1953 Oppenheimer Communication Copperbelt Employees Page 530



	THE NORTHWARD EXPANSION	489

	introducing improvements in African housing, leave and working conditions generally. This, however, is not enough. The African has learned to use simple European tools and to perform tasks that until a generation ago he would have regarded, if he thought of them at all, as far beyond his ability. The African must be allowed to develop these skills and he must be helped to develop them through European teaching. It is the whole basis of policy in the new Federation that the African should play a fuller part in the industrial economy of the country of which he is a citizen. Without such development there can be no real future in Central Africa. This part of the African's development creates certain difficulties, for it is at this point that he begins to impinge on what have hitherto been regarded as the prerogatives and entrenched positions of the European. It is not only a matter of custom and tradition; it is also, as in every industry in every civilized country, a matter of formal agreement between the employers and the employed. It is not essentially or necessarily a question of colour or race Our agreement with the European Mine Workers' Union—we have another with our Staff Association—lays down a wage scale for various scheduled occupations and provides that we shall not employ non-members of the union in those occupations. This is a normal 'closed shop' agreement. The rates of wages laid down in this agreement take account of the acquired skills and inherited experience of European artisans and operatives, and they were enhanced originally because those artisans and operatives had had to emigrate from their homes in Europe or South Africa to an undeveloped part of Central Africa. These high rates of pay would not be justified for workmen of inferior skill and limited experience working in their own homeland. When we ask the European union, as we have done, to consider jointly with us whether it is possible to define certain categories of jobs now carried out by their members as ones that could be allocated at lower rates of pay to Africans who qualify for such responsibilities, we realize that we are asking them to do a very difficult thing. The companies also realize that this study and allocation cannot be done unilaterally. We need the help and the agreement of the European union.