands of the TUC are disregarded in such a cavalier fashion, how long can unions repose trust in those who disregard them? It is to be hoped that the answer is "not long". As Frnie Roberts rightly says, in this month's issue of Voice of the Unions, "If the leaders won't change, change the leaders." The new Companies Act is-yet another argument for doing just this,