3rd May 2002

One of the most powerful weapons now used by Business against Labour is the management consultant, brought in, we are always assured only, to recommend ways of improving efficiency and productivity, but often just as a device to downsize, outsource work to others and to invent reasons to lay off those who are employed by the company that has taken them on.

This practice has grown steadily over the years and is now spreading to the public sector as well, being used as an excuse to breakdown and privatize operations that have been controlled by democratically elected local authorities, public agencies and even government departments.

A consultant's report can always be presented as being completely objective since it comes from those who bring special expertise to the job and, being independent, can be trusted to give advice that is not available inside the organization.

In practice many firms bring in consultants to provide them with arguments for doing what they want to do anyway and the consultants know that very well and make sure, before they start, exactly what is required of them, carefully checking their recommendations with the management that has engaged them, before they submit them to the directors who will then be able to endorse them to their own workforce who are expected to go along with what is proposed.

We have long seen the effect of this in industry and no doubt it was on the advice of consultants that Dyson decided to close his British factory, making the successful bagless vacuum cleaners, and transfer the work to Malaysia where wages are far lower, and presumably Marconi and Enron had looked for outsiders to help them to succeed, along with other companies that audit their accounts.

The outsourcing of jobs previously done by staff employed in-house can, on the advice of consultants, be steered towards companies with which the consultant already enjoys a special relationship, and where the consultants are actually asked to follow up their own recommendations, within the company, they have power without real responsibility in the organization.

The main gains of outsourcing to those who suggest it is, of course, that the threat of putting work out to tender can be used to worsen conditions for existing staff, and if they do lose out those employed to do it outside may have lower wages, poorer working conditions and be less protected from redundancy if their jobs come to an end, as was the case when hospital cleaning contracts went out, often lowering the standard of cleanliness that is necessary for staff and patients alike.

It is high time that the trade union movement challenged this whole philosophy and rediscovered the case for industrial democracy which would give those who actually do the work the chance to get the information they require, discuss and decide for themselves how the work that they do could be more efficient and what they need, and expect, from their own management.

Many years ago when in Cuba, visiting their fine Havana hospital they explained that every month there were three meetings, one chaired by the management and attended by the unions and the ministry of health, the next chaired by the unions attended by the management and the ministry and the third by the ministry with management and unions present, all to discuss how the hospital was doing from three different perspectives.

The British Labour movement has a fine tradition of arguing for greater industrial democracy, as, for example in 1910 when Thomas Straker the secretary of the Northumberland Miners, in evidence recommending public ownership of the pits, to the Sankey Commission said:

"Any administration of the mines under nationalization must not leave the miner in the position of a mere wage-earner, whose sole energies are directed to the will of another...he must have a share in the management of the industry... he must feel that the industry is run by him to produce coal for the use of the community, instead of profit for a few people"

The Union of Post Office Workers, now a part of the CWU had the same commitment and with the far higher level of education, technical knowledge and understanding that there is today it must be obvious that the knowledge and skills in-house far exceed those which can be imported by this new breed of management consultants who seem to hover like vultures above us and tell us what to do, entrapping us all in a nightmare of bureaucracy that is both inefficient and destructive of our own powers of imagination and capacity to innovate.

Nor would this in any way threaten the genuine management expertise that exists in-house for most workers respect good management and want to support them, while many managers are themselves under threat from the consultants who may well be undermining their own authority and their jobs too.

At the meeting held last Saturday, to launch the campaign to reclaim trade union rights, John Edmund's proclaimed the death of New Labour and he was right to do so, for it is all collapsing around us in a flurry of gimmicks and mutual recrimination, but all those of us who are looking beyond the present impasse must necessarily be coming up with positive and practical solutions that can also win widespread support and reestablish faith in the contribution the Labour Movement can make that will benefit those who use the services that are provided, as well as those who actually provide them.

Privatization is the lifeblood of the Consultants and we should turn our back on both and believe in ourselves again.

3/5/02