484
SIR ERNEST OPPENHEIMER
we
retain our faith that there is sufficient reasonableness and good will
among the main interested parties for ultimate success in these
negotiations. After all, everyone is agreed on the fundamental
principle of African advancement. Surely the means whereby it can be
facilitated should not be beyond our joint ability to devise.
Owing
to the adherence of the European union at that stage to the principles
of'no fragmentation of jobs' and 'equal pay for equal work' the
Selection Trust group on the next day gave six months' notice of the
termination of the agreement recognizing the union. But as, in January
1955, 60 per cent of the union membership voted to agree to a cession
of certain jobs to Africans, this notice was then withdrawn. In March,
the attitude of the union was reaffirmed. The attempt to change from a
group basis of discussion to a 'Copperbelt' basis, agreed to by both
sides in March, broke down in July, because the union demanded the
right of prior agreement before any further changes were made.
The
deadlock was broken by an agreement between the Anglo American
Corporation group and the union on 31 July 1954 relating to the
transfer of twenty-four jobs. The Selection Trust and the union also
came to terms on 10 September 1954, and the agreement provided 'for a
detailed survey and analysis by outside consultants of other European
daily paid jobs with the object of planning a permanent solution of the
problem for adoption on expiry of the initial three-year term of the
agreement.64 At the end of September 1955 a combined
agreement was signed in substitution of the two separate agreements.
The transfer of twenty-four jobs to Africans, and the acceptance of the
policy of a job survey' were both embodied in this joint agreement.
A
first great step had been taken: whatever the difficulties of
bargaining in the future, the principle of action by consent laid down
by Ernest Oppenheimer is not likely to be abandoned.
64 For a more detailed account of the negotiations vide the 1955 Year Book of the Northern Rhodesia Chamber of Mines, p. 21 et seq. For later developments vide Year Book, 1956, p. 7, 1957, p. 7, 1958, p. 11, 1959, p. 9.
