Down with robber-barons

Articles which originally appeared in the Australian journal “Nation ” form part of “Managers and Men”, a study of industrial relationships, by R. A. Ramsay.

A GREAT deal of this book sounds like theory, although the author’s career suggests anything but that.

He graduated in Law from Mel bourne University and in 1951 be came an industrial advocate on the side of Big Business. After two years he had had enough of it and went to sea in Swedish vessels, work ing his way up from deck-hand to third officer. He got his master mariner’s certificate in London in 1962, returned to Sydney and became assistant manager in a shipping com pany.

It is from this position, at the age of 40, that he makes this assessment of the fundamental conflict between employer and employee, much of which has become indistinct and distorted at the present time.

Much of the fault lies with the employer (he seems to think). “If we are to come to grips with economic injustice,” he says, “it is essential that more of the affairs of large companies be exposed to the public gaze.”

He thinks that a Prices Court (rather than an Arbitration Court that sets wages) could become the instrument for regulating economic injustice—by refusing price approvals to companies paying excessive dividends or top salaries; that more money should be spent on equipment to wipe out drudgery; and that soft padded board-room control should be outed.

What he doesn’t tell us is how to keep the country from going broke and disintegrating into economic con fusion while we are stamping out the commercial robber-barons and turn ing control over to Government which, basically, appears to be what

he is suggesting.

IT.

(Managers And Men. Ure Smith

$3.25.)

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