BL WORKERS DECLARE WAR ON 4%
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE DECISION of BL Cars Joint Negotiating Committee to recommend an all-out strike from November 1 puts BL workers on a collision course with Thatcher's 4% public sector pay limit.
Their call was in response to BL's insulting 3.8% offer, tabled by BL's chief negotiator Geoffrey Armstrong last Friday.
The decision goes much further than the JNC had been prepared to go in the past.
Last year, when they made a similar recommendation, they refused to name the day of the action. When mass meetings followed their recommendation and voted for strike action, they refused to implement it and took a second vote on the same offer with a different recommendation.
Now, they have named November 1 as the date for an all-out strike, which is the day the current BL contracts run out.
Confrontation
The decision is of major importance to the trade union movement as a whole. A strike in BL could trigger a confrontation with the Thatcher government capable of sweeping it from office this winter.
And their decision can have a major effect in other sections of the car industry such as Ford and Vauxhalls as well as the whole of the public sector.
Contrary to the illusions created by the mass media, BL workers are in a very powerful position. They directly control the point of production and the full effects of the strike will be felt immediately.
The effects will go far beyond BL. Once the 58,000 workers in BL Cars stop work, a very large section of the engineering industry covering hundreds of thousands of workers, is very quickly affected.
To implement the strike call, the JNC decided to organise a meeting of convenors for October 9 to seek endorsement of their decision. This is to be followed by simultaneous mass meetings to be held at 8 am on October 16.
Last year, the manipulation of the BL vote and the sabotage of the strike by the leadership was a major blow to the whole pay round and the struggle against the Tories.
The weakness of the JNC moves this year is its time scale. To leave the action until November 1 gives time for the Frank Chapples and the Terry Duffys to attempt to undermine the action.
At the JNC meeting itself Roy Sanderson of the EETPU pressed for a secret ballot. When he was voted down, he declared that the EETPU would ballot their own members unilaterally to decide whether to support the action or not.
Similar moves are afoot within the AUEW leadership. But it should not be assumed that because Duffy and Chapple have been successful in sabotaging strikes in BL in the past, that they will be successful this time.
The problem in heading off the strike is the militancy of the BL workforce. This extends as far as can be seen, to every plant and makes a big strike vote on the 16th inevitable.
Clear evidence of the kind of determination which exists is the militant strike of assembly workers from the Princess and Honda Acclaim tracks in the Cowley assembly plant, now entering its second week.
It began as a spontaneous response to the loss of a day's pay and the breach of the lay-off agreement. It quickly became a symbol of defiance against a management constantly on the attack.
The strikers have mounted mass pickets of the plant every day and a very militant meeting of strikers on Monday voted with only six against to continue the action and step up the picketing to 24 hours.
It is one of the most determined and militant actions in the Cowley plant for many years and is closely linked to the pay review.
Last Tuesday, management circulated a letter spelling out their reply to the trade union claim. It has simply enraged workers even more.
BL unions have claimed a £20 increase across the board, improvements in sick pay and lay-off entitlements, a shorter working week, and additional holidays.
Edwardes has dismissed the claim out of hand. Despite his own recent 38% increase, he has offered 3.8% on the five grades, making the new rates £108.60 for Grade 1 £99.55 for Grade 2, £97.60 for Grade 3, £89.70 for Grade 4 and £81.60 for Grade 5.
He has also offered to raise the bonus ceiling from £22 a week to £30 a week — an irrelevant figure since most workers see only single figure bonuses.
But even such an increase in the bonus ceiling is conditional on the acceptance of a "special team" of super work study engineers to study all jobs.
Shudder
After that a plant might qualify for the mythical extra £8. Having suffered for years at the hands of "ordinary" work study engineers, BL workers will shudder to think what a "special team" of super IEs would do to them.
The BL propaganda machine says it is necessary to be "lean and efficient" in order to survive. Yet on Edwardes' own figures, produced in his six-monthly report to shareholders, efficiency has gone up by 30% over the past two years, and wages declined dramatically.
This is what makes BL workers so determined. They know there will be manoeuvres by their leadership. They know there will be threats from Edwardes to close down the corporation if there's a strike. This time they are at the end of the road. They are prepared to strike and to organise and to meet the threats as they come with militant action.
They know the strike will not be primarily against Edwardes but against Thatcher.
Once it starts it must not remain isolated. BL workers must fight alongside other workers fighting for wage increases in both the public and private sectors.
Other public sector workers affected by the 4% limit must not sit back and see BL workers fight alone simply because they have a later review date.
The lesson of the steelworkers was that they were left to fight alone.
The engineering pay claim has been rejected and the engineers have been offered 3.1%. Their review date is the same as BL — November 1.
Vauxhalls — whose review date is now past — should declare that they will come out with BL. Ford unions should coordinate their action with BL workers and not wait for their review date on 23 November.
If such a fighting unity can be built around a BL strike, it will be very difficult for the Tory government to survive.
[Photo: The JNC rejected a move from Chapple's EETPU to go to a secret ballot]