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a proposed strategy for training and manpower managers THE INDUSTRIAL TRAINING ACT HAS, WITHIN EIGHT YEARS, produced great and identifiable gains in the training of the national labout force. By 1972 we have enough experience of its working to be able to recognise certain weaknesses, too. The consultative document proposes wide‐sweeping changes in the system which are revolutionary rather than evolutionary. What training and manpower managers have to ensure is that the benefits which have accrued from the system will be preserved and that the shortcomings of the Act will be corrected. Any proposed new system ought to be judged on the extent to which it will enable us to hang on to our gains and free ourselves of the failings.

THE INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS ACT 1971, hurriedly if not indecently buried, introduced a major innovation into the law relating to dismissal; the notion of unfair dismissal was something entirely new to English law although there had long been (and still is) common law relating to wrongful dismissal, a very different matter. The latter illustrates the general legal rule that where a contract is unjustifiably repudiated, an action will lie. Thus when an employer dismisses an employee without proper notice and without good reason according to the law, this amounts to repudiation of the contract between them. Rights under this heading are founded in the law of contract.

In a previous article the author discussed the curious way in which The Redundancy Payments Act is working. This month she examines some of the many facets of the operation of the new unfair dismissal procedure under the Industrial Relations Act, including some which become evident when both statutes are being invoked by an applicant. What is unavoidable is the conclusion that even if the details may be changed in some ways the unfair dismissal procedure is here to stay.

The Consultative Document, Code of Industrial Relations Practice, was put forward by the Minister, Robert Carr, as a ‘compendium of commonsense’ but, according to press reports, it has been described by Vic Feather as ‘paternalistic’. In its final form as a Code of Practice, it will be an important part of the new industrial relations edifice. Organisations and individuals have been invited to submit comments upon it to the Department of Employment not later than 18 October. Comments by national organisations on the proposals should be sent to Industrial Relations Division (IRC 2), Department of Employment, 8 St James's Square, London, SW1. Those by local organisations or individuals should be sent to the appropriate Senior Manpower Adviser of the region concerned, whose name and address may be obtained from the list on the last page of the Consultative Document.

The Government's Proposals for a Safety and Health at Work Bill have been published at last. Based on the ‘Safety and Health at Work’ report of the Robens Committee, it proposes the fusion of various safety statutes, the setting up of a central authority, an extension of scope of application, greater powers of inspection, emphasis on statutory regulations supporting a basic statute, and additional requirements of various sorts, the whole still being enforced through criminal law. In a previous article, the author criticised the Robens Report as being biased towards elegant administration. She sees the Proposals in the same light and suggests that what is really proposed is a rationalisation of law and administration together with an intensification of the existing system which has already failed to reach its objectives. Robens called for a change of direction but the Proposals drive harder along the same route.

After two years' study, the Robens Committee on Safety and Health at Work has reported its findings. Its terms of reference required it to examine the existing statutory provisions and to recommend any changes it regarded as necessary in relation to two sets of people: employees in general and the public in so far as work‐based hazards affect them. The subject of general environmental pollution was expressly excluded, presumably because the Ashby Commission was set up to deal with the matter.

The question will probably be more important in the future than in the past; for one thing, statutes as unlike as the Trade Descriptions Act and the Factories Act place a liability upon a manager if certain offences are committed by his organisation. In the training field from a practical rather than a narrowly legal point of view, ITBs have had to identify the ‘manager’ in relation to grants and training recommendations, for example.

With a distinguished air of insularity, Parliament proposes low‐key legislation on equal opportunity for men and women in employment. The traumatic experience of American businessmen who have been dragged by the law along this road, has been overlooked. Most businessmen in both countries would almost certainly deny that they discriminate unfairly and would offer all the traditional myths in support of their arguments. But the Civil Rights Act 1964 and the Equal Opportunity Act 1972 which now govern the subject in the United States have changed employment practices rapidly by attacking through the medium of corporation profits. We have chosen, so far, to overlook the harrowing transatlantic experience and continue as if it had not happened. The proposals current here at the time of writing are for a largely voluntary system broadly similar to that which failed in the States. American experience has proved that voluntarism is inadequate and that compulsion aimed at profits is necessary.

One of the many innovations in industrial law practice introduced by the Industrial Relations Act, 1971, is the statutory requirement for the disclosure by employers to representatives of registered trade unions of information relating to the structure affairs of the organisation. Exactly what information must be revealed is a matter to be settled before the Code of Practice is published. The General Council of the TUC have made their views known to the CIR which is undertaking an inquiry, the result of which will have an important influence on the eventual terms of the Code. These views, somewhat irreverently called the ‘TUC Shopping List’ are discussed in this article.

‘Inflationary, unfair and parasitical bodies’, ‘irrelevant bureaucracies’, ‘counter‐productive institutions which upset the colleges and create cash flow problems for small businesses’ are among the descriptive allusions to ITBs. The complex hostility of a significant area of industry to the ITBs has been irrational, but whatever the circumstances, the most unlikely term to occur to critics in connection with such boards is ‘charity’; yet the Construction ITB recently sought a Court Order to the effect that it is just that: a charity.