BL aims to demolish shop stewards movement
Socialist Press1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Last week the press gave wide coverage of BL's proposal to force full time convenors back on their jobs.
It is important that these reports are seen in the context of the overall situation facing BL workers.
Over the last two years BL have launched an increasing onslaught on the shop stewards' movement. Victimisation alongside the threat of and preparation for more victimisations are now an everyday fact of life on the shop floor in BL.
Dossiers
Day by day dossiers are prepared on shop stewards, "investigations" are carried out by management and the discipline procedure is used against stewards following stoppages on their sections.
Managers obstruct the release of stewards who need to deal with problems on their sections and there is a clamp-down on stewards' meetings.
There is no doubt that BL have set themselves an objective of destroying the shop stewards' movement: and they don't see this as a long term project.
The proposal to clamp down on convenors is an aspect of this all round attack but it is not the actual spearhead of it. BL strategists are well aware that the role that most of the convenors play is far too important for them to make the convenors' system a prime target too early.
That will come later—if they are successful in crushing the shop floor movement.
Not new
BL comments on convenors are no new development. They are contained in a document tabled to the unions in March of this year (reported in SP 241) covering new negotiating and disciplinary procedures.
The most dangerous clauses of course have not been mentioned by the media. They include:
*a new National Negotiating Committee dominated by full time officials;
*a new discipline procedure, giving BL the right of summary dismissal for what they choose to define as "gross industrial misconduct";
*a clause making the new procedure legally binding, which would make any worker on unofficial strike in breach of his or her contract of employment and therefore liable to instant dismissal.
TGWU convenors have rejected the document while the AUEW national officers under the 'leadership' of Ken Cure have equivocated. BL are tabling the document again for "discussion" this month, after which they are likely to try to force it in, perhaps as part of the forthcoming November wage review.
Despite this most convenors are deliberately playing the document down. No attempt has been made to prepare BL workers to face such a challenge.
So if the document is 4 months old why did the clause on Convenors hit the headlines last week?
It is not simply that it is the issue which concerns the convenors the most.
In fact the press took it up when it was raised from the rostrum at the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) conference last week by former BL Longbridge clerical staffs convenor Bill Linthwaite.
Linthwaite was until recently chairman of the National BL Cars Clerical Staffs Negotiating Committee.
Long list
He revealed to the CSEU conference that he had recently taken voluntary redundancy because he was:
"not prepared to stand for the continual harassment and vicious nit-picking to which my colleagues and I were continually being subjected."
He had decided therefore not to fight the company, but to add his name to the long list of BL senior stewards who have gone voluntarily redundant in the last year.
But he still had the nerve to turn up to the CSEU conference—claim his expenses from the union—and give everyone the benefit of his opinions.
He told the conference "The regime in Longbridge is now like Colditz. The atmosphere is a powder keg."
Leadership
That is certainly true and 13,000 workers—unlike Linthwaite—still have to work there.
Linthwaite's example says a lot for the crisis of leadership which exists in BL: there are dozens of similar examples.
Senior stewards who sought out positions under "participation" and before when the perks were around now sell their jobs and get out when management clamp down.
Process
Linthwaite is not prepared to be harassed. Yet trade unionists have been harassed and persecuted since capitalism began and will be until it is ended. What is so different now?
Those leaving BL are part of the process in which the struggle for new leaders in that company must take place.
BL workers must have a leadership at combine level who are prepared for an uncompromising struggle against a brutal and ruthless management, and are prepared to see that struggle through to the end.
That is why we urge BL workers to support and join with the Leyland Action Committee in its fight for such a new leadership.