Cowley workers strike: rank and file defies leadership
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Car production at Cowley was halted for 24 hours on Monday November 16th by a strike of 3,500 workers in the Assembly Plant.
The strike was touched off by a management decision to plunder £80m from the employees' pension fund.
The Cowley workers were alone in taking action against the Austin-Rover management move, which follows similar gambits by Murdoch and Maxwell — all legalised by recent Tory legislation.
Management have already begun a three year "pensions holiday" — a unilateral refusal to pay their contribution to the pension fund. This will save them £80m during the three year period and reduce the pension fund "surplus" by half.
Having allowed management to implement this plan without protest in September, the union eventually held a ballot of the workforce which produced an overall majority for industrial action.
Despite this majority the Austin Rover National Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) decided to accept the management terms and recommend that no action be taken.
They did this on the curious basis that not all unions had their own individual majority for strike action — despite the fact that the unions had balloted collectively on the issue.
The key factor in the JNC decision was the role played by the Communist Party-led delegation from Longbridge. They not only opposed strike action, but stated in advance of the vote that they would not carry out any majority decision which called for strike action. Nonetheless, they were still allowed to take part in the vote!
The decision not to call action was accepted in all plants without further consultation with the workforce, with the exception of the Cowley Assembly Plant, where a mass meeting of 3,500 TGWU members was called.
A recommendation that, under the circumstances, the JNC "no action" decision should be accepted was put to the meeting by the convenors.
The recommendation received only 20 votes. The rest voted against the JNC and in favour of a strike.
Management decided, unusually, to close down the plant and lay off those not involved in the strike.
Management normally see such a stance as a display of weakness and open the gates as a matter of principle. It seems, however, that they were anxious to avoid a picket and prefered the day to pass quietly, hoping that now the protest is over the pension fund issue will be dead and the management move accepted without further action.