\"35\" hour week: extend the action!
Labour Briefing1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
The campaign for the 35 hour week has reached a crucial stage.
The campaign, run by the Conferederation of Ship Building and Engineering Unions, should perhaps be retitled the "37 hour week" campaign.
There are small but important cracks in the ranks of the employers.
NEI Parsons, the Rolls Royce subsiduary in Newcastle, has offered a 37 hour week — and talks have now been arranged at their Derby and Glasgow plants.
BAe have talked of a phased introduction of a 37 hour week if the strike action in their plants is called off, although they are saying the deal would have to be "self financing" — in other words stringent productivity strings.
These small splits are important but the employers of the Engineering Employers Federation [EEF] are not about to crumble with such a small percentage of those involved in the claim on strike.
What the cracks do show, however, is what would be possible if a real all-out struggle for the 35 hour week was waged in the engineering industry: a major breakthrough could have been achieved by now.
With only just over 8,000 of the 2,000,000 workers covered by CSEU national negotiations on strike there is a danger that the action could drift into a stalemate.
The 8,000 strikers are employed at just five of the 4,500 establishments represented by the EEF: three BAe plants in Preston Chester and Kingston, a Rolls-Royce plant in Glasgow and a Smiths Industries plant at Cheltenham.
The strikers are receiving strike pay of £125 per week — partly from union funds and partly from collections and levies in the rest of the industry.
The response of the EEF has been to break off negotiations at national level and terminate all future national negotiations in the industry — reverting entirely to local bargaining.
This is a major attack on bargaining rights in an industry which has had national negotiations on hours, holidays and basic rates since the 1920s.
Response
There has been no response from the CSEU on this, although it abolishes at a stroke their main reason for existence. It is part of a trend by the employers as a whole.
In the 1970s they were trying to move away from local bargaining, but now with the unions weakened at local level they are taking this opportunity to get back to local negotiations.
They are trying to go down the same road as British Rail bosses and the local government employers.
The reaction of the CSEU leaders has been to stress that they will continue the campaign for the shorter working week via local negotiations with individual employers.
This strategy could well lead to the stronger plants forcing some concessions with the vast majority left out in the cold.
CSEU leaders are even delaying ballots for the planned second round of strikes — putting these back to well into the new year.
Interviewed in the Morning Star, Alex Ferry praised the response of engineering workers to the campaign, saying it had been the strongest response to any campaign in the industry since the defence of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971.
If that is the case then it is time that strength is allowed to reflect itself in a real extension to the action — not just to win the 35 hour week but to defend national bargaining rights as well.
Ferry draws no such conclusion however. Instead he stresses that there must be a reduction in hours "to at least 37 hours".
Nor is the CSEU opposed to productivity strings which have marred previous reductions in hours in Britain — with some workers doing more after the hours were reduced than they were previously.
The struggle for the 35 week goes beyond the CSEU and the EEF. A reduction in the working week is a part of the wage claims at both Ford and Vauxhall — neither of them members of the EEF.
A 35 hour week is an important element of the Ford wage claim. Ford unions have unanimously rejected the recent offer of 9.5% for this year with inflation plus 2% for next year and no reduction in the working week.
A ballot of the workforce for all-out action is now being arranged and polls conducted amongst the Ford workforce show that a reduction of hours is now a major priority for them.