Car industry: Rover workers reject \"the best deal in the world\
Labour Briefing1990sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Rover workers at Longbridge have decisively rejected management's much vaunted thirty-one and a half hour week deal.
In a ballot, the workforce voted 7,000 against and 5,000 in favour.
This may have surprised those who saw Jack Adams, TGWU national officer and senior negotiator, on the television praising it as a huge victory for the unions.
Adams described the deal as "the best hours agreement negotiated in any car company anywhere in the world."
Readers of the Morning Star must be baffled as well. It used its whole front page to praise the deal to the skies under a glowing headline: "37-Hour Triumph at Rover".
What the Morning Star did not say, however, was that the deal was highly contentious from the outset.
Despite the strongest possible recommendation from the national officials, shop stewards throughout Rover voted almost unanimously against it.
In Cowley the deal failed to get the support of any of the shop stewards, who voted that they would rather stay on 39-hours.
At Longbridge the works committee accepted their views were rejected after a heated session of the joint shop stewards committee.
In fact the only people who were in favour of this world historic breakthrough were people who would never have to work under it.
What the media, including the Morning Star, also forgot to mention was that the deal was not the result of a claim by the unions — it was management who made the running from the start.
Rover workers' annual wage review is not until November. This fact alone should have suggested that management were not about to offer the best thing since sliced bread.
Management want major changes in shift patterns including continuous working — 24-hours-a-day 7-days-a-week — in the engine plant. They also want speed-up on the tracks and they see this type of deal as the way to get it.
The Confed campaign for the shorter working week was not directly involved, since Rover are no longer a member of the Engineering Employers Federation.
They have no doubt seen the advantages other employers have been getting from the strings attached to the various 37-hour agreements.
Since they will eventually be confronted with the problem, they have chosen to get in with a good deal now.
They may also have been encouraged by the gains they made a few years ago in the move from 40-hours to 39.
Then they were able to negotiate the abolition of one-hour 40-minutes of relief times plus speed-up in turn for a reduction of one hour in the working week! The workforce would have been far better off staying on 40-hours.
The Rover deal is aimed at Longbridge which will be its only mass-production plant after most of Cowley closes down next year.
They are introducing two new models — the Rover 200 and the Rover 400 — and want to make the maximum use of the investment and automation involved.
The deal involves workers on continuous working on the engine tracks, working a thirty-one and a half hour week over a five week period; workers on a three shift system on a 36 hour week; and workers on days and nights working 37 hours.
All three involve a worsening of the general conditions of work — working weekends without premium payments and with less than the average pay earned at the present time.
It also involves cuts in relief time — which are a major problem, particularly for line workers — and an increase in work effort to provide the self-financing element of the deal.
Relief time is often called "tea-breaks", which is something of a misnomer since they are the only time a worker is off the track during a shift — maybe ten minutes in a four hour stint with the track running bell to bell at 100% effort.
The problem of strings has dogged the 35/37-hour campaign in engineering from the outset.
It is clear that the attitude of union leaders sitting behind their desks in their offices is that any deal which results in a reduction in hours is a good thing, particularly if you get some publicity from it.
On the shop floor, however, it is a different matter. A reduction in hours is a good thing providing the workforce ends up with improved conditions at the end of the day.
According to the Morning Star (which after a full front page praising the deal had a couple of paragraphs on the back page reporting its rejection), management is now to meet national officials to discuss what went wrong in the ballot and what can be done about it.
Management are said to have considered imposing the deal but have decided against it at the present time.
No doubt they will try their other usual tactic of making minor, irrelevant changes until confusion sets in and a ballot goes the right way.