Britain: An official handbook > 1977

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Training
Services
Legislation and
Conventions
BRITAIN 1977: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
The Training Within Industry Scheme (TWI) is intended to develop the skills
of supervisors in job relations, instructing and communicating, improving
methods and preventing accidents. Special courses are available for supervisors
employed in offices, retail distribution and hospitals. There is also an in-plant
training service to aid selection and further the training of operatives and
clerks as instructors. Courses in international trade procedures are available for
staff employed in export/import offices and (at an advanced level) for customs
training clerks. Courses in industrial instruction techniques are available to
firms and SC staff at the Training Services Agency’s two Instructor Training
Colleges (one in England and one in Scotland) and at six Instructor Training
Units attached to SCs. .
Training services at SCs, TWI courses, and courses at Instructor Training
Colleges are available to trainees from overseas under approved schemes (for
instance, those of the International Labour Organisation or technical assistance
provided jointly by the Department of Employment and the Ministry of
Overseas Development).
Other training services comprise the training of firms own instructors,
training of experienced workers in instructional techniques, provision of mobile
instructors to train people in employers’ own premises, and training of
supervisors.
TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT AND WORKING CONDITIONS
Britain has been a pioneer in the introduction of protective legislation for the
safety, health and welfare of employees and in providing certain legal im¬
munities for trade unions. The determination by statute of minimum wages,
holidays and holiday pay was until recently confined in principle to those
trades and industries where the organisation of employers or workers, or both,
was inadequate to negotiate collective agreements and to ensure their observance
(see p. 338). However, recent legislation, in particular the Employment Pro¬
tection Act 1975 (see p. 339), provides considerable safeguards for the employee
in his terms of employment as well as working conditions. The Terms and
Conditions of Employment Act 1959, as amended subsequently, provides
machinery, under certain conditions, for enforcing the observance of terms or
conditions established by collective agreement. The Contracts of Employment
Act 1972 requires an employer to give an employee written information on his
terms and conditions of employment, and the procedure available to him
where he has a grievance about his employment; it also lays down the right of
both employers and employees to minimum periods of notice when employ¬
ment is to be terminated. Under the Redundancy Payments Acts 1965 and l9^9
employees with a minimum period of service of 104 weeks are entitled to
lump-sum redundancy payments if their jobs cease to exist (for example,
because of technological improvements or because of a fall in demand) and their
employers cannot offer suitable alternative work, the cost being partly met from
a fund subscribed to by industry. The Trade Union and Labour Relations
Acts 1974 and 1976 give protection against unfair dismissal by providing
machinery under which an employee may complain against an employer of
unfair dismissal, and obtain reinstatement, re-engagement or compensa¬
tion; give legal support to the right to trade union organisation by making it
unfair to dismiss a person because of his membership or participation in the
activities of an independent trade union; and lay down that written collective
agreements between trade unions and employers are presumed to be intended to
be legally binding only if they contain a provision to that effect. The Employ-