Poliestireno expandido (espumaflex)

'Status quo', the other key axiom, is a principle widespread throughout British industrial relations. It may be explicit, as in the B R IT M E T collective agreement:

Statui quo: In caM of a dispute, tha conditions to be applied during procedure are those prevailing by established practice.

or implicit as described by a manager at BR IT B R E W :

"It ia understood that no new practice will come into operation until agreement has been reached".

The status quo provision does not invariably, as might be expected, work to the union's benefit. Any industrial action by the union before the exhaustion of either interests or rights procedure is considered a violation of the status quo and management in both plants (but especially B R IT M E T ) will resist 'negotiating out of procedure'or 'under duress'. Yet, as noted in chapter IV, this concept is a flexible one. A s Marsh says, such remonstration may often be an indicator of the need for:

"informal talk» between tha officials of both sides. The use of the technique of ‘no negotiation under duress' is, ia fact a tactical matter and frequently succeeds, not from the eacellence of the idea itself, but because it enables forces of time and circumstance to be applied to the situation." (Marsh, 1966, p.T-M

Indeed, at both of our British plants, union industrial action out of procedure is often a way o f underlining the seriousness of a grievance while management recourse to status quo is often a method of bringing the union back to the table, albeit informally.

Status quo can also work to the employer's benefit when, all other things remaining the same, the union wants to exploit a temporary advantage (eg. seasonal ones at B R IT B R E W ) to introduce a change, like a rate increase, and management wishes to resist. Management can drag out talks until the advantage has passed.

But it is the union to whom this principle most often redounds and the industrial plant can indeed sometimes become a 'debating society', although the managers in neither of our British plants feel that such shop-floor debates per se present a major problem of disruption.

To invoke the status quo provision, the union need only launch a dispute. Since it is management that most often wishes to initiate change, and delay in implementing change

Chapter V...page 168 can often cost money, the status quo provision can be a powerful union lever, in and of itself, for wresting concessions from managers where they must make quick or marginal changes.

On the other hand, the status quo provision can have the effect of forcing management to plan important changes carefully in advance if it feels it necessary to 'take on' the union. For instance, in the dispute over the B R IT B R E W draymen's incentive scheme, mentioned in Chapter III, the company laid plans for changing the scheme a full two years before the eventual strike and hired a new manager with suitable 'hatchet man' qualifications. Feeling a strike might eventually result, management submitted a report to head office, indicating how important the desired change was, warning that a strike might result, estimating the losses that would be incurred, and requesting a 'bail out' if necessary. Head office agreed to the plan and estimated strike costs were built into the B R IT B R E W 's budget.

The dispute was ostensibly over change to a written departmental agreement. Yet like an unseaworthy ship, the old agreement was unsatisfactory to the company not only because of internal weakness but because of the mass of unwritten adjustments which had grown onto it like barnacles over more than a decade....items like delivery routes, procedure if a load could not be delivered, the amount of assistance given by draymen to publicans, whether signatures were required on delivery notes. A ll of the above were important to the company to control costs and service and to the workers to maintain earnings and some amount of job discretion. A s mentioned earlier, the ability to isolate this dispute in time and place from other issues in the plant helped both parties, to their independent benefit, keep it containable. The existence of cushioning body of unwritten adjustments means that both sides could settle earlier, without losing face, in the confidence that even the most Draconian settlement could be adjusted at the point of production to meet their day-to-day needs.

In Canada, managements also plan in advance for showdowns with the union over change, but only if they involve amendment to the collective agreement. For other small and large changes under the umbrella of 'management's rights', industrial relations implications are often blithely ignored. Where change must be negotiated in Canada, the relative absence of a cushioning body of custom and practice makes any proposed

Chapter V...page 169 agreement all the more drastic for both parties, witness the extended work week dispute at C A N M E T .