[campaigning paper which can. organise workers in the…]

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campaigning paper which can. organise workers in the struggle for new leadership.

To do so we need consistent support and money. Socialist Organiser Alliance groups Why not join with us? Supporters are asked to undertake to sell a minimum of 6 papers per week and contribute at least £1.50 not wasted the opportunity to utilise the cash crisis as a lever to prise Ray Buckton out of his Hampstead office and into the infamous ACAS sell-out chamber.

They must be well aware that the mere threat of impending bankruptcies and closures has consistently succeeded in reducing even arrogant 'left' talking loud-mouths in the union bureaucracy into quivering heaps of jelly -and in drawing the most obedient responses from right wing collaborators such as Boyd and Weighell.

So far ASLEF's leadership has held firm in the face of threats. But Buckton is hovering with no visible means of support.

Refusing to call for an all-out strike, he is unable at present to force a sellout upon his mobilised members. help us to build one?

But neither can he offer his members - or the NUR rank and file, labouring under the misleadership Name of Weighell - a coherent Address answer to the BR/Tory offensive.

In fact the war on jobs BR and the decimation have been established in most big towns.

per month (20p for unwaged).

If there is no group in your To 'Get Organised' , Write at 28 Middie Lane, London N8.

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THE SUCCESS of BL management strategy is increasingly used to spearhead the employers' offensive in other sections of industry. The fundamental reorganisation of the payment system, and the offensive against the shop stewards' movement, is the envy of other major employers in the engineerHere" BILL PETERS gives an outline sketch of how this large section of the industrial working class, originally numbering 200,000 workers in 55 plants, have been consciously and repeatedly betrayed by trade union leaders who acted as, and at one stage actually were, effectively part ThE now. The millionth Mini ing industry.

of corporate management.

THE POST-WAR development of the shop stewards' movement was largely spearheaded by the car industry, where militancy and the piecework system produced relatively high wages, giving the shop stewards their power base.

The decline of the postwar boom in the second half of the 1960s sharpened competition among the car barons, and focused the attention of the Labour Government towards curbing car workers as front runners in the wages field and controlling the shop stewards' movement.

Piecework and payment by results (PBR) systems were singled out as a primary target for change well betore BL was tormed in 1968 with Pat Lowry as Director of Employee Relations. Lowry, however, elaborated a detailed strategy on these lines for BL.

1971: Imposition of Measured Day Work PBR was to be replaced (MDW) - flat rate payments and work effort controlled by time and motion study, as at Ford.

Then BL would move towards a completely centralised USA-type bargaining system, which would remove the shop stewards from the process and give power to the full-time officials.

Lowry moved in 1971 to force MDW into the major plants of the Cars Division. This met protracted strike action in the Cowley Assembly Plant and Jags, which was sold out by the officials, with the acquiescence of the Communist Party. A year later MDW was established in the maiority of plants. Longbridge convenor and CP n support for participation'-anc plan in February 1978 BL admitted publicly three years later that they had offered low work effort as a tactic to get the MDW principle established. But, as militants had warned at the outset, the drive was soon on to re-establish piecework effort for flatrate wages.

Alan Thornett was victimised and removed from plant leadership in 1974, during strikes in opposition to the use of stopwatches on the tracks in Cowley. This was used by Jack Jones and Region 5 of the TGWU to establish the right wing in control in Cowley, and speed-up on the tracks quickly followed.

In December 1974 Tony Benn, as Harold Wilson's Industry_Secretary, commissioned a team of four, headed by Lord Ryder from the NEB and including TGWU deputy general secretary Harry Urwin, to inquire and prepare report on BL for submission to Parliament.

The Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU) promptly appointed 'team' of convenors to discuss with the Ryder committee. Ryder records that he found a ready response to his ideas from the team' , which included Derek Robinson and several leading members of the CP — a response which was to become quite fundamental to the future course of events in BL.

1975: the Ryder report The Report was finalised and presented to Parliament by Benn in April 1975. Un the basis of market forecast figures it called for BL to be maintained as a producer of cars, trucks and buses - on the basis of Government shared.000,000 Kobots in Longurage: Only holding and capital loans, since its profit base was 'wholly inadequate' The money, however, would be paid in sixmonthly tranches which could be used to blackmail BL workers. The report laid down:

"That the process of the capital expenditure programme and the injection of new finance by the Government should be staged and that each stage should depend on evidence of a tangible contribution by BL's workforce and management to the reduction of industrial disputes and improvements of productivity"

It connected with Lowry's strategy by calling for reform of the wage structure through a common review date, a reduction in the number of bargaining units. and a bonus scheme.

It called for more industria! democrac:' through an extensive austem of Wurke? participation committees - something which came directiy out of Benni s original terms of reference.

1975-77: the Ryder and 'pa irticipation' The report receiver massive backing from al é side of Edwardes' "Japanese the unions in BL and from the CSEU Executive. That support, with all its implications, remains unshaken to this day, and has been a crucial factor in all subsequent events.

'Participation' under Communist Party control, eventually cut very deep into the shopfloor movement in BL Cars. Thousands of shop stewards, and the vast majority of BL Cars' 500-plus convenors and senior stewards, were eventually sucked into it and had their teeth drawn.

The Combine Committee was cast aside. Though officially they were nonnegotiating bodies, the 'participation' committees rapidly took over the role of the trade union structures.

On top of this, with BL run by the government through the NEB, Scanion and Urwin effectively became very senior members uf management.

Br the end of last year the effects added up to: the loss of 20.000 BL jubs (far more ihan the entire Ford labour forcel: wage rates falling to the lowest car wages in Europe: and the systematic smashing of conditions and agreements established over many years.

In addition. BL's achievement in rationalising the pay structure in BL moael Cars, gaining control of many thousands of different rates and payments in 34 diverse plants scattered across the country, is viewed with envy by employers in other sectors of industry.

For this reason it is well worth looking a bit closer at how this was achieved, and how participation was and push it ture opposition The document detailing the structure of the participation committees was signed in October 1975 by a body known as the 'Joint Trade Union 32 Man Committee' , and sets out the terms of reference of the scheme:

• To examine® future plans to make BL Cars a more competitive designer, producer and seller of cars; to seek as far as possible to reach agreement on those plans, whilst recognising that executive responsibility rests with management' As a result of this an ad hoe committee was set up in March 1976 to administer the introduction of the Ryder scheme into all the plants. The scheme was pushed into most plants by the autumn of 1976, but the committee was already involved in other things.

By January 1977 they had negotiated the so-called 'Security of Earnings Document' , which in return for a marginal increase in lay off pay and a corporate sick scheme contained dangerous no-strike clauses.

Despite their recommendation, the document was decisively rejected at a series of mass meetings.

The toolroom strike in early 191l, which was whipped up into a national emergency, gave BL the chance to force the pace on wage reform, particularly since Scanlon excelled in his role as NEB boss by publicly endorsing BL's decision to sack all 6,000 on strike.

Despite their hard line, however, BL basically agreed with the toolmakers that skilled sections should be at the top of the pay • scale. Therefore, along with the threat went a joint commitment with the unions to take a new initiative to examine differentials and change the wage structure in BL Cars.

This took the form of a Joint Working Party (JWP), set up by the CSEU Executive (none of whom work in BL) in March 1977 to examine 'differentials' It quickly became a new lever for forcing the pace for Lowry's strategy of corporate bargaining.

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