OFFICIALS RAILROAD BL SELL-OUT
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
BL management's union-busting procedure agreement which accepts the Tebbit Bill, provides for summary dismissal and the rapid introduction of speed-up measures was manipulated through the Joint Negotiating Committee by senior trade union officials last Friday.
A week earlier the document which represents a grave new danger for workers and shop stewards in BL had been referred back to the shop stewards committees in the individual plants by meetings of both the AUEW and TGWU senior stewards.
Although the document had been negotiated under a cloud of secrecy, since a commitment to negotiate on it had been smuggled into the final stages of last November's wage negotiations, National Officers had opposed this reference back.
In the case of the AUEW, the full Executive had already unanimously accepted the document. At the TGWU convenors' meeting, Jack Adams, convenor of Longbridge and chairman of the meeting, assisted Automotive National Officer Grenville Hawley to neuter the motion moved by Bob Fryer from Cowley.
They argued that since the JNC was due to meet on the issue on April 23, the reference back to the stewards could not result in a further convenors' meeting since there would not be time. Instead, stewards' committees should send letters to Hawley giving their views on the document and he would inform the JNC of the decisions.
It was designed to put everything into the hands of Hawley and it did. At the JNC Hawley claimed that the only definitive rejection of the document was from the Cowley Assembly Plant and therefore he regarded himself as having authority to sign it.
He reached this position by counting resolutions which rejected the document on the basis of certain paragraphs or called for substantial amendments as acceptance in principle. As were stewards' committees who failed to reply in writing.
Not a single committee actually accepted the document. Faced with this Bob Fryer called for a private meeting of the ten TGWU delegates. There, he moved a resolution to the effect that the TGWU would not sign the document until a full convenors' conference had been held.
Hawley refused to accept the motion and moved his own motion that he be allowed to sign, sweeping aside criticisms that he was out of order to move a motion as a full time official and chairman of the meeting.
The meeting voted 5-5 on Hawley's motion and he used his casting vote to declare it passed, thus allowing him to sign.
With the AUEW it was much more simple. Ken Cure ruled a convenors' meeting out of order since the Executive had already decided.
Once again BL workers have been the victims of bureaucratic manipulation moves by their leaders over moves designed to put more power in the hands of BL management.
Once more the urgent need for alternative leadership and democratic control by the membership is painfully obvious.