NO COMPROMISE! NO SELL-OUT!
Socialist Organiser1980sCowley backlash against Thatcherism on shopfloor
Transcribed by hand from the printed page.
EACH MASS meeting of the 5,000 strikers at the BL Cowley Assembly Plant has grown stronger.
At today's meeting only a handful voted to accept BL's terms and return to work. As workers filed into the plant sports ground for the meeting, the mood was obvious. This was a spectacular backlash against repeated management attacks and the treatment workers are receiving on the shop floor.
Placards called for 'all BL' to be called out and for 'no sell-outs'. Others read: 'Duffy and Evans – don't wash your hands of this strike'.
The backlash is not just at Cowley or BL. It represents a mood in the working class as a whole against Thatcherism – which is in essence what BL workers are facing on the shop floor.
The militant demonstration of shipyard workers on Tyneside on Monday shows it clearly.
These conditions, however, do not make top trade union leaders any less determined to get the strikers back to work on any terms. The now-famous meeting between those leaders and BL bosses at a plush hotel near Gatwick on Monday arose from a secret get-together between Terry Duffy and management, held with no local negotiators present.
The problem for Duffy and for Evans (who arrived in the same car as BL chief Harold Musgrove) was that BL management would have no compromise on the six minutes washing up time – or anything else. In fact they simply restated their original position with a different date: 'Audited Plant Status' would be introduced on May 16, and bell-to-bell running would then operate forthwith.
That was a very nice offer. A four week strike to get a three week delay! And (though none of the so-called leaders have managed to grasp this) the workers don't want Audited Plant Status. It means that they have to work harder and lose jobs, with no guarantee of anything in return.
Yet even this they tried to sell to the workforce. AUEW executive councillor Ken Cure and TGWU national automotive secretary Grenville Hawley were dispatched to Cowley to do the job.
Fortunately they failed. The stewards stood firm.
The stewards have seen that the issue of the six minutes is crucial to the strike. Although the strike is really about the general situation, management can only be beaten by workers winning on the specific issue of the six minutes.
The decision that the stewards took at their previous meeting, that the six minutes are 'sacrosanct', is a big problem for Cure and Hawley.
It is also becoming clearer to the workforce how far BL intend to go if they are not stopped. BL boss Geoff Armstrong has said that the efficiency measures already taken in BL are 'only the beginning'. BL wants a workforce 'equal to the best international standards in Japan, the continent and the USA'.
As with Ford's AJ (After Japan) plan, Japan is the real target. In Japanese car plants independent unions were smashed many years ago, and replaced by yellow unions controlled completely by management. BL will need a non-union shop at Cowley if it is seriously to compete with the levels of exploitation achieved by the Japanese capitalists.
Tomorrow, talks with BL management resume, with apparently little chance of a settlement. Management are unlikely to compromise, and their terms are unacceptable. Duffy could simply order the AUEW members back to work, as he did in the 1981 BL strike, but that could fail this time.
Management also have a big problem. The plant has been at a standstill for four weeks, paralysing four crucial models. They were forced to postpone their sacking threat from Tuesday to Thursday, and now Thursday is hardly viable and they may have to shift again.
If the union leaders can't break the strike, management have to try to do it themselves. But it is not easy.
They could carry out the sacking threat, open the gates, call on the police to enforce the Prior and Tebbit laws to let a few scabs in, get something started, and begin recruiting new labour. But politically it would not suit the Tories at the moment to have the pitched battle that would inevitably ensue.
Contingency plans have however been laid (see inset).
Although the strike is very strong, it has obvious leadership problems. TGWU district secretary David Buckle has emerged as the main local spokesman. He is a local magistrate, with a long history of betraying struggles in the plant. Last November he refused to attend a mass meeting in my support after I was sacked by the same BL management he now so roundly denounces.
Rank and file control is crucial to the strike. The people running the strike should be the strike committee which has been elected from the shop stewards.
David Buckle's belated stand is welcome, but workers should not have to rely on an appointed official over whom they have no control. His boss is Moss Evans, not the rank and file workers.
What right does Terry Duffy have to make public statements about buying out the six minutes, without any authority from the strikers – particularly when he calls for a 'small' buy-out payment!
The officials are now talking about a public inquiry into the management's attitudes in BL. Who needs an inquiry into that? They are threatening to sack the entire labour force. What more evidence is needed?
The reality is that BL's position does not start from being humane or inhumane. They start from their need for profitability.
The unions should be demanding, not just an inquiry into their attitudes, but to open the books and investigate their entire business. Management use their sole control of information to back up their productivity drives.
The strike also needs a clear policy in the event of sackings, which will be a major industrial and political issue if BL goes ahead. All BL must be called out in that event.
Moss Evans talked about this before he went to the Gatwick meeting. Local officials have now opposed a call on these lines from the stewards, on the basis that it would be dangerous if it were not successful. But the mood in the other BL plants is strong. Conditions in all the main plants are the same as Cowley. BL workers know that Cowley is fighting a battle with corporate management which is also their battle.
An official call to the other BL plants would get a tremendous response. The combine committee should meet and organise to ensure that in the event of sackings all BL is called out on official strike.
5,000 workers sacked for going on strike would be a national political issue for the whole trade union movement. It would be a fundamental challenge to the right to strike – and should be treated as such.
The campaign must begin now in support of the Cowley workers. Trade union branches and shop stewards' committees should discuss general support, and active support in the event of sackings. Trade union and Labour Party branches and wards should pass solidarity resolutions and raise cash.
The workers at Cowley are prepared to fight. Let's rally the movement behind them.
Rank and file control of the strike! Open the books of BL! Bring out all of BL! Appeal for supporting strikes to the whole trade union movement in the event of sackings!