BRITISH AUTOMATION CONFERENCE, 1965

DISCUSSION GROUP A3

P r o f e s s o r B. C. R O B E R T S , MA(Oxon)

Professor of Industrial Relations,

London School of Economics and Political Science

Social Change

Professor Roberts, who is currently engaged on researchinto problems arising out of economic growth andtechnological advance, is an authority on industrial relationsin developing countries. He has recently returnedfrom Japan where he made a study of industrial relationsand technological change.

He has travelled widely, has been Visiting Professorat Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University ofCalifornia and of Princeton, and has lectured at manyother American universities including Harvard, Chicago,Illinois and Michigan.

Professor Roberts is Editor of the British Journal ofIndustrial Relations; President of the British UniversityIndustrial Relations Association; and author of manypublications on various aspects of his subject.

THE impact of automation on the pattern of oursociety is over the long run bound to be pro-

found. New techniques of production alter thecomposition of the labour force, change the structureof industry and commerce and ultimately affect theorganisation of society in all its aspects.

Social change is not only an inevitable consequenceof technological change : it is also a necessary condi-tion. Unless the appropriate social changes takeplace, technological development is frustrated and thecondition of society either remains or becomes stag-nant. This can be seen most obviously in the under-developed countries. Modern technology if put fullyto use could swiftly raise the living standards of thosecountries, but the extent to which they can takeadvantage of this possibility is seriously limited bysocial factors. The problem can also be observed ata different level of development in an old industrialsociety, such as Britain, where the strength of tradi-tion and social conservatism have held back socialchange, especially in the field of education over thepast 50 years, and as a result slowed down the paceof technological adaptation and with it our economicgrowth.

Thus the most dynamic element in the evolution ofall societies is the interaction between technologicaldevelopment and social change. The "web of rules"and the complex of institutions through which weregulate human relations have to be continuouslyadjusted as technological advances take place. Unlesswe make the necessary social adjustments we shallfall behind other societies in our rate of economicgrowth and social development; or expose ourselvesto undesirable social tensions and political stressesbecause we have failed to develop an adequatesystem of social control. There is always a time lagin the modifying of old behaviour patterns and thebuilding of new institutions, since human beings aregenerally reluctant to give up established positionsof power, privilege and prestige. But why Britain,which 200 years ago was capable of making what wenow choose to call an industrial revolution, involvingimmense social changes, should find coming to termswith modern technological developments a moredifficult task than many other countries, is a mysteryto be probed more deeply elsewhere. The speed andsmoothness with which a society is able to adapt tothe need for social change is clearly a function ofmany factors, but above all it is related to the abilityof the society to overcome the resistance of those whobelieve that they are likely to suffer rather than togain from the changes that are involved. This beliefmay have no foundation in fact and be merely theproduct of a fear of the unknown, but it will power-fully reinforce the opposition of those whose beliefsare founded on a more certain knowledge that theywill lose something from change.

automation and unemploymentThe social problem aroused by automation which

has so far attracted most attention and given rise tothe greatest fear is unemployment. This apprehensionhas been expressed most vehemently in the United

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States where it is widely, but in my opinionerroneously, believed that automation has beenprimarily responsible for, by European standards, theextremely high level of 5 to 6% unemployment whichhas prevailed during the past decade. Credence wasgiven to this view when, in 1962, President Kennedystated that 25,000 jobs per week had to be found totake care of those being eliminated by technologicaladvances, and new entrants into the labour market.This figure was substantially improved upon by theAmerican trades unions and the late chairman of theAmerican Foundation for Automation and Employ-ment 1 who claimed that the figure of technologicaljob displacement was 40,000 jobs per week.

These statements, however, tend to be highly mis-leading, since they give the impression that unemploy-ment has been increasing by this amount. This, ofcourse, is not so. The actual number unemployedhas risen in the U.S.A. from approximately threemillion in 1955 to just over four million in 1965 2.

When considering the job displacement figure,which is simply another way of measuring produc-tivity, and therefore the greater it is the better weshould be pleased, we should bear in mind that therate of displacement (the rate of increase in produc-tivity) has been only marginally greater during thepast two decades than the average over the past 50years. Thus, so far, there is nothing new or sensa-tionally different about the effects of automation onthe level of unemployment from the situation thatwe have known over a long period.

The most important empirical fact about employ-ment is that in all the industrial countries throughoutthe world there are far more people employed thanthere were 25 years ago, millions more than 50 yearsago, and many, many millions more than there wereemployed 100 years ago. Significant as unemploy-ment has been in certain periods in the past, and asit still is today, of far, far greater social significancehas been the ability of modern industrial economiesto create productive employment.

In 1964 the number employed in the U.S.A., whoseexperience I would like to consider further, sincethis country is much further down the road in its useof modern technology than any other, had risen toover 70 million. Ten million more workers were injobs than had been employed in 1954. During thisperiod the increase in productivity had been dis-placing workers at a rate of rather more than 200,000per year and new entrants to the labour force hadaveraged about 750,000 3 per year. In the last fewyears this figure has risen to over 1,000,000 newentrants per year. Thus the demand for output hashad to rise by an amount that would have createdmore than 1,000,000 additional new jobs a year.The Americans did not quite succeed in achieving thislevel of demand, with the result that unemploymenthas increased over the decade by about 1,000,000. Inthe future, with the labour force increasing by .morethan 1,000,000 each year, higher participation rates—that is, more people wishing to work—and a ratherhigher rate of productivity, aggregate demand willhave to be raised to increase output somewhat morethan the average of the past decade. The solution

to the problem of achieving the level of demandrequired to reach and maintain full employment isa matter of political decision. There are difficultiesto be overcome, but these are well-known and under-stood and they raise no new issues of principle.

Is there any reason to think that after 150 years ofrising levels of employment we are now likely to seea fundamental change in the capacity to create jobsfor all, or practically all who desire to work? Ithink not, for several reasons. We are as yet a longway from satisfying all our wants, even in the mostadvanced societies. So long as we maintain thecapacity to make demand effective, I have no doubtthat all we can produce will be required. Even if wewere to increase our real incomes to five or six timesthe present level, and on present indications this willtake 100 years, there will still be a great deal of roomfor further growth. It we take much of this increasein potential output in more leisure, the rise in thevolume of goods and services will be somewhatslower.

changes in the structure of employment

There are certainly no grounds for the alarmistand extreme views, again mainly expressed in theUnited States, but often repeated in Britain, thatautomation has resulted in a tremendous increase inthe unemployment of certain groups, namely, youth,the unskilled, negroes, and the poorly-educated. Infact, the evidence which has been presented in aseries of definitive studies shows that "since the mid-fifties—that is, since the American economy last cameclose to what is generally accepted as full employment—the unemployment situation has not worsenedrelatively for any of the groups on which attentionhas been focused in the last few years. Whether weconcentrate our attention on teenagers (before 1963),on blue-collar workers, on the unskilled, on non-whites, on the least educated, or on workers in theindustries most affected by automation—in none ofthese cases has the unemployment situationworsened relatively when we take account of therise in total unemployment since the mid-fifties " 4.

Professor H. A. Simon, author of easily the mostbrilliant study of the social consequences of auto-mation yet made, has pointed out that empiricalstudies do not indicate that there is any "generaltendency toward either the upgrading or the down-grading of job skill requirements " 5. " The automaticfactory calls for different skills from those used on anineteenth-century farm. They do not appear, fromthe evidence, to be either particularly lower or higherskills "5. There is in fact no reason to believe that ahighly automated economy will not be able to employthe range of skills and ability to be found in oursociety. But we shall require a larger educationaland training effort to make full use of the humanmaterial available.

Confident as I am that automation presents nothreat to the aggregate level of employment over thenext 50 or even 100 years, this does not mean thatthere will not be any problem of technological dis-placement. On the contrary, in the short run there

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will be important problems of redundancy. Oldindustries will decline, as have textiles, coal miningand railways during the past fifty years, and newindustries will arise. There will be a shift awayfrom semi-skilled factory employment and a far largerproportion of the population will be employed in theservice trades. It is also probable that there will bea higher proportion of the labour force employed intechnical, administrative and professional jobs. Thusthere will be changes in the occupational profile, butif the trends of the past 50 years continue the changeswill not be sudden and violent, though over the longrun they may be considerable. Whether they will begreater than the changes which have occurred in thefirst half of this century it is difficult to tell, but itseems unlikely on present indications. There willalso be considerable changes in the geographical dis-tribution of the labour force, but here again is nonew situation. Though the direction of the flowsmay well change, there is no evidence to indicate thatinternal migration will be on a greater scale than inthe past. What is, however, absolutely certain isthat there will be little increase in the labour forceuntil after 1975. From then on the labour force willbegin expanding again and it should have grownconsiderably by the end of the century.

The most important threat to the level of employ-ment in Britain in the immediate future comes notfrom technological displacement, but from a fall inthe relative efficiency of British industry and anover-rapid increase in personal incomes leading toprice inflation. Unless we can conquer this problem,we shall be compelled to continue financial measuresto protect the balance of payments that will inevitablylead to a substantial increase in the average level ofunemployment. Failure to find a more rational wayof keeping money incomes in step with output mightcompel us, like the Americans, to accept an averagelevel of unemployment far higher than we woulddesire. It would not make much sense to blamesuch an increase on technological change, althoughthis would certainly be a factor in the situation if itis too slow to keep Britain competitive.

adjusting to changeIf we are to avoid this dilemma we must increase

our productivity without increasing costs. Since, inthe immediate period ahead, all the calculationsindicate that we are likely to be suffering from ashortage of manpower rather than a glut, this meansthat we must get rid of the obstacles to change thatarise from the fear of unemployment. Our socialproblem is to bring about an understanding thatredundancies caused—by abandoning uneconomicmethods—are the only way in which a more efficientuse can be made of the manpower available. Thedifficulty is to convince management and workersthat every time they restrict output in order to pro-tect their own jobs or profits, they are jeopardisingnot only other jobs but restricting, if not reducing,over the long run their own standard of living.

The problem to be overcome is not merely one ofeducation and communication, as is sometimes sug-

gested. There is a genuine hardship involved whena man or woman is called upon to give up a job inwhich they have invested a considerable period oftheir lives and for which they might have preparedby years of study and training. It is impossible topersuade a worker in this situation that he will bebetter off if his job is made redundant. This may betrue for society in general, but what is true for societyas a whole may not be true for the individual. It is,therefore, necessary for society to provide an adequatemeasure of protection for those who are displaced bytechnological change, or for that matter by economicor social policy.

We took the first steps in this direction 50 yearsago with the National Insurance Acts and we haverecently taken a further step with the Severance PayBill. A wealthy society may wish to go even furtherthan Britain has so far gone in protecting its citizensfrom the personal burden of the social costs ofchange.

increased education and training

Cushioning a man or woman financially is neces-sary, but not sufficient. Most of us need to work, sinceidleness is unbearable. We must, therefore, providethe educational and training facilities necessary toequip everyone who desires to work with the skillsthat are required under the prevailing technical con-ditions. This may well mean that in the future alarge part of the working population will have tospend a much longer period of time at school, univer-sity or other educational or training institution. Re-training and refresher courses will probably becomeof far greater importance as a normal feature ofworking life. In these respects we have a long waystill to go. A large section of our population, interms of modern technology, is profoundly ignorantand this includes a good many who occupy impor-tant posts of responsibility in management and theprofessions, who have not learnt a thing since theyleft school or college a long time ago. Technicalincompetence has been masked by a layer of smugsocial superiority and protected by an uncompetitiveeconomy. As a society we will have to spend a muchlarger proportion of our national income on educa-tional, training and informational activities than wehave been accustomed to spend in the past, and eventhan at present projected. We will also have tosweep away the restrictive attitudes to training andretraining which are a product of the 19th Centurythinking and which have no relevance to the con-temporary situation. In this respect the IndustrialTraining Act was a step forward, but a real break-through has yet to come.

Although we are likely to be short of manpowerduring the next 10 years, it may be confidently pre-dicted that the hours worked per week will tend tofall and over the longer run the fall may be con-siderable. This will, of course, also offset the dis-placement effects of technological advance. I donot think, however, that the fall will be dramaticin the immediate future. It is likely that for sometime we are going to continue to prefer income to

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leisure. Thus although there may be a continuedreduction in the length of the basic work week, alarge part of the labour force, unless there is a re-markable change of habit, will desire to work over-time or take a second job. In the United States,where a 37 to 40 hour week has been established formany years, experience has shown that further reduc-tions in hours bring a large increase in the proportionof workers taking second jobs 6.

Although long hours reflect mainly a preferencefor income over leisure, it is likely that many willwish to follow the practice of many miners and enjoya three-day weekend. The four-day week has, infact, already been conceded to night shift workers inthe engineering industry and this is likely to becomea regular feature of other industries.

As industries become more capital intensive therewill be a growing advantage in continuing opera-tions over a longer working day. Scarcity of labourand resistance to night shift working may tend tolimit the trend in this direction. However, highlyautomated plants may find that they are able to goover to shift working, since the staff required tooperate a night shift might be quite small.

change in social activities

The social opposition to shift working may also beexpected to become less important with the accept-ance of the four-night week. We may also expect tosee a change in our shopping and entertainmenthabits. It is certain that shopping facilities andentertainment will eventually be provided over amuch longer period of the day than has been thecase since the First World War. With rising afflu-ence and continuous work weeks we are likely todevelop a taste for continuous entertainment. Lifewill be lived round the clock and through the entireweek. The old division of the day and week, whichwas a product of an old technology and supportingsocial beliefs that are obviously passing, will give wayto a less restrictive and freer society. We shalleventually see a pattern of shopping and leisure-timeactivities emerging which is similar to that whichalready exists in the United States. Here again re-strictions, demanded by unions and often supportedby employers and imposed by the State, which grewout of totally different conditions are now entirelyagainst the public interest and will become evenmore so in the future. A society in which there is arapidly rising real income, and a real shortage oflabour, does not need to protect employment standardsby methods designed to meet the problems arisingfrom an economic situation dominated by heavyunemployment and depressed wages.

Advancing technology should give workers a greaterdegree of freedom to choose the pattern of hours thatsuits them best. Some may prefer to work shifts,including weekends and public holidays, for moremoney and this should be possible without involving,as at present, excessive hours of overtime. The re-cent agreement in the Electricity Supply Industrymay in this respect prove to be a model that others

will follow. At the present time most wage earnersenjoy two weeks' annual paid holidays; by 1970 thiswill be generally three weeks and probably four weeksbefore 1980. I also expect to see provision for sab-batical and educational leaves extended to a widerange of workers.

problems of leisureShorter hours and more extensive holidays will

bring in their train a problem of leisure-time activi-ties. Unless we give people the ability and the desireto fill non-working time with creative and construc-tive activities, we shall see a growth of undesirableuses of leisure. Increasing affluence allied to thepressures generated by rapid technological changewill lead to an increase in drug-taking, crime, divorce,and other social disorders, unless we are far moresuccessful than we have so far been in inculcating apositive response to leisure opportunity in a size-able proportion of the population.

How to achieve this result we have yet to learn.We shall not do so unless we recognise the signifi-cance of the problem that lies ahead and preparenow to find the solution. For many people it maywell be that paradoxically the most satisfactory wayof using increased leisure will be to take anotherjob. Double-jobbing, or moonlighting, as the Ameri-cans picturesquely call it, is at present regarded associally undesirable. The trades unions look uponit as robbing another man of a job and the employeras being robbed of the employee's vigour and con-centrated interest in his work.

This attitude will almost certainly have to be re-laxed once actual hours worked fall below 40 a week.Studies of the factors that determine the numberof hours worked show that there are powerful psycho-logical as well as economic reasons why some workersprefer to work long hours. From the point of viewof the individual, the right to arrange the length ofthe work week to suit his own personal needs is oftremendous social importance. At the present timethe opportunity to work overtime to some extentachieves this purpose, but long hours of overtime ontop of a 40-hour week have an adverse effect onmanagement and the worker.

The situation would, however, be different if hoursof work fell to 35 or 30 per week. Moreover, doingtwo different jobs may be far less fatiguing thandoing the same job for the same total number ofhours. In fact, the effective employment of leisuremay be looked upon simply as a change in the typeof work. There is no moral reason why one shouldnot turn leisure activity to financial profit and thereis no moral objection to having two jobs; this is infact looked upon as quite normal at the level of theBoard Room in industry. I should also add that Ithink the objections against overtime, which at thepresent length of the work week have great force, losetheir validity when hours drop below forty. Thereis no reason in principle, though there may be prac-tical difficulties, why individual workers should notcontinue to work very different total hours in the

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future, when the nominal work week is very muchshorter than at present, as in fact they do now.

the effect of automation on industrial relations

The system of industrial relations which had be-come firmly established by the end of the 19th Cen-tury, and has remained almost unchanged until thepresent time, is now clearly no longer appropriateto the needs of our times. Technological advancehas made long-term planning not only feasible, buta vital necessity. With the aid of the computer it ispossible to reconcile and harmonise investment pro-grammes, income flows, import and export require-ments and all the other ingredients that make up themodern economic complex.

In this type of environment collective decision-making can no longer be a laissez-faire process. Thefunction of unions must, therefore, change. In thefuture they have an important role to play, alongwith the employers' organisations, in the process ofarriving at a national consensus on issues of economicand social policy. This does not mean that theunions must jettison, or even subordinate3 the interestof their members to the interests of other socialgroups; on the contrary, it is only by recognisingthat under modern circumstances the bargaining roleof the unions must be exercised within the limitsimposed by the logic of the economic goals they haveaccepted that they can maximise the interests of theirmembers.

If the unions are to discharge their functionseffectively they must create the organisational struc-ture that will make this possible. At the one endof the scale, they must make effective the ability ofthe TUC to enter into national agreements relatingto economic development and incomes policy thatwill be carried out by the constituent unions and therank and file membership. At the other end of thescale, room has to be found for local bargaining andparticipation in the achievement of enterprise objec-tives without destroying the basic requirements ofnational policy.

control of wage driftWe have recently seen the TUC take a hesitant

step to meet the challenge presented by the Pricesand Incomes Board and the National Plan, but theunions have a long way to go before it can be saidthat they have developed a co-ordinated and effec-tively enforced national wages policy. Moreover,little has been done so far to face up to the challengethat comes from below. Control of "wage drift" atthe plant level has now become a major problemthat must be solved if the chronic wage-price spiralis to be stopped. I expect, therefore, to see moreexperiments in the working out of the implicationsof the prices and incomes policy at the enterpriselevel. Wage systems developed to reward individualeffort have now become a significant source of wagedrift and the cause of much industrial conflict. Undermodern technological conditions what are requiredare wage structures and incentives that facilitatechange, adequately reward the learning of new skills

and the acceptance of responsibility, and continuouslyencourage the co-operation of the employees withmanagement 7.

Productivity formulae, such as the Scanlon Plan,which enable workers to benefit from cost savings,and profit-sharing arrangements which permitworkers to participate in the capital gains of theenterprise, are likely to become of increasing import-ance. Certain developments at present being can-vassed in Germany and elsewhere on the Continentare of special interest in this respect, since they offeran example, that British trades unions might alsofind attractive.

The most difficult problem which confronts theGovernment, unions and employers at the presenttime is the readiness with which workers and shopstewards are prepared to break agreements and unionrules to win improvements in wages or working con-ditions. The problem of unofficial strikes has alreadybecome great and it will become much worse in thefuture until a means is found of insisting that agree-ments and contracts are carried out. I think itis extremely unlikely that the unions will be ableto reassert their authority without outside assistance.

legal action on strikesIn these circumstances it seems to me fairly cer-

tain that there will be a stiffening of the law regard-ing strikes. There are a number of different pathsthat might 'be followed. The making of collectiveagreements into collective contracts would be onepossibility; another would be to make strikes illegalduring the period of an agreement and to set uplabour courts to deal with issues of interpretation.Another would be to penalise unofficial strikersthrough loss of accumulated rights in social securitybenefits and severance pay. In addition to thesepossible sanctions against wanton strikes, we arelikely to see a much more vigorous policy of officialintervention pursued through the Ministry of Labourconciliation service.

Thus I am certain that in this and other respectswe shall see more legal regulation of our system ofindustrial relations than has been the case in the past.Legal restriction will not, however, of itself preventindustrial conflict. Its justification lies in the effortsit would compel unions and employers to make toavoid the imposition of legal sanctions. A changein the law would also reflect the social judgmentthat a strike is no longer acceptable under modernconditions as a method of resolving disputes betweenemployers and workers, except under very limitedcircumstances.

It is clear that the Government can no longermaintain the fiction that its role is simply to main-tain a balance between employers and unions and tosee that the fight is fair. The implications of con-temporary economic and technological developmentsare that the Government has a positive role to playto ensure that social goals are reached. Employersand trades unions share a common interest with theGovernment — whatever its party colour — in seeing

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that plans and policies in which they have partici-pated are carried out. The new model thereforeassumes that employers and unions, management andworkers, can significantly narrow their area of con-flict and that this can be done to the advantage ofthe interests of both sides as well as to the advantageof the community as a whole. The new pattern ofindustrial relations involves a good deal more than anew legal framework; it also involves a new style oftrades unionism and management, and a new styleof politics.

Automation is likely to make the enterprise muchmore significant as a social unit in the future. Tech-nological advance is making possible much largerunits of organisation and capital employed is leadingto a growing emphasis on the unity of the enter-prise. The authoritarian style of management isless likely to be successful under the technologicaland social conditions of the future than it has beenin the past. Better educated, economically moreindependent employees, whose actions are of criticalsignificance to the achievement of the goals of theenterprise, will have to be given an appropriaterecognition of their role and an opportunity of self-fulfilment.

In short, technological advance is making industryless like the classic mass production plan satirised byChaplin in his film Modern Times, in which man iscompletely subordinated to the conveyor belt. Tech-nological developments are eliminating much of themoronic repetitions and drudgery, and freeingworkers for more responsible and more demandingjobs. Some of the new types of work will involveless physical, but more mental, stress and strain. How-ever, workers are in a far better position under thenew conditions of employment to ensure that theirrole is appreciated by management. This means, touse the terminology of Douglas McGregor, that theadvance of technology is pushing management fromstyle X to style Y8. That is to say, managementwill only be able to secure the effective co-operationof subordinate employees by recognising that theymust be granted a status that is related to theirfunction and responsibility. I therefore expect tosee a substantial development of "status agreements"which give workers long-term security of employ-ment, the fringe benefits enjoyed by the staff and ashare in the capital accumulation of the enterprise.

joint consultationI also expect to see a revival of interest in joint

consultation. Interest in consultative committees asa means of softening the exercise of managerialauthority by the provision of more information hasgreatly declined since it reached its high point inthe immediate post-war years. The cause of thisdecline has been twofold. On the one hand^ fullemployment has greatly enhanced the power of theshop steward and stimulated a tremendous growthof plant bargaining. On the other hand, manage-ment has become much more conscious of the needto consult continuously and to improve the qualityof supervision and personnel management. Thus

both workers and management appear to have lostinterest in joint consultative committees and have pre-ferred to accept a cash payment as the quickest solu-tion to a conflict. When money bargaining iseffectively brought under control and there is lessfreedom to break agreements, some form of workscouncil with wider and more specific functions maywell be found to be necessary by management andunions.

I also think that we will eventually see a changein company law that will require employees to begiven specific rights to be represented on the boardof directors of public companies, as is already thecase in some countries.

political effectsThe changes that technological advance and asso-

ciated economic developments are having on oursystem of industrial relations will also greatly alterthe pattern of British politics. There are alreadyclear indications that the relationships between theunions and the Labour Party and the employers andthe Conservative Party are no longer as close as theyused to be. Nor are Party differences as wide. Theproblems that confront Britain today and tomorrowwill not be solved by the nostrums advocated by thedoctrinaires of either party. Modern technology isproducing a consensus over a growing area of deci-sion-making in the fields of economic, industrial andsocial policy-making. At the same time, the classstructure of society on which our party system hasbeen based is being rapidly eroded by the factorsthat have made modern technological developmentpossible. The line is no longer to be drawn, asMarx drew it, between those who own property andthose who do not. The social problems of techno-logical change are remarkably similar in all advancedindustrial societies, whether the system of propertyownership is mainly private as in, Western Europeand America, or public as in the Soviet Union andEastern Europe. Ideological and social conflicts arenow taking a new shape as we struggle to master theconsequences of modern technology, but the basicissues remain the same. What we are concerned withis to define anew the extent of liberty and regulation;the rights of the individual and the institutionalarrangements necessary under modern conditions tomaintain a healthy society.

The full effect of the factors discussed in thisPaper on social change will only be apparent a cen-tury from now. We shall then be able to look backand see clearly the social impact of the computerand associated technology on our economic, legal,political and industrial relations systems. At thepresent time it is difficult to do much more thanhazard guesses. What is necessary now is a con-siderable technological advance in our ability topredict the rate and direction of technological changeand its social consequences. We are putting a fargreater research effort into developing technologicalhardware than we are into the social response thiswill evoke. The social costs are rarely taken into

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••»• I - • , - « ! ?

account when major investment decisions are beingtaken, mainly because they often don't figure in thebalance sheet of the decision-makers, but also becausethe information is not available. We could know agreat deal more than we do if we put more resources

into the social sciences. My plea that we shoulddo this is not merely, or even mainly, based uponhumanitarian considerations, but that it would leadto the much more efficient development and use ofour technological knowledge and its application.

REFERENCES

1. JOHN T. DUNLOP (Ed.), "Automation andTechnological Change", p. 1.

2. " Monthly Labor Review", Bureau of Labor Statistics,U.S. Department of Labor.

3. "Manpower Report of the President", March 1964.

4. R. A. GORDON, "Has Structural UnemploymentWorsened?" Report No. 234, Uniyersity of California,Institute of Industrial Relations.

5. HERBERT A. SIMON, "The Shape of Automation forMen and Management", 1965.

6. MARCIA GREENBAUM, " The Shorter Work Week ",New York 1963.

7. See DENNIS PYM, "Is there a future for wage incentiveschemes?", "British Journal of Industrial Relations". Vol.II No. 3, and R. B. MCKERSIE, "Wage paymentmethods of the future", "British Journal of IndustrialRelations", Vol. I, No. 2.

8. "The Human Side of Enterprise", Proceedings of the FifthAniversary Convention of the School of IndustrialManagement, M.I.T. Cambridge, Mass. 1957.

THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING

This Conference, which is being sponsored by the Canadian Council for Non-Destructive Technology, will be held at the Mount Royal Hotel, Montreal, from21st-26th May, 1967.

An invitation has been received for British authors to submit Papers, andcopies of "Notes for the Guidance of Authors" can be obtained from the Secretaryof the British National Committee for Non-Destructive Testing, Redfields HomeFarmhouse, Church Crookham, Aldershot, Hants. Synopses, not exceeding 400words, are required in Canada by April 30th, .1966, and the final Paper byNovember 30th, 1966. It is requested that authors send a copy of their synopsis tothe British National Committee so that the British contribution to this importantConference may be co-ordinated.

80 The Production Engineer