Rover: hours betrayal at Longbridge
Labour Briefing1990sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
Car workers at Rover's Longbridge plant have now been ballotted for the second time over the same deal.
Management are trying to push through an hours/productivity package.
The first ballot rejected the package by a majority of 7,000 to 5,000, even after Jack Adams, TGWU chief negotiator, had promoted it as the best hours reduction agreement negotiated anywhere in the world.
The deal involves reductions in hours from 39 to 37, 36 or 31.5 for various parts of the Longbridge complex. In return, management get continuous production 24 hours a day, seven days a week where they want it.
The deal is self-financed by an increase in track speeds to achieve the existing production in the new hours. Where seven day working was to apply there would be no premium payment for work done at the weekend.
To self-finance the deal involves an increase in effort on the tracks to a level in excess of 100% of the British Standards Institute's scale of work effort measurement. Workers on the tracks would be required to do up to 60.9 minutes in the hour.
Nor does it just involve the track workers. Ancillary workers are required to do a 39 hour work in 37 by working on the track where necessary.
The principles of the deal were due to be applied to the Longbridge plant straight away and introduced into Rover's other plants as and when necessary.
Management had approached the unions eight months before the end of the current contract for a reduction in working hours, after they had seen the benefits achieved in other sectors of the engineering industry with such deals.
After the vote for rejection, management made it clear that they would not recognise the vote (since it did not go their way) and would impose the deal.
Empty
It was in some ways an empty threat, since it is easy to "force" people to go home after 37 hours rather than 39 — but not so easy to force them to work 60.9 minutes in the hour.
They need not have worried. The national officials soon sorted it out — there would be another ballot!
This time the workforce would not be required just to vote for or against the deal but for or against an all out indefinite strike to oppose it!
Under these conditions management finally got their vote. The figures were reversed. Seven thousand voted to accept it and 5,000 for an all out strike.
The speed-up, however, may still be difficult to introduce despite the ballot result.
There could well be resistance section by section as inhuman levels of effort are forced onto track workers who have been speeded up repeatedly and are already streched to breaking point.