Union officials give green light for new Cowley witch-hunt
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
THE joint management/union inquiry into labour relations in the Cowley Assembly Plant has been concluded. Not that its findings have been released to BL workers — nothing so democratic. It has however fallen into the hands of the Sunday Times who have revealed most of its contents.
Many workers expected the report to be a whitewash, in the event it is very much worse.
Every inquiry ever carried out in Cowley has been turned against the workforce, and, as we predicted, this one is no exception — although it arose out of a strike where the workers were criticising the management.
Some of the points, more minor in the circumstances, have been partially accepted. The report concedes that "cleanliness in the factory is poor"; some managers have been abusive to employees; health and safety problems are not dealt with adequately; there is a "lack of trade union facilities on the plant."
But despite these partial criticisms — very partial in most cases — the inquiry concludes that what management has been doing — ruthlessly pushing up productivity and cutting manning levels — is correct and necessary.
This is what it is all about. It is not possible to double the work effort and destroy existing working conditions and be nice about it.
In fact the report specifically argues that management were not expecting workers to work unreasonably hard or that the changes they were forcing through were wrong. It says only that the pace of the changes was too fast.
The report also makes it clear that the joint inquiry team consider that work effort has to be pushed up much further.
It criticises the unions on the plant, saying that while "accepting the need for international competitiveness", they do not have "a general awareness of the degree of change or levels of productivity that would be required to bring this about."
In other words they don't accept the company's objective of achieving Japanese productivity standards.
Yet this report is not a management report, it is a joint effort. It is comprised of two managers and two trade union officials.
It is a testament to the collaboration of the unions with BL management that these officials can go along with such a report; but it does not end there.
The inquiry criticises the workforce for staging too many strikes under conditions where the unions have just been supporting a strike which they (correctly) said was against BL's "industrial dictatorship".
The most important part of the report, however, is the witch hunt it opens up against the shop stewards movement.
It is here that the inquiry is turned into an attack on the shop floor movement, exactly as the inquiry report into my victimisation was used in 1974 and the inquiry report into the victimisation of four shop stewards in 1976/7.
The report asserts — without a shred of evidence — that "The political views of some of the shop stewards work against constitutional trade unionism on the plant."
Such a statement is very sinister indeed. That it can be jointly agreed with trade union representatives in an "inquiry" arising out of a strike about management attitudes is astounding.
It is not surprising therefore that the report concludes that there should be a "fundamental reorganisation" of the trade union organisation on the plant.
Every previous "reorganisation" of the shop floor movement in the Assembly Plant has weakened the workforce against the management.
Such a 'reorganisation' could only mean three things: a further reduction of the number of shop stewards; more involvement in the plant of the full time officials and more witch-hunts against the militants.
Mass meetings in the Assembly Plant three weeks ago rejected management's "final terms" and voted to defend the 6 and 9 minutes washing up time when management move to take it away.
Similar decisive action should be taken against this report.
[Panel]
ONE of the two managers on the 'inquiry' team has just been rewarded for his impartiality by promotion to the post of director covering the whole Oxford area — responsible directly to the BL board.
The two union officials concerned at TGWU regional official Bill Lapworth — who has refused to allow Cowley members to see the report, saying it goes directly to Moss Evans — and AUEW Birmingham divisional organiser Doug Fairburn, who presided over the victimisation of eight Longbridge workers in December 1980.
TGWU and AUEW members should move resolutions condemning the involvement of these officials in a witch-hunting report which further endangers trade union organisation.
[Panel]
THE meeting between AUEW Executive member Ken Cure and Cowley Assembly Plant AUEW stewards proved to be somewhat of a damp squib. In place of the expected strongarm efforts to force the stewards into a surrender on the washing-up time issue, Cure merely asked them their position, and heard that the stewards — like all bar six workers at mass meetings of the Assembly Plant workforce — were committed to defence of the 6 and 9 minutes.