BRITISH workers are under sustained attack - but not just from pay freeze and job losses. Reorganisation of working practices - the so-called new management techniques is sweeping through industry.
Few workplaces of any size have not been affected by the new exploitative techniques which hide behind buzzwords like "flexibility". *team working and quality management'.
Flexibility and multi-skillIng are core ideas in the NMTs. The era when workers had a job description, precise tasks and a known work-week is gone. Workers are expected increasingly to be able to be able to carry out numerous lasks and to work those hours which suit the bosses.
Short-term contracts rather than a full-time job are becoming the norm in many industries; some firms are even employing workers on the basis of 'nil guaranteed hours' -in other words you come into work only when the boss wants you.
Most of the NMTs were invented in the US, but were first applied on a larde scale in Japan. Ploneered in the car industry the techniques are now widespread in health, local government, transport, journalism, retailing and numerous other industries.
And they have been decked out with a pretentious ideol ogy almed at getting workers to participate in their own exploitation; notions like team work and quality management try to tie workers to reporting on their fellow employees and brainwash them into identitying with the company and its alms. pert Dan Jones dubbed the NMTs 'The Machine That Changed the World'. Multinationals are still investing mil lions in retining the techniques.
But against the background of mass unemployment the NTs are very difficult to fight. Workers are often co. erced into accepting new working practices and de-unionisation by the threat of losing their jobs. The Socialist Outlook day school on Saturday 3 July aims to explore strategies of resistance to the NTs onslaught. education, NHS, post and telecommunications, transport, local government, manufac turing and the civil service. Resisting economic restructuring, social engineering and the new management techniques SATURDAY 3 July, Conway Hall London WC1, 11am-6pm Registration $5 (waged), $2 (unwaged, UB40, students) Workshops include discussion on the NTs in
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 45 June 26 1993. Page 4