ABSTRACT
the basic purpose of all sound policies and action throughout the whole field of industrial relations is to secure maximum co-operation between management and workpeople in production at the workplace. This requires the establishment of standards of wages, hours, and working conditions which are fair not only between different grades of workpeople, but between the workpeople as a whole and the needs of capital for organizing the business, covering its risks, and for maintaining the efficiency of its plant. Such conditions depend in part on economic and social forces outside the individual workplaces, and need collective agreements and State intervention to prevent sweating and unfair competition in labour standards between different firms. But although action is necessary by trade unions, employers' organizations and the State in these wider aspects of industrial relations, and such action attracts much public attention, the unobtrusive day-to-day relations at the workplace are the alpha and omega of the problem. There the wider agreements and regulations have their detailed interpretation and application, there a spirit of harmony and mutual confidence or of suspicion and distrust is generated, and there the workers are disposed to work well if satisfied with their conditions and their relations with the management, or they deliberately or subconsciously put a brake on their output because of discontent and sense of frustration.
