The Hidden Meaning of Pay Conflict

159 Pages·1981·17.374 MB·English

by  Michael White (auth.)

THE HIDDEN MEANING OF PAY CONFLICT
Also by Michael White
MOTIVATING MANAGERS FINANCIALLY
INCENTIVE PAYMENT SYSTEMS FOR MANAGERS
SHORTER WORKING TIME
THE HIDDEN
MEANING OF
PAY CONFLICT
Michael White
Senior Fellow, Policy Studies Institute, and Research Associate,
Ashridge Management College
M
© Michael White 1981
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1981 978-0-333-26833-9
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1981 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-04736-9 ISBN 978-1-349-04734-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04734-5
Contents
Acknowledgements vi
The Puzzle of Pay Conflict 1
2 Attitudes to Employment 13
3 Pay Attitudes and Pay Satisfaction 26
4 Pay Systems, Authority and Conflict 39
5 The Case-Survey Method 48
6 The Hotels 62
7 The Finance Company 79
8 The Manufacturing Plant 98
9 Summary and Implications 115
10 The Problem of Authority 131
References 141
Index 148
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this book involved interviews with 300
people, and the collection and analysis of 3200 questionnaires. Clearly
this would not have been possible but for the help and co-operation of
many people.
In the hotels study (Chapter 6), the field work was shared by
Andrew Hepworth, Roger Hughes, Miranda Cummins and myself.
The fmance company field work (Chapter 7), was carried out by
Roger Hughes, Tony Boyle and myself. The manufacturing plant field
work (Chapter 8) was conducted by Andrew Hepworth, Bromwen
Stiven and myself.
Andrew Hepworth worked closely with me on the planning and
administration of the surveys, and many aspects of the exploratory in
vestigations and survey procedures were discussed and decided jointly.
The multivariate statistical methods used in this research were
selected on the basis of experience from a methodological study sup
ported by a grant from the Social Science Research Council (Grant
HR 2020, 'Systematic Analysis of Employee Satisfaction'). The team
consisted of Peter Lansley, Roger Hughes and myself. Peter Lansley
played the main role in this project, in terms both of statistics and of
computer programming.
Particularly crucial was the support of the organisations from
which the information was gathered. These three companies paid
for the studies of their employees, yet gave every freedom to the re
searcher, and agreed that the work should serve research purposes as
well as their own practical needs. Managers within the organisations
contributed very substantially to the administration of the studies; and
in two organisations support was also forthcoming from union rep
resentatives and officials. Above all, there were the individual em
ployees who took part in the studies and created their substance.
The burden of typing the book has been carried by Janet Rabbetts.
I received much help and support from Professor Sylvia Shimmin,
who supervised my doctoral thesis at the University of Lancaster,
vi
Acknowledgements
Vll
from which this book developed. Professor Shimmin and Professor
Hilde Behrend gave me encouragement to attempt this book, without
which it would not have been written.
I gratefully record my appreciation to all these.
London MICHAEL WHITE
March 1979
1 The Puzzle of Pay
Conflict
Pay is a puzzle. But perhaps few people would see it like that. They
would regard it as a commonplace aspect of everyday life. Everyone
can feel that he knows about pay, just as everyone can be his own
cinema critic. But if we do not fmd the workings of pay a perplexing
topic, I suggest that it is time we did. For the problems of pay - the
much-publicised disputes, recriminations and injustices - appear to
be growing from year to year. How can we claim to understand it,
when it is in such poor shape?
My personal curiosity about pay was aroused at an early stage of my
work in industry - it was some years later that I began to study the
subject and research it. The puzzling things I noticed in those early
years were not so much the big strikes over pay (although there were
one or two of those), but more the local frictions and emotional out
bursts. For instance, when a new work planning system was being in
troduced, the people affected - maintenance engineers - were bitterly
hostile towards any detail that affected the way their pay was to be
calculated. This was even though the scheme offered them higher pay
as a whole. Such a situation will be quite familiar to those who work in
manufacturing industry: it is a common situation. Nevertheless, the
hostile reactions aroused by such a situation need explanation. It is
not transparently clear why changes in payment systems which offer
higher earnings should sometimes arouse fervent opposition.
How do people involved in such situations interpret them? I seem to
remember the term 'daft' being used frequently. 'You must be daft'
said the shop stewards, or 'You must think we're daft if you think that
we're going to "buy" this lot'. And the managers did think they were
'daft' - daft not to accept the scheme. It was a term to be muttered at
the end of acrimonious meetings which had made no progress. But to
cast aspersions on the sanity of the others is not an explanation of the
2 The Hidden Meaning ofP ay Conflict
situation. It is an admission that no explanation can be found; the
situation is beyond reason.
And what are the reasons for this want of a reasonable explanation?
It could be a convenient defensive stance. If the others are beyond
reason, it's pointless to try to understand their problem or see their
point of view. Or it could reflect a failure of a conventional way of
looking at people's behaviour at work. The well-worn cliche, 'All they
want is money', does not seem to fit the bill any more.
These occasions, when a new pay scheme offering more money is
opposed, are not confmed to manual workers. I myself have been a
member of a 'professional' group of employees, which was offered a
new salary structure with very considerable fmancial benefits. It
created enormous tensions and hostility. By this time, I had worked
out the theory which I describe in this book, and I accurately predicted
the antagonism which the scheme would arouse. This did not prevent
me from feeling as incensed as any of my colleagues.
I have started with anecdotes, but as will soon be apparent, there is
a mass of more systematic evidence about these problems. The
anecdotes should not and need not persuade anyone of the importance
of the topic, but they do reveal my personal involvement with it.
Although the method of this book is as detached and scientific as I can
make it, I would not want to disguise that I still feel strongly about the
problems of pay which I have experienced at firSt hand.
In fact, much of this book is about the feelings pay arouses -
especially in those apparently inexhaustible conflicts around it. Any
worthwhile explanation of conflict over pay must, I consider, be such
as to make sense of the emotions we experience in these situations.
Moreover, the explanation should not depend on a narrow concentra
tion on the big and visible pay disputes where workers are battling for
major pay increases. It should cope with the everyday, small-scale,
half-veiled conflict over pay - which many people would not even call
'conflict', but is no less keenly felt and no less corrosive in its effects.
It is from this category that my earlier anecdotes come, and it is this
type of conflict which is most widely experienced in industry.
DIMENSIONS OF THE PROBLEM
For a start, we need some impression of the extent and the pervasive
ness of conflict over pay. And to help in getting this, a preliminary
distinction is useful. It is this: conflict occurs not only over how much