TGWU funds pay for new bosses' report on Leyland
Socialist Press1980sEVANS & DUFFY GANG UP AGAINST BL WORKERS
Transcribed by hand from the printed page.
A reformist trade union leader, as every class conscious worker knows, is one who accepts that capitalism is necessary (in many cases thinks it is desirable) and sees his or her job as attempting to obtain a few concessions within the system—providing the system itself is not threatened and his or her own privileged position within it is maintained.
This political position lies behind the numerous betrayals which the leadership foist on the working class, particularly in a period of severe economic crisis.
Nowhere are such betrayals more clear than in British Leyland where reformist leaders face the issue most difficult for them—the crisis of profitability of the Company.
Acquiesce
It is of course not new for trade union leaders to acquiesce to closures or redundancies. It is not new for them to do behind-the-scenes deals and to sell out struggles.
What was new in BL when the Edwardes plan was announced last September was that the leadership of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (the CSEU) actually supported the closure of the 13 plants and 25,000 redundancies.
They actively argued that it was necessary, and railroaded the plan through the shop stewards movement.
They were themselves responsible for ensuring that the plan was accepted by organising the infamous secret ballot jointly with the management. They recommended the 90,000 workforce to vote 25,000 threatened people out of a job.
Not surprisingly, this collusion, and the confusion it created, resulted in a 7-1 vote in favour of the plan.
Robinson
This vote was quickly turned to full advantage by management who sacked Derek Robinson with the help of the right wing of the AUEW and the Communist Party—in this way seeking further to intimidate and discipline the BL workforce.
The "left wing" of the trade union movement, represented by the TGWU at the time, took an outwardly more militant line.
They loudly opposed the Edwardes plan. But at the same time they refused to do anything about it, preferring to hide behind the decisions of the Confed—in which they were a minority rather than using the weight of their majority membership position in BL.
They, of course, had no alternative policies to offer any way other than their standard appeals to the government for more investment and for the reactionary, nationalist policy of import controls.
Profitability
But Moss Evans still had a problem. Management were saying they were bankrupt.
After all, if the profitability simply was not there, and the market share was still falling, how could you force BL to continue to employ 25,000 workers that it didn't need?
Faced with a classical capitalist problem, and devoid of any socialist solution, Evans turned for advice to the capitalists themselves.
He decided to commission a Paris-based group of capitalists—Euro Finance Ltd—to produce a study of BL and to advice the TGWU on what its policy should be!
Accordingly on the basis of the very substantial fee paid to them by the TGWU, Euro Finance Ltd produced a lengthy report. It said that the major problems which BL has is the refusal of the TGWU to give wholehearted support to the Edwardes plan!
The report of course did not put its conclusions in terms as clear as that. They were couched in a mask of objectivity but behind this was their clear class position.
Partnership
The report 'assessed' the various options open to BL, and concluded that the best option for BL would be a partnership with another manufacturer with whom they would pool development costs—probably Honda.
The report criticises the Edwardes plan but then goes on to say that there is no point in even discussing various options to the Edwardes plan unless BL is going to survive—and it will only do that if the Edwardes plan is supported or management persuaded by force of argument to change it!
In any event the main point is to support the management. The report puts it in this way:
"At BL Cars in particular, the period 1980-83 will be critical. Depending on their force, short term shocks to BL Cars during 1980-83 could trigger collapse of the business, although more probable would be further sharp reductions in the fixed cost base, i.e. plant closures, investment cuts and manpower reductions".
Later on it explains:
"Support for measures to limit BL's exposure to short-term shocks is tantamount to support for the BL 1980 plan". (The Edwardes plan.)
Advice
The report concludes by giving its advice to the TGWU:
"From the confusion of the current situation, it seems to us that the TGWU should focus on the questions of limiting BL's exposure to short term shocks and the crucially important LC10 programme.
(. . .)
This is not meant to imply that everything be surrendered to short-term exigencies and the LC10 programme. But it may mean having to face both ways at once [!].
This is because the hard questions about BL Cars future under the 1980 plan will not go away, however much short term support the Company can muster, and however smoothly the LC10 programme is kept rolling.
But there will not be any hard questions about BL Cars manufacturing future if LC10 fails to meet plan targets".
Well, it is certainly not necessary for Euro Finance to explain to the leadership of the TGWU how to face both ways at once.
They are past masters at the exercise.
But what this conclusion to the report means is that Moss Evans has expended a large sum of union funds simply to be told what BL management have never ceased to say—if you don't knuckle under, BL will close down and throw you all out of a job.
It didn't need thousands of pounds to get that answer. Edwardes would have told them for nothing as he has done thousands of times in the past.
The report, however, had a very big effect on the TGWU leadership.
At the June meeting of the General Executive Council it was decided to continue opposition to the Edwardes plan:
"until such times as senior stewards have had an opportunity to assess the contents of the report".
In other words they will end their opposition as soon as they can get it organised.
When the senior stewards met shortly afterwards they were handed a document which claimed that the Euro Finance report "substantially supports" the views of the TGWU on the Edwardes plan.
This is rather bizarre, since the report advocated that the Edwardes plan be supported in the absence of an alternative acceptable to the Company!
Working group
The document proposed that a "small working group" be set up to draw up a plan for BL.
"Euro Finance have sketched in the background", it explained, "a small working group could put the flesh on these bones and return within a month with a reasoned argument which would engage the confidence of all those involved".
What is needed, argues the document, is:
"a consensus on the way forward" and a "declaration of intent" by the TGWU, by BL and by the government.
In other words, the years of 'participation' under the Labour government and Ryder, which did so much damage to the trade union movement within BL, are to be replaced by a joint "declaration of intent" with Thatcher's Tory government, designed to keep the factories running at all costs.
"Three years peace"
Any doubt about the seriousness of this turn or the support it will get from the increasingly bureaucratised convenors, was dispelled by the statement made to the press by Grenville Hawley, TGWU Automotive Group National Secretary, when he emerged from the convenors' meeting.
It was necessary to have "three years peace" at BL he declared. He thought this would be accepted because "there had not been a militant voice raised at the meeting".
The TGWU report that has been produced accepts the Euro Finance report in almost its entirety.
The exception is on import controls. Euro Finance make the case for import controls but also point out the contradictions—particularly BL's intention to become the spearhead of Honda penetration into the European market through the Bounty.
But apart from this—which the TGWU report simply ignores—there is complete agreement.
In fact the TGWU report is a scissors and paste job of clippings from Euro Finance and sections produced by the TGWU research department.
It amounts to 40 pages of crass comment about the car industry designed to cover up a very deadly sting in the tail.
Like Euro Finance it calls for a partnership with another company and for more investment into BL.
But whereas Euro Finance call for three years of peace and say that any sharp shock would finish the company, the TGWU actually makes it much more specific.
In the key section they call for government funding of £1,532 million by 1985. In return for this they make the following proposals:
"It would be the height of folly to embark on the committal of resources on this scale unless other measures were taken to ensure at least some guarantee of success.
We see there being five major inter-related areas that have to be envisaged:
- drastic but selective controls over imports
- declared movement towards a full scale partnership
- substantial revitalisation of engineering resources
- continuity of physical output
- adequate investment
All five points have to be taken together as they embrace the short term objective of establishing the viability of the Cars division and the medium term objective of forming part of a two million unit/annum combine.
Beyond that time scale, 1995-2000, the issues are rather speculative. All the points are now examined in some detail".
The key to it all, of course, is "continuity of physical output". This is as near as you can get to a no-strike clause.
It is the logic of the Ryder report—that the interests (or survival) of the Company comes first—put down in writing in a document compiled by the major union in the car industry.
This is exactly the argument used time and time again by Terry Duffy.
It was the reason Duffy and the Confed accepted the Edwardes plan in the first place (and collaborated in the sacking of Robinson).
In the words of Alex Ferry (Duffy's man in the leadership of the Confed):
"Michael Edwardes gave us a look over the precipice and we didn't like what we saw".
Exactly the same argument was used by Duffy when he urged acceptance of the 5% offer and 92 pages of strings.
And it was exactly the argument used by Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon to force in the Ryder plan and the collaborationist 'participation' committees which did so much damage to the shop floor movement in BL.
At that time we had Jones and Scanlon on the front page of the Leyland Mirror saying—KEEP WORKING!
In BL the Jones/Scanlon right wing axis of 1976-78 has now been replaced by the Evans/Duffy axis of 1980.
The logic of reformism is inexorable. Moss Evans seemed verbally far away from Terry Duffy.
He took different positions on Labour Party reform. He seemed far away from Duffy in the Ford strike and the lorry drivers' strike—both issues where the question of capitalist profitability did not appear to be so clearly posed.
Involved
But once Evans became personally involved in BL things were quickly different.
His spectacular collapse last April during the strike in the Midlands plants over the imposition of the 5% wage offer and 92 pages of strings was the key turning point.
No doubt Edwardes gave Evans a quick look over the same precipice that had given Alex Ferry vertigo six months earlier.
When the chips were down, the left and the right came together in defence of capitalism.
Evans' problem of course will be getting his document accepted by the management—despite the inducement of a no-strike clause.
For the government, the additional finance called for will be unacceptable. But this does not make the document any less dangerous.
Whether or not the document becomes formally accepted, the "declaration of intent" spells out the attitude of the TGWU leadership.
It says clearly that the problems of the management are more important than even the most basic trade union principles.
The point will not be lost on Edwardes or the government.
Secondly the document is immediately damaging to the struggle for the wage review. It provokes discussion about the viability of the Company at just the point when all attention should be turned towards the negotiations due to begin for the November wage review.
But the document is not the only problem the workers face—although it is the most far-reaching.
When the bargaining structure in BL is taken into account it can be seen that BL workers are in a very difficult position indeed.
The fact is that since corporate bargaining was introduced 18 months ago BL workers have had no means of expressing their collective view except through a highly bureaucratised Joint Negotiating Committee—which had no powers to call strike action even if its decisions could have been influenced by the shop floor.
Last April even this body was virtually disbanded after it supported the strike in the Midlands plant.
Not influenced
A committee comprised of national officials who could not be influenced in any way by the shopfloor was set up, with powers to override the JNC.
It quickly used these powers to sign a highly controversial procedural agreement over the heads of the BL workforce which effectively crushed any opposition to the new five grade structure forced in by management.
Whilst TGWU officials and leading convenors have been drawing up the document and giving away the right to strike, nothing has been done to reconstitute the JNC in order to clear the way for wage negotiations to begin.
They have completely ignored the campaign waged in some plants for a democratic representative JNC to be set up based on a representative conference of BL workers.
In the Cowley Assembly Plant workers signed a mass petition on these lines and copies were sent to every level of the TGWU inside and outside of BL—but no response has been forthcoming.
Edwardes meanwhile has been far from complacent. He has called for the JNC to be permanently replaced by a committee comprised solely of national officials, and has sent proposals on these lines to the general secretaries of the unions concerned.
He has also made the major tactical move of withdrawing BL from the Engineering Employers Federation from 1 August 1980.
The implications of this are farreaching for BL workers.
From 1 August all agreements negotiated with the Federation covering minimum rates, premium payments, holidays and hours of work will cease to exist.
Yet not a word has reached the shop floor from the unions.
They have been too busy trying to solve the company's profitability problems at the expense of their members.
It is obvious that another major attack on BL workers is in the offing.
Edwardes will use the crisis in the industry and his withdrawal from the Federation to launch another vicious package against BL workers in reply to the review.
The Combine Committee has not met since Derek Robinson was sacked. Its first meeting since that time is scheduled for Wednesday of this week.
It is crucial that the committee takes the decision to reject all capitalist "solutions" to the problems of BL workers.
It must tackle the question of democratic representation of BL workers on a reconstituted JNC. The Cowley Assembly Plant has placed this on the agenda and it is crucial it is supported.
There is no reformist answer to this attack. The problems of BL are the problems of capitalism which is in acute economic crisis on a world scale.
Workers are not the cause of this crisis. They have no influence over it and no responsibility towards it.
Their only answer can be to defend their independent interests against the interests of capitalism.
That means not selling the right to strike but exercising it.
It means using the strength of the trade union movement to stop the closures and redundancies now.
Work sharing on full pay! Open the books of BL and its suppliers and distributors to an elected committee of rank and file trade unionists! For a nationalised, integrated, automotive and components industry. For a democratic, fully representative, negotiating committee elected at a delegate conference. *For a wage claim to re-establish the standard of living of BL workers and a sliding scale of wages to protect the new rates against inflation.
*Since this article was completed more information has become available on the 'reconstitution' of the JNC. It appears that the Confed has met and considered two proposals—one from the TGWU calling for proportional representation, and one from Michael Edwardes, calling for more national officers and fewer convenors.
The JNC met last Friday but nothing was resolved. No further moves towards 'reconstitution' will now take place until August 27. Meanwhile there is no JNC and therefore no means of negotiating wages.