Evans gets Star' billing 4: By Pat Kane Barry Busst is a spot welder in the Jaguar Common Lane plant. in Coventry. He was just one of the 18,000 car workers who were out on strike last week throughout the West Midlands. The strike was in protest at management's attempts to impose a five per cent pay deal and new productivity levels of the workforce.
Like many of the young militants on ine picket fines • he remember a strike that had involved so milany workers, skilled workers who know they face the dole queue if they cannot defend shop floor organisation plalits 'We don't need the 92 page document to produce Sherpa vans. productivity is high, and we make a profit. We take in raw materials at one end, and finished vans go out the other. All the people here know that the Edwardes plan is an attack on our rights. They don't need to introduce it here. That's why we came out right at On m RATING THE DALY WORKER EVANS STANDS FIRM. This was the extraordinary judgement of the Morning Star in the aftermath of the transport leader's sell-out of the BL strikes last week.
The paper was commenting on Evan's gyrations after it became clear that BL workers had gained nothing from the negotiations between union chiefs and Leyland bosses last Thursday.
Yet George Guy, workers' leader and prominent Communist Party militant, the Morning Star of Friday 18 April claiming a 'trade union victory'. Socialist Challenge the beginning,' he says.
profit out of the industry.
Metro
Longbridge 'Metro' LICW could not particularly un- of in these worker.
Out take over their doesn't workforce.
Thursday night he slipped nent article by the editor, time prompted him union on Thursday night.
However for Star readers. reverse of the strike had failed sheetmetal curately was quoted in 24 April 1980 But despite high levels of productivity in many of these plants Michael Edwardes wants to sqeeze still more pianis. shows BL management intends to go. Here the model is about to be built on two of the most automated despite production lines in the world. While Longbridge workers produce around 16 cars a year (about twice the average Dufly, European workers) when Metro production gets into full swing and lines. the robots start to take over productivity is expected to rise to 23 cars per However shon stewards are unlikely to take kindly to workers being placed on the dole queue while robots jobs. Edwardes shop floor organisation to create difficulties for union his plans to chop the British Leyland The militants in British Leyland By THE EDITOR The next day's issue of the Star maintained this position in a promibut by this responses by strikers LO dell. there are problems with the agreement reached "The George Guy was OlE hand again to continue the cover up The deal was the company claimed by the press he explained, because the threat to sack all those on But as the 'Fleet Street' press acunlike their harringdon Road colleagues, the company threat had "failed' because it had been Dully withdrawn. It had been withdrawn are aware of what's at stake. When we interviewed Barry he wasn't at the Coventry platil lic wai 'secondary picketing' in Birmingham Drews Lane plant. This is where most of the axles and transmissions systems are made for the rest of Leyland The workers here skilled, members of the AUEW, who hope that they will remain working the Introduction technology because their skills will be more in demand. Urged on by Terry the president of the engineering union, they were crossing picket Transport drivers were not moving lorries however and the transport union pickets were clearly determined to close this plant down completely. The recent steel strike had not passed without car workers seeing the benefits of flying pickets. Normally in the car factories the members of the stay at home and let the stewards conduct the strike.
This time it different. In Rover Solihull, the senior stewards because the union leaders had conceded to the most essential aspects of the company case.
The reason for the 'trade union victory' according to George Guy was the 'united front' presented by the trade unions to the company threats.
Leyland management
changed to a conciliatory attitude and sought ways of ending the conflict.
This glowing version of events was denied by Moss Evans himself in his message to the striking workers, who accurately claimed that the Transport and General Workers Union had been left alone on the main issues, a polite reference to the scabbing role of Terry leadership. were forced to set up a strike committee across the whole site. Hundreds of workers werer turning up for picket the duty. The strike was spreading into an all-out confrontation.
The transport union leaders did not want ine strike movement to go out of their control. They decided to mainly back . dówn. As Larry ecutive officer of the TGWU put it: 'Had we not arranged this meeting with management today i am sure we would have been besieged by people the Moss (Evans) to call an all-out strike'.
Strike It was rushing back from his trip from South Africa Terry Duffy alle Evans.
The Leyland Action Committee, a grouping of shop floor militants based in Rover, Longbridge, Cowley and Jaguar distributed leaflets campaigning for an all-out However, apart from a temporary delay of the unilateral imposition oi the companies 92 page "slave charter' for ten days, the only gain that the CP could point to was the reestablishment of the national machinery in BL 'by August'. then Bogus But the cover up campaign of the Communist Party and the Morning Star which had done the opposite of aim. the fact that the Communist Party did not want the strike movement to succeed at any point, whether before or after the bogus 'victory'.
Proof of this can be found in the Leyland. Pickets Smith, will'.
prese Shop organised Michael Edwardes that defeated this strike but eventually Moss thousands stewards participation applies ment.
made.
Their objective was to cover up working The notning and strike to defend trade unionism in 'Stay at home pickets only help the company' said one of the leatlets. 'We need mass pickets to stop any plant that stays at work, and to stop any scabs creeping in...Those are our jobs: if we don't defend them nobody The Leyland Action Committee does not intend to give up the fight.
floor have to be across union lines if Derek . victimisation is to be avoided. A worker's plan that confronts the problem of new technology needs to be drawn up to give a clear alternative to Edwardes productivity plan. Now is the time for militants in British Leyland to get together to force the union leaders to defend trade union rights.
The Leyland Action Committee invites every British Leyland worker who wants to fight back to get in touch. Phone 021-643-0669.
pledge attitude of the Longbridge plant shop committee led Jack Adams, CP member and successor to the sacked Derek Robinson.
The conditions of work document equally Longbridge workers as to those who were out on strike. It would have been an idea.
launch counteragainst the BL manageNothing was done. No call was The largest factory remained Communist Party forgets learns nothing. The cover-up campaign of the Morning Star is just one more episode in their road to disaster in BL.
By Bernard Connolly, Craft convenor, Rotherham THE fatal mistake the Tories made was in thinking that the leadership of the steel unions reflected the membership. the government's assessment of the leadership was a hundred per cent correct, they got the membership totally wrong.
Their error was in not decimating the shop stewards movement have tried to do in Leyland.
Tunity presentend rant and tile opportunity extend organisation, and with the ending of the strike we will contnue tus organisation.
Central to what is going to happen now is the fight against redundancies. I don't see how the official leadership can lead that fight. As far as they are concerned, the jobs have already been sold.
The official leadership attempted to sell us out from day one. It had to be dragged kicking and screaming every step of the way. This will be the case on jobs.
All unions claim to be opposed to closures and job loss, but they ignore the pleas of the membership to fight.
I don't think it's an accident that South Wales has been picked off. There has been a campaign now for some years to pump into their heads that it's their fault that the steel industry is in crisis. We have to oppose the logic of management and the Tories.
When looking at the Tories' plans for BSC, consider is not the needs of the industry but the needs of the membership. Faced with the threat of job loss, a shorter working week is essential.
This must not be made an excuse for more On the craft side in While first, as they SCHOOS.
improve sent enemi in the strike weakness. area, alternatives to the unofficial organise uning Rotherham, 1,300 members work 10,000 hours of overtime a week. Think how many more people could be employed if we cut that out.
Sometimes overtime would have to be done, in an emergency, but it should be priced so high that management is torced to employ more labour. It should be treble or quadruple time.
Here we are in the 1980s and still workers can't retire before the age of 65. We could have sabbaticals, longer holidays, longer studying at long Is il since 40-hour week?
We are all in favour of new technology to efficiency. But who benefits? think it should be us.
Just before Christmas we negotiated locally a 16 per cent increase through the bonus, maintaining the number of apprentices and with a no redundancy agreement.
Tement mentart of the nana pay He li produce redundancies, but the initial payment covering three months is the last we'll see of it. Nobody will sell anything for that kind of peanuts.
It's important to show a united front to management. They'll pick on us where there's a The steelworkers in South Wales have to be better organised for a fight, bury their petty differences and get it together. It's hoped that the outcome of the strike and the pressure of events will drive them together.
Even when action is official, it's a hard uphill fight. We have to become organised at divisional, and the national level. The national strike committee had to during the strike because the ISTC wouldn't do it officially nor would the other see bois.
There are now many more activists, and in the fight over jobs it will be once again down to we wor lat 12,000
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it's beat! quietly, his
Like posse Climbdown by Leyland on sack threat
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