Car crisis: a programme for BL workers
Socialist Press1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
One of the most dramatic aspects of the current world slump has been the collapse of vehicle sales.
From small cars through to heavy trucks, sales have plunged by anything from 25 to 60%: two of the three major US car monopolies are deep in the red with losses totalling well over $2 billion predicted for this financial year.
The plunge in sales has produced a crisis of overproduction for the major manufacturers: and as stocks of unsold cars have grown uncontrollably, a spate of lay-offs, closures and cutbacks have been imposed on a world scale.
In the USA, domestic car production is down to 5.5 million this year—3.8 million below the 1978 figure. 300,000 car workers are laid off, along with a further 500,000 in component firms and related businesses.
In Italy, Fiat is facing an unsold stock of 60,000 cars with losses on car production last year of $120 million: lay offs have been prevented so far only by militant union resistance.
German sackings
In West Germany 12,000 car workers have lost their jobs in Ford and Opel, while tens of thousands more are on short time working in the other firms.
In Britain, too, every major car manufacturer is operating short time, lay offs or redundancies as sales have slumped by over 38% this year.
And things are getting worse as the recession continues to deepen.
In such conditions competition between car giants becomes cut throat. There are signs of a price war as manufacturers scramble to launch new models to corner an increased share of a declining market.
Ford, for instance, have launched their new 'world car' (the Escort replacement), the Erica, at a US price that means an estimated $200 per car loss in a bid to recapture lost sales.
And Ford's $4 billion investment programme includes the establishment of automation far in advance of its European rivals—with 500 assembly robots operating in Europe in the next three years.
General Motors, too, is embarked on a vast multi-billion international investment programme involving the closure of "obsolete" plants in Australia and West Germany and the building of new plants with government aid in Austria, Spain and Northern Ireland.
Overshadowing these massive investment programmes is the growth of Japanese car exports. By 1984 Japanese car exports to the USA are expected to equal Ford's entire US production!
Strikes
Throughout Europe, too, car manufacturers are bleating long and loud about import penetration—and, of course, blaming workers for low productivity and strikes as supposedly the cause of their economic crisis.
In Britain, Ford has emerged as the most profitable car manufacturer, while the past year has seen both Talbot and Vauxhall claiming to make a loss.
BL, after returning only marginal profits has now returned a £155 million loss for the first half of this year, indicating a new crisis point for the corporation.
But recent months have seen a rapid deterioration in the UK. Both Talbot and Vauxhall are on short time.
The slump, coupled with closures in heavy manufacturing industry such as steel, have also resulted in the lay-up of tens of thousands of lorries in the areas affected.
Worst slump
This has created by far the worst slump in the history of the heavy vehicle industry. Fodens have gone into liquidation, while some BL heavy vehicle plants are operating only one day a week.
In cars, BL plants are operating at only a fraction of its capacity with many plants on short time working. Further cuts are taking place at Jaguar, Range Rover, the Rover SD1 Saloon where output is now a mere 20% of the target announced when the model was launched four years ago.
The Cowley Assembly Plant which has a capacity of nearly 10,000 cars a week, is also cutting production down to 1,900 a week—a mere 20% of capacity.
These BL cuts come despite the near completion of the factory closures under the Edwardes plan. Canley is now closed, Castle Bromwich is closed and MG closes next month.
The best indication of the slump is the new mini Metro, which was to be the "saviour of BL". Before it is even in the showrooms its production target has been halved to 3,500 per week!
Similarly the new Morris Ital has been cut back after only 3 months on the market.
Under these conditions can BL survive? It is hard to see how.
Certainly the near future is likely to produce at the very least a further "Edwardes Plan", foreshadowing the complete break-up of the company.
Bleak
Under these conditions how can BL workers defend their jobs?
On the face of it things look impossibly bleak. The employers are getting away with murder.
Factories throughout industry are closing daily.
But it must be understood that the biggest single reason for the success of the employers in closing plants without resistance from the workforce is that the strength of the trade union movement has never been used to stop one!
In steel, for example, not a finger is being lifted to stop the closures. Redundancy pay was negotiated at Port Talbot against the official policy of the unions.
At Consett the unions "reluctantly recommended" acceptance of the closure—even while stirring speeches were being made against the closure at the TUC!
The Confed actually backed the Edwardes plan. When BL balloted the workforce the Confed enclosed a letter urging a "yes" vote.
As a result, Derek Robinson was sacked and Edwardes won a major victory.
Is it any wonder with such leaders that there are few fights against closures at the present time?
When workers make a stand, as at Meccano, the officials refuse to give them enough backing to win.
If closures are to be challenged there is only one answer—a programme to defend the jobs, direct action to implement the programme and the mobilisation of the full strength of the trade union movement behind that action.
But a programme and action of this kind is a directly political question.
It requires a leadership that refuses to accept the "right" of the employer to make profits at the expense of the exploitation and redundancy of his workforce.
Overthrow
In other words it requires a leadership that is prepared to fight for the overthrow of the anarchic and crisis-ridden capitalist system of production.
But the existing trade union leadership seek only to achieve reforms within the capitalist system.
They recognise that their own fat salaries, expense accounts and influential positions depend upon their ability to balance between the strength of the working class and the strength of the employers. If the employers were defeated, the union bureaucracy itself could also be swept away.
No reforms
This is why the union leaders time and again emerge as opposed to any direct challenge to the system itself: and even when the capitalists make it clear there are no reforms on offer, the union bureaucrats divert workers with illusions that if they make concessions on hard-won conditions and living standards, it will open the door.
The Stalinists of the Communist Party who dominate the shop stewards in BL are no different. Their policy of "peaceful coexistence" with capitalism lands them up in peaceful coexistence with Edwardes! They have an appalling record.
They accepted both the Measured Day Work system and the Ryder Report. Derek Robinson, as senior "participation" representative pledged "total cooperation" at the inception of the Metro project.
The Stalinists supported the witch-hunt of Trotskyists. They helped to introduce the new five grade structure and advocated corporate-level bargaining. They even refused to challenge Duffy when Robinson himself was sacked in a major move designed to discipline the trade union movement.
Now Jack Adams, the successor to Derek Robinson has circulated a bulletin around the Longbridge plant calling for full cooperation with the mini Metro project—only days after he was disciplined by management for attending a meeting of the BL Combine Committee!
Between the Communist Party convenors and right wing union officials a division of labour has been established in which through both the official and unofficial bodies of the unions they combine to block any independent struggle and to force through the only policy they can offer—on which they both agree: the reactionary call for import controls.
Apparent logic
Many workers see more import controls as a way to save British industry and defend British jobs.
The policy appears to have a logic: imported cars for example have doubled their penetration into the British market in the past ten years.
Imports are going up. Would it therefore not be "sensible" to cut imports and protect the British car industry?
Afterall didn't "Japanese competition" destroy the motorcycle industry?
It is this kind of apparent logic, coupled with an overwhelming desire not to get into a confrontation with the motor employers which has led major unions like the TGWU to base everything around the demand on the Tories for import controls.
The TGWU Executive Council launched their Save British Industry Campaign last spring which adopted a ten point charter on import controls.
They have adopted a TGWU 'alternative plan' in which they offer a no-strike clause in return for import controls and more investment.
The question is would import controls save jobs even if Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph could be persuaded to implement them?
Thatcher and Joseph of course look at things from the point of view of capitalism as a whole and know the implications. The TGWU charter argues that there would be no retaliatory action by other trading nations; yet similar protectionist policies are being advocated throughout the capitalist world under the impact of the economic crisis.
While the TGWU for example gets together with Edwardes to pressure the Tories for controls, the United Auto Workers union in the USA is also getting together with US manufacturers—to push Carter for protection of the American industry!
But Thatcher and other capitalist governments recognise that import controls are protectionism and protectionism is a step towards all-out trade war.
In such a trade war no capitalist trading nation will simply allow even 'selected' industries within its economy to be hit by new tariffs without defending itself by retaliation.
Under these conditions the weakest will go to the wall—British capitalism is undoubtedly the weakest.
British capitalism is also the most vulnerable to retaliation. The USA for example exports only 6% of total production. Britain exports 30%. For British capitalism to go around the world threatening to impose sanctions and protectionist policies would be very rash indeed.
Those in BL who support such action should know that it is very unlikely that BL could survive such conditions.
But these economic realities are not the main reason that the Workers Socialist League opposes import controls.
Our opposition is one of political principle.
For workers in Britain to get together with their "own" employers to save their "own" industry resolves nothing. It is not in any case their "own" industry. They neither own nor control it.
Workers in Britain have far more in common with Japanese, French, German or Italian workers than they can ever have with a 'British' boss. All workers are exploited and face very similar problems.
To gang together with your "own" boss against workers in another country, simply feeds reactionary nationalist sentiments while playing right into the hands of the employer.
Such class collaboration places workers immediately on the employers' home ground, and the employers' response is obvious and universal: if the trade unions want to fight to keep out Japanese or Italian imports then productivity must be raised, the commodity must be made more competitive, wages must be held down, factories must be closed and hard-won agreements must be given up!
The trade union leaders have, of course, gone along with this—as BL workers are painfully aware.
The unions are now involving themselves in advertising campaigns and sales promotion. The TGWU recently gave a full page of the Record to a reprint of BL's 'Buy British' advertisement. Convenors cooperate in sales promotions in their individual plants.
In this way import controls lead workers directly into alliance with their own employer at the very point when they are facing severe conditions created by the crisis of capitalism and requiring a socialist solution.
So how can BL workers actually defend themselves under these conditions? There is no magic formula.
First and foremost it is a question of leadership. They must be prepared to challenge their existing "leaders" at every level. They must tell them to stop the sell-outs. Stop the collaboration with management, stop the soft jobs and the easy life.
It is necessary to find ways of demonstrating clearly to workers exactly what these 'leaders' are and who they represent.
At the same time defence of jobs needs a plan, a programme around which to organise action. Workers must demand that their leaders support this plan. Workers must at the same time be prepared to build a new leadership from amongst those who are prepared to fight.
The situation must be ended where the employers keep all the trump cards in their hands and are allowed to play them so that everything turns into a scramble for the highest redundancy pay. This happens when it appears to workers that there is no alternative but to accept the money.
There must be a clear alternative which can develop a confidence amongst workers that there is a real chance of success in defending their jobs.
Such an alternative must start clearly from the independent interests of the working class as distinct from that of the employers.
The trade unions must declare that the problems facing the workers stem from the private enterprise system of the employers themselves.
They arise from the system of production for profit and the contradictions within the capitalist mode of production.
They must say clearly that the working class have a right to a decent house and a right to a living wage, a right to a decent home and a right to a health and education service.
They must say that it is unacceptable that the working class be made to pay for the crisis.
Having got that straight it is necessary to have a programme which directly challenges the "rights" and prerogatives which employers have for so long been allowed to exercise.
Business secrecy for example. When closures and redundancies are announced the only people who know the whole picture are the employers: this enables them to say anything they like to justify their actions.
Last spring, Edwardes created a crisis situation. He claimed massive overstocking, laid most plants off for a month and ran a programme of voluntary redundancy.
When Edwardes' "crisis" was investigated (by an open the books committee set up from the shop stewards committee in Cowley, for example) it was found that with the exception of the Rover SD1, stocks at the time were normal!
The lay-off had created a shortage of cars. A month later some plants put production up and recruited labour—having just made hundreds "redundant"!
The exercise, while appearing to be economic madness, in fact paid Edwardes very well. It was timed just before the crunch on the annual wage review and created the feeling that it was hard to fight for wages because the company was stacked out with cars. It had the desired effect.
This autumn, although the crisis is very real and not contrived it is again being manipulated and synchronised to coincide with the pay review to have a similar effect.
The only reason management can play this kind of game is because they monopolise information.
When a closure is announced they usually show the full time officials a simple balance sheet of profit and loss. But this does not mean anything. Only management have all the information; and they use it to suit themselves.
They never reveal where all the money is going—for instance what they are paying for their components and services; or what rake-off the distributors are getting.
Even small items like how much they are paying into Tory Party funds or £1 million to charter a cruise liner to take the distributors on a holiday are hidden away.
Yet two-thirds of a car is manufactured in the private component industry. With BL being government controlled the pricing policy of the component suppliers is of particular importance.
There is no point in saying BL is making a 'loss' if profit is simply being creamed off by component manufacturers.
Distributors, for example, get a 30% rake-off from the sale of a car.
To get a true picture it is necessary to know all of this. If workers are to lose their jobs or are being denied a living wage they have the right to know.
The unions should therefore demand the opening of the books—all the books, all the files and all the information about the operation of the company as well as its suppliers, distributors and bankers—who are currently receiving £70 million a year in interest payments from BL.
This investigation is a step towards workers' control. If it turns out that the company is bankrupt then the mobilisation created around forcing the opening of the books can be turned to actively demand nationalisation in the case of a private firm.
If the firm is already nationalised, demands can be placed on the government to nationalise the distributors, the suppliers and the banks and to fund a programme of alternative production for social use under workers' management.
A campaign of this sort gives the initiative back to the labour force and puts management on the defensive.
Obviously simply to open the books will not save jobs. For that occupation is crucial.
Thoughts of redundancy payments must be set aside, and everything concentrated on defending the plant.
The property of the employer must be seized and the plant brought physically under workers' control.
Occupation alone may not be enough but it certainly puts management on the defensive, gives workers confidence, raises the issue sharply and provides the necessary platform to demand full support from the trade union movement for what is usually decisive in the end—strike action in support.
A major battle of this sort would transform the situation in relationship to closures and must be the objective if a new Edwardes plan is announced in BL.
To avoid occupations the employers run plants down gradually. It is an effective tactic.
Immediate occupation
Just look at Canley and Castle Bromwich. By the time the closure comes there is not much left. Occupation should therefore be immediate, whilst the plant and the workforce is still intact.
Voluntary redundancy (VR) is also used repeatedly to run down plants both for closure and to cut production.
In some plants management select who will go from amongst those who apply. They select the shop stewards and the militants.
In the Cowley Assembly Plant 80 out of 180 TGWU shop stewards went VR last spring in one exercise. It both deflates the trade union movement and gives the impression that stewards have been given preference.
VR must be resisted. If it cannot be stopped then manning levels must be defended and workers who go VR replaced on their jobs.
Work sharing on full pay, when management cut production.
BL workers have fallen far behind in the wages league. In 1973 for example, the national average wage was £40 a week. A track worker in BL was on £50. Now a BL track worker is on £88 and the national average wage is £122.
This year the 20% claim must be won in full. One of its weaknesses is that it has no cost of living clause to cancel out the effects of inflation.
Future claims must contain such a clause. Since the working class are not responsible for inflation and have no influence over it they must have agreements adequate to protect them against it.
But neither jobs nor wages are going to be defended unless there is a struggle for leadership.
The official leaders are moving rapidly to the right—as shown at the recent TUC Congress. Now they are not just calling for import controls but even supporting Callaghan's call for wage controls.
No-strike clause
The TGWU on the basis of the report they commissioned from Eurofinance, have drawn up an "alternative plan" for BL which offers a no strike clause in return for more investment and import controls.
In talks on the reconstitution of the BL JNC the Confed discussed a document containing a legally binding no strike clause.
Although no agreement was reached this is still on the agenda to be resolved by the 1981 review.
Meanwhile the unofficial BL Combine Committee is almost defunct. Its recent meeting (the first for a year) was attended by less than 50 stewards—the smallest meeting since it was set up 16 years ago.
In an unprecedented move, those who attended the meeting including Longbridge convenor Jack Adams were disciplined by management for attending an unofficial meeting inside working hours. This means that the committee is unlikely to meet again in the foreseeable future.
The Combine Committee must be rebuilt. Historically the shop floor strength in the car industry has been built on the unofficial movement. But this requires a development amongst militant workers and shop stewards in BL.
This is a big job but is entirely possible. The Leyland Action Committee has made an important start. It has adopted a programme which is essentially the same as the programme outlined in this article.
Divisions
An action programme for BL must break down divisions between workers throughout the car industry, both internationally and within Britain.
Ford workers must not be played off against BL workers. Vauxhall workers must not be played off against Talbot workers, or workers in the component industry.
Such moves must be combatted through the call for a nationalised integrated car and component industry in Britain, embracing all car and component manufacturers and distributors. Only such a measure could bring any kind of planning or order to the industry.
It is true to say that no real or lasting solution can be achieved under capitalism; that only socialism and a planned economy can resolve the problem.
But there is an intimate connection between the fight in defence of the workers rights today and the possibility of overturning capitalism and establishing socialism.
Trotsky set this out in the Transitional Programme.
The programme explains that it is only through the defence of the working class today that a leadership can be developed in struggle, adequate to the task of social revolution.
It is only through such struggles that the consciousness of the working class in the car industry and elsewhere can be raised to carry through that historic task.
A boxed item printed alongside the article read:
*20% wage increase now!
*Restore the agreements lost last year!
*For a sliding scale of wages to protect against inflation!
*Defend jobs—stop redundancies—work sharing on full pay!
*Stop all closures—occupy the plants.
*Support occupations with an all-out official strike.
*Open the books of BL, the suppliers, distributors and banks.
*For a new leadership in BL—build the Leyland Action Committee.
*Strengthen the shop stewards movement—rebuild the combine committee.
*For a nationalised, integrated automotive industry under workers' management.
A display panel across the spread reproduced the CSEU Executive Council's advertisement:
CONFEDERATION OF SHIPBUILDING AND ENGINEERING UNIONS.
The Executive Council is convinced there is no feasible alternative to the BL recovery plan. We therefore strongly urge all Trade Union members to vote YES in the present ballot.