Engineering Employers to Push Ahead with Plans

from an industrial correspondent Despite the fact that the unions have turned down the Engineering Employers! Federation white collar scheme (see previous issues of The Week) the employers are to go ahead with this scheme. Last week the leaders of the staff unions rejected the scheme for the third time, but the employers said they would not take no for an answer, The Federation's management board will consider the issue at its next meeting on January 26, The unions would be happy to negotiate minimum scales for staff workers in engineering, but they dislike the employers' plan for standard rates of pay because it would mean that they could not negotiate pay increases with individual employers, The Federation, on the other hand, is determined to stop the white collar unions from, as they put it, playing off one employer against another, It also want to establish a system whexrby all companies would pay their staff the same amount. They are using the argument that if this is not done the Government will step in "to stop the ‘upward drift of engineering employees salaries, This dispute is interesting in a number of respects: it shows the subtle use by the employers of the Government's incomes policy to try and impose conditions which would have been unthinkable in the past. It is an indication of the complete "proletarianisation" of the staff employees tooe It is good that the unions are resisting these efforts, union members should ensure that their leaders do not change their minds,