BL: the background to the betrayals
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE SUCCESS of BL management strategy is increasingly used to spearhead the employers' offensive in other sections of industry. The fundamental reorganisation of the payment system, and the offensive against the shop stewards' movement, is the envy of other major employers in the engineering industry.
Here is an outline sketch of how this large section of the industrial working class, originally numbering 200,000 workers in 55 plants, have been consciously and repeatedly betrayed by trade union leaders who acted as, and at one stage actually were, effectively part of corporate management.
THE POST-WAR development of the shop stewards' movement was largely spearheaded by the car industry, where militancy and the piecework system produced relatively high wages, giving the shop stewards their power base.
The decline of the post-war boom in the second half of the 1960s sharpened competition among the car barons, and focused the attention of the Labour Government towards curbing car workers as front runners in the wages field and controlling the shop stewards' movement.
Piecework and payment by results (PBR) systems were singled out as a primary target for change well before BL was formed in 1968 with Pat Lowry as Director of Employee Relations. Lowry, however, elaborated a detailed strategy on these lines for BL.
1971: Imposition of Measured Day Work
PBR was to be replaced by Measured Day Work (MDW) — flat rate payments and work effort controlled by time and motion study, as at Ford.
Then BL would move towards a completely centralised USA-type bargaining system, which would remove the shop stewards from the process and give power to the full-time officials.
Lowry moved in 1971 to force MDW into the major plants of the Cars Division. This met protracted strike action in the Cowley Assembly Plant and Jags, which was sold out by the officials, with the acquiescence of the Communist Party. A year later MDW was established in the majority of plants.
[Photograph. Caption: Longbridge convenor and CP member Derek Robinson led support for 'participation' — and applause for the Edwardes plan in February 1978]
BL admitted publicly three years later that they had offered low work effort as a tactic to get the MDW principle established. But, as militants had warned at the outset, the drive was soon on to re-establish piecework effort for flat-rate wages.
Alan Thornett was victimised and removed from plant leadership in 1974, during strikes in opposition to the use of stopwatches on the tracks in Cowley. This was used by Jack Jones and Region 5 of the TGWU to establish the right wing in control in Cowley, and speed-up on the tracks quickly followed.
In December 1974 Tony Benn, as Harold Wilson's Industry Secretary, commissioned a team of four, headed by Lord Ryder from the NEB and including TGWU deputy general secretary Harry Urwin, to inquire and prepare a report on BL for submission to Parliament.
The Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) promptly appointed a 'team' of convenors to discuss with the Ryder committee. Ryder records that he found a ready response to his ideas from the 'team', which included Derek Robinson and several leading members of the CP — a response which was to become quite fundamental to the future course of events in BL.
1975: the Ryder report
The Report was finalised and presented to Parliament by Benn in April 1975. On the basis of market forecast figures it called for BL to be maintained as a producer of cars, trucks and buses — on the basis of Government shareholding and capital loans, since its profit base was 'wholly inadequate'.
[Photograph. Caption: The palmy days, or it seems now. The millionth Mini]
The money, however, would be paid in six-monthly tranches which could be used to blackmail BL workers. The report laid down:
"That the process of the capital expenditure programme and the injection of new finance by the Government should be staged and that each stage should depend on evidence of a tangible contribution by BL's workforce and management to the reduction of industrial disputes and improvements of productivity".
It connected with Lowry's strategy by calling for reform of the wage structure through a common review date, a reduction in the number of bargaining units, and a bonus scheme.
It called for more 'industrial democracy' through an extensive system of 'worker participation' committees — something which came directly out of Benn's original terms of reference.
1975-77: the unions, Ryder and 'participation'
The report received massive backing from all the unions in BL and from the CSEU Executive. That support, with all its implications, remains unshaken to this day, and has been a crucial factor in all subsequent events.
[Photograph. Caption: Robots in Longbridge: only one side of Edwardes' "Japanese model"]
'Participation', under Communist Party control, eventually cut very deep into the shopfloor movement in BL Cars. Thousands of shop stewards, and the vast majority of BL Cars' 500-plus convenors and senior stewards, were eventually sucked into it and had their teeth drawn.
The Combine Committee was cast aside. Though officially they were non-negotiating bodies, the 'participation' committees rapidly took over the role of the trade union structures.
On top of this, with BL run by the government through the NEB, Scanlon and Urwin effectively became very senior members of management.
By the end of last year the effects added up to: the loss of 70,000 BL jobs (far more than the entire Ford labour force); wage rates falling to the lowest car wages in Europe; and the systematic smashing of conditions and agreements established over many years.
In addition, BL's achievement in rationalising the pay structure in BL Cars, gaining control of many thousands of different rates and payments in 34 diverse plants scattered across the country, is viewed with envy by employers in other sectors of industry.
For this reason it is well worth looking a bit closer at how this was achieved, and how participation was used to defuse opposition and push it through.
The document detailing the structure of the participation committees was signed in October 1975 by a body known as the 'Joint Trade Union 32 Man Committee', and sets out the terms of reference of the scheme:
"To examine future plans to make BL Cars a more competitive designer, producer and seller of cars; to seek as far as possible to reach agreement on those plans, whilst recognising that executive responsibility rests with management".
As a result of this an ad hoc committee was set up in March 1976 to administer the introduction of the Ryder scheme into all the plants. The scheme was pushed into most plants by the autumn of 1976, but the committee was already involved in other things.
By January 1977 they had negotiated the so-called 'Security of Earnings Document', which in return for a marginal increase in lay-off pay and a corporate sick scheme contained dangerous no-strike clauses.
Despite their recommendation, the document was decisively rejected at a series of mass meetings.
The toolroom strike in early 1977, which was whipped up into a national emergency, gave BL the chance to force the pace on wage reform, particularly since Scanlon excelled in his role as NEB boss by publicly endorsing BL's decision to sack all 6,000 on strike.
Despite their hard line, however, BL basically agreed with the toolmakers that skilled sections should be at the top of the pay scale. Therefore, along with the threat went a joint commitment with the unions to take a new initiative to examine differentials and change the wage structure in BL Cars.
This took the form of a Joint Working Party (JWP), set up by the CSEU Executive (none of whom work in BL) in March 1977 to examine 'differentials'. It quickly became a new lever for forcing the pace for Lowry's strategy of corporate bargaining.
1977: Corporate bargaining
At the end of May the trade union side of the JWP put a policy statement to a convenors' conference, along with its proposals on wage bargaining reform. These went far beyond its terms of reference. They were a variant on what Lowry had been pushing for months, and were entirely in line with Ryder.
"This meeting of Leyland Cars senior shop stewards recognises the need to change our present method of bargaining in order to comply with the Ryder recommendations and the decision of the CSEU officers... We propose the following steps:
Phased programme over two years to achieve the bargaining reforms of the Ryder Report.
Principle of parity in all grades in BL Cars to be achieved no later than November 1979,
Staff conditions to be implemented by November 1978,
Introduction of incentive schemes, mutually agreed at plant level".
Although the company side of the JWP disagreed with details of the four points, the points gave Lowry all the loopholes he wanted.
On June 27, 1977, the JWP met in the plush Allesley Hotel in Coventry to consider Lowry's proposals:
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Common review date — November 1st.
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Establishment of a graded uniform corporate wage structure established by job evaluation.
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Parity payments to equalise rates once the number of new grades and the differentials had been established. [A five-grade structure had already been discussed].
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Lowry outlined how he would see a bonus scheme.
Needless to say, these proposals were accepted by the working party.
They left out the still supposedly contentious words 'corporate bargaining', but BL knew the obvious: that parity and corporate bargaining meant the same thing, when linked to a common review date. Corporate bargaining had been agreed in all but name.
Having made this breakthrough Lowry wanted it endorsed by a secret ballot of the workforce, a technique he and Edwardes after him were to use many times in the next three years in BL cars.
In November 1977 a package drafted by Lowry was ballotted. It was presented to the workforce only in vague outline, before what was in reality a blind vote. It was nevertheless strongly recommended by the CSEU and a convenors' conference.
Ballot papers were accompanied by a CSEU letter urging a 'yes' vote.
The package was accepted by a two-to-one majority. It included parity proposals, the 'outline' of a bonus scheme, and ten per cent on the rate payable from February 1978 (because of Callaghan's 12-month rule).
It also included the previously rejected 'Security of Earnings document', with slightly modified no-strike penalty clauses.
1977-78: the first Edwardes plan
This vote was an important milestone which Edwardes inherited when he was appointed BL chairman by Eric Varley the following month — on the recommendation of the NEB, with the full support of Scanlon and Urwin.
The 'participation' atmosphere ensured that Edwardes came to BL with massive backing from the trade union leaders inside and outside the corporation.
At a convenors' conference — with plant directors invited — at Kenilworth in February 1978, he received a standing ovation led by Derek Robinson and the CP. The following week he announced his first closure — the Speke Assembly Plant.
In April Lowry pushed a set of new, slightly modified, bonus proposals to another postal ballot. They were one of the few things actually opposed by the trade unions in BL Cars for the past eight years, and were rejected by the membership with a two-to-one majority.
1978: parity and the 5 grade system
The next major BL thrust was at the November 1978 wage review. A five per cent offer (Callaghan's famous 5%) was conditional on the abolition of all existing rates. Grades covering the entire labour force, with skilled at the top and a £19 differential between skilled and unskilled, were to be introduced from November 1, 1979.
The package was strongly recommended in a further postal ballot by the Working Party, which by now had been transformed into a Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC). It was a completely undemocratic body, not elected by the membership, and with a built-in majority for the skilled workers, despite the TGWU organising two thirds of BL workers.
Although the package was accepted 60/40, the most difficult part was to actually slot the thousands of existing rates into the five grades and make them stick.
Most would be hotly contested, since the commitment to the toolmakers (and to BL philosophy) involved moving production workers, who in many plants were at the top of the pay scale, down to grade III.
Even before the package was balloted, secret meetings of a new body — the Joint Job Evaluation Committee (JJEC) — had taken place to tackle the problem. They met behind closed doors, ticking off question sheets and feeding the results into a computer.
The print-out — 60 'benchmark jobs' — would be the cast-iron yardstick BL would use to determine the grading for the 120,000 workers involved.
By May 1979 the JNC had agreed detailed parity proposals, equalising the rates in three stages. Pressure would be put on workers by withholding payment from each section until they had accepted the 5-grade structure and where they slotted into it.
Participation had played its role, and soon disappeared under Edwardes. In a calculated strategic shift, BL had moved from 'participation' to confrontation.
It met a shop stewards' movement greatly weakened and demoralised by class collaboration, in bad shape to withstand an onslaught of hardline management. And Edwardes knew it.
A regime of fear was generated. Threats, blackmail and intimidation became the order of the day. Management philosophy was no quarter and no concessions.
It was an all-or-nothing policy which could be effective provided that the workforce, which was militant and had not been defeated by the employers, could still be prevented by their leaders from taking on Edwardes and beating him.
1979: the Tories come to power. New corporate plan.
Following the election of the Thatcher government in May 1979, Edwardes brought in a new corporate plan to replace the ten year plan drafted a year earlier with the Cars Council. It heralded a drastic contraction of BL.
In September 1979, Edwardes announced the crunch decision. His so-called 'survival plan' meant the closure, or part-closure, of 13 plants, and the axing of 25,000 jobs.
The CSEU promptly set up an 'emergency committee' to oppose the plan. It set out to develop an 'alternative strategy' for BL, and importantly called for resistance to the plan through the blacking of work moved from one plant to another.
The CSEU backed the policy, and called BL workers to a demonstration through London against the plan.
When it marched past Leyland House, an Edwardes aide handed out a statement expressing surprise at the demonstration since the survival plan had already been accepted by the CSEU.
It turned out to be true! The CSEU Executive had already met Edwardes and reversed their opposition.
Edwardes, as usual, seized the advantage. The plan was put to a postal ballot. 100,000 workers were urged in a joint BL/CSEU statement to vote 25,000 out of their jobs. This and the emphasis on 'survival' produced a 7-to-1 majority in favour.
The CP and therefore the combine committee actually opposed the closure, at least in words. Despite opposing an occupation motion at the combine, Robinson co-authored a pamphlet calling for occupation. Edwardes replied with the sack in what was the most significant victimisation and defeat for the shop stewards' movement in the car industry since Ford in 1962.
Deadline
It put Edwardes in a powerful position over the crucial November 1979 wage review — the deadline for the implementation of parity and the five-grade system, and the first review to be conducted under corporate bargaining.
He produced another bombshell. A general increase of 5% was conditional on acceptance of a 92 page document abolishing all previous conditions and agreements — including the 'Security of Earnings' agreement forced in two years earlier.
It involved full mobility and flexibility of labour, and abolished the 80% lay-off pay — originally a prime selling point for the MDW system. Instead of the 'staff status' dreamed of by the collaborators, Edwardes proposed a return to casual labour.
[Photograph. Caption: Longbridge mass meeting]
BL and the 1980 steel strike
Negotiations on the package dragged on into the new year, and into the steel strike which began on January 4. In February, the JNC, with BL cooperation, conducted yet another postal ballot of the workforce, recommending rejection of the offer and calling for authority to call a strike. The vote was two-to-one for strike action.
Surprised by the vote, the JNC refused to implement it. The Leyland Action Committee organised a joint Leyland workers/steelworkers' lobby of the convenors, calling for the implementation of the decision to strike alongside the steelworkers. Still they refused.
At the end of March, Edwardes seized the initiative once again. He wrote to the Leyland Cars labour force. The package would be implemented from April 8th. Anyone clocking in on that day would be accepting the package. Anyone not clocking in would be sacked.
The major Midlands plants struck. Although the AUEW were party to the postal ballot which called for strike action, Duffy and Cure promptly conducted a 'sounding' exercise among AUEW members and declared that their members were in reality against striking.
AUEW members were ordered to accept the 5%/92-page package.
The TGWU, however, were no better in practice. Moss Evans intervened, made the strike official, and then, in an astounding about-face, signed an embarrassingly naive document on April 17.
This called for the disbanding and reconstitution of the JNC — not a bad idea in itself. But far more important — and contrary to statements made since — it agreed in writing to accept the 92-page document.
Understanding
The 'Agreement of Understanding' over Evans' signature actually claims as a 'major concession' from Lowry his commitment to give ten days' notice before changes arising from the 92-page document were implemented. On that basis Evans ordered the TGWU members back to work!
Any longstanding agreement or working practiced could now be terminated by BL after ten days' notice. To the embarrassment even of the right wing, Evans claimed this as a 'victory'.
But there was worse. Trapped by BL's viability argument and Evans' lack of any political answer, he commissioned a Paris-based firm of industrial consultants, Euro-finance, to produce a report on future policy for BL.
No-strike clause
From that the TGWU produced its own document, ironically with the same title as Ryder: 'BL, the next decade'.
Incredibly, it offered the TGWU's own no-strike clause: "continuity of physical production" in return for more investment and a 'partnership' with a Japanese corporation.
The fight against the 5 grade system: 1980
Evans' sell-out on the 92 page document did not resolve all Edwardes' problems. The 5-grade structure and the grading remained contentious, despite the parity payments.
From April 8, 1980, everyone was slotted into their new grades, mostly to their disadvantage. The result was an immediate series of sectional strikes which threatened to paralyse BL for an extended period.
The General Secretaries and National Officers were soon back for an exercise which, in terms of sheer abrogation of trade union democracy, outclassed even their previous treachery.
Meeting on May 8, they agreed an 'appeals procedure' which effectively smashed opposition to the grading. It provided a three stage binding procedure which ended with the so-called 'three wise men' set-up: one BL management, one TUC, and an 'independent' chairman. Their decision was final and binding, with no right to strike once the procedure was exhausted.
And worse was to come. The General Secretaries then imposed the appeals procedure on BL workers without the slightest consultation. The individual plants were notified of it by management.
They then ordered all grading strikes to cease, and all disputed grades into the appeals machinery. Thousands of claims were placed on appeals committees at various levels. Virtually none were settled, and eventually the committees disbanded and the heat inevitably went out of the issue.
In the Cowley Assembly Plant, of 90 claims submitted none were conceded, and the committee was disbanded arbitrarily by the company.
The next massive sellout was at the second corporate wage review in November 1980, when 6.8 per cent was offered. This time pressure from Cowley replaced the secret ballot principle with votes at a simultaneous series of mass meetings, producing a big majority for strike action. The result: panic in the JNC.
They reopened negotiations on paltry bonus guarantees, and then reversed their recommendation, appealed for acceptance, and recalled the mass meetings.
Everything hung on a controversial decision by Jack Adams to declare the Longbridge vote cast for acceptance in the face of claims by the militants that it had gone strongly against.
Bitter resentment and frustration at the JNC's capitulation produced a mass demonstration against management inside Longbridge which was labelled a 'riot' by the media. A month later, four stewards and five members were victimised and sacked as 'leaders of an unruly mob'.
Strikes in their defence were ended with the institution of a joint inquiry which ended with the unions actually agreeing to the sacking of the four stewards and two members in the form of joint findings.
Lowry's move to ACAS, to give the employers in general the benefit of his BL experience, saw an escalation of management's offensive. In March 1981, Edwardes began pushing for a new disputes procedure and disciplinary procedure.
A document was produced which, it emerged, had already been the subject of secret meetings with national officials and senior management.
It was another major move by BL, giving management the right of summary dismissal in the event of what the company considered 'gross industrial misconduct'.
It ends all previously established full-time convenor and deputy convenor positions, and makes the grievance procedure a part of the individual contract of employment — a disguised no-strike clause. It calls for a new JNC, appointed by the union executives and consisting almost entirely of full-time officials.
The November 1981 review
Last November's wage review will be well remembered as a major political test case for Thatcher's four per cent policy. Edwardes offered 3.8 per cent and for the first time the JNC called for strike action from November 1st.
Mass meetings gave the call a massive ten-to-one backing, despite a threat from Edwardes to close down the whole corporation and sack the entire labour force if the strike went ahead.
Each union made it official in advance, but Machiavelli would have been proud of the manoeuvres which began once Duffy and Kitson (acting in Evans' absence) realised that they were heading for an all-out confrontation which could bring down the government.
Everyone from Michael Foot to Len Murray, plus the general secretaries of all the unions in BL, combined on the eve of the strike to sell it out.
They actually recommended a deal which was worse than the original offer — since the 3.8% remained unchanged — but it included a commitment to negotiations on the March draft of Edwardes' new procedure document, dragged in for the first time.
Implications
The sell-out had far-reaching implications for BL's negotiating machinery. Even the grossly undemocratic JNC, resurrected for the review, and still not reconstituted despite Evans' 1980 agreement, was cynically overridden by the General Secretaries, who effectively became the negotiating committee. This was something Edwardes had always wanted.
They even allowed the 39 hour week negotiated in 1979 to become enmeshed in the review, provoking an all-out strike of assembly workers in Longbridge when management cut the relief allowance to fund it.
This time the month-long strike was sold out not just by the officials, but directly by the Longbridge Works Committee, who strongly recommended and fought for a return to work on terms worse than the proposals that the workers originally struck against.
Not only was relief time cut, but the tracks were speeded up, and the night shift had their hours increased from 38 to 39.
Although BL are still balking at attempting to force RA cuts into Cowley, two major sell-outs in two months was a tragedy for BL workers. Each came at exactly the point when management were under extreme pressure and Edwardes could have been broken.
He survived at BL workers' expense, by the efforts of the trade union leaders and the Longbridge Works Committee.
Instead of the 'new management approach' promised to Duffy and Kitson as part of the wage review sell-out, the assault on shop floor workers sharply increased. Victimisations, harassment and pressure became constant factors on the production line.
Edwardes began implementing in advance many of the clauses in the new procedure document.
Edwardes' objectives became more clear. Having used the convenors through 'participation' to end plant-level bargaining, he was now marginalising their role and that of the JNC. Full-time deputy convenor facilities have been withdrawn in most plants, and management have made it clear that this will soon apply to convenors. Moves are already being made to reduce the number of shop stewards in the sections.
It represents in a very real way the drive to completely smash the shop stewards' movement, and in this Edwardes still gets the total support of the top union leaders.
Any doubt about this can be dispelled by the current edition of the AUEW Journal, where John Boyd commits himself totally to Edwardes and his strategy in the following astounding terms:
"A new procedure agreement must be fully exploited now, and a new relationship forged between the shop stewards of the nation's assets [the Board] and the trade union stewards, under the guidance and control of their union executives. If for any ideological reason individual representatives from either do not wish to participate, then they must be cast aside".
Despite such breathtaking treachery, BL workers remain militant and prepared to fight. Where strikes break out, management can be pushed back.
The task is to build a new leadership within the BL unions capable of fighting the betrayals at top level.