Putting the screws: Tebbit and the bosses' offensive
Socialist Organiser1980sTranscribed by hand from the printed page.
A look at the combination of government measures and management attacks confronting the working class.
DURING HER election campaign in April 1979, Margaret Thatcher ranted on about her determination to put an end to "wreckers who go on strike, indulge in secondary picketing, or have demarcation disputes". Lord Denning backed her up with statements about trade unions being "the greatest threat to the rule of law".
A Parliamentary majority of 43 seats gave Thatcher the ability to establish the most single-minded and determined anti working class government this century. She was soon identifying "wage levels, manning levels, and non-viable factories" as the most important problem to be tackled.
In contrast, Callaghan's strategy for capitalism's survival had been largely based on class collaboration.
He sought to attack the working class through first drawing the bureaucrats into 'participation' and the Social Contract.
Thatcherism short-circuited such niceties. Under her the Tory government set course for confrontation with the unions, seeing the use of mass unemployment as key to breaking the resistance of the working class and fundamentally changing their working conditions.
Branded
Thatcher's actions over her first two years are branded into the consciousness of the working class. Within weeks of the election, she began to make even the actions of her Tory predecessor, Edward Heath (architect of the Industrial Relations Act and the jailer of the Pentonville Five and the Shrewsbury six) look moderate.
Among her first actions was to raise the pay of the police and the army.
Thatcher was strategically prepared. Her approach to the 1979-80 pay round was to offer 5 per cent to BL workers and 2 per cent to steel.
It was a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation, and resulted in the 13 week steel strike, which was in effect a direct clash between the Tory government and its economic policy and the working class.
The strike was sold out by Bill Sirs and the leadership of the ISTC, who fought to confine the strike to the issue of wages. They were aided by the trade union leaders and the TUC who fought to ensure its isolation and to prevent a generalised political confrontation with the Tories.
By May 1980 the first year of monetarism had produced not only rising unemployment, factory closures, and 20 per cent inflation, but, on top of this, a harsh budget by Geoffrey Howe designed to directly hit working class families.
In November 1980 Thatcher imposed a six per cent limit on wage increases. This move was met by total paralysis at the TUC and among the main trade union leaders.
When BL workers opposed the six per cent and voted for an all-out strike, they were quickly urged to 'think again'. A second vote was then taken on the same offer, with a recommendation to accept.
The TUC entered into talks with the Tories, claiming that the trade union movement "had to live with the government".
1981 saw 'official' unemployment figures (i.e. heavily doctored figures) rise to almost three million. It saw further massive cuts in the public services, and riots in the inner cities.
The major Left-dominated Labour councils capitulated in front of Heseltine, and the trade union leaders actually increased their determination to avoid any confrontation which could bring down the government.
In November their blatant sell-out of the powerful BL strike became a watershed in the life of the Tory government, and significantly shifted the political situation against the working class and to the advantage of Thatcher.
In fact, throughout 1981 the Tories had stepped up their attack on the working class. But the routing of the 'wets' in the autumn reshuffle marked a new stage. It created a cabinet completely controlled by hard-line monetarists.
Tebbit
Most importantly, Norman Tebbit was installed as Employment Secretary and a four per cent wage norm was announced.
The significance of this turn was not just at government level. It represented a hard-line turn by the ruling class as a whole, with the strong support of the big employers.
The turn was made in spite of splits and divisions in the Tory party and panic among those sections of the employers likely to go under to monetarism.
Yet regardless of these divisions, added to by by-election defeats, Thatcher set her face firmly towards the clear class objectives which had characterised her administration from its inception — to substantially increase the rate of profit extracted from the working class in Britain.
That is what made the BL strike so central. In defeating BL workers through the treachery of their leaders, Thatcher sought not only to impose her four per cent policy on the working class, but to gain the authority to press home her attack on all fronts with a new urgency.
After the BL sell-out there was a collapse among the trade union leaders on the pay round. NUPE and the G&M claimed 7 per cent as a 'victory' for local authority manual workers.
By the end of the year, it was clear that Thatcher was very close to holding wages to her original target — probably a bit above four per cent.
From the point of view of the ruling class, her tactics have been good. Instead of fixing a legal limit which would have obliged the government to hold the line in every sector, she chose to set a 'norm'. This gave her the flexibility to duck confrontations which the Tories want to avoid, while picking particular battles which they then must win.
It is certainly true that the wage round is not yet over. Pressure has built up since the December mini budget which took £5 out of the pockets of the average working class family.
Nor is the willingness of the working class to fight in question, given leadership. That is demonstrated by the Ford vote, the Scargill victory in the NUM, and the likely vote for strike action by the miners in the absence of an improved offer from the NCB.
The problem remains one of leadership. The efforts by union leaders to ensure a sell-out of the Ford workers, which are painfully evident as we go to press, show that the trade union leaders are just as determined to knife that strike as they were at BL.
Despite the nationalistic arguments the leaders used to back off from a fight against Edwardes, they are no more willing to fight an American multi-national if it is likely to start a confrontation with the Tories.
A successful Ford sell-out would give Thatcher increased authority, not just completing her success on wages but enabling her to press home the next stage of her attack, the anti union laws.
Tebbit's Bill, which is to be presented to the next session of Parliament, has implications which go far beyond its legislative aims. It is far more dangerous than Barbara Castle's In Place of Strife, Edward Heath's Industrial Relations Act, or Prior's Employment Act.
The removal of immunity at law for engaging in strike action which is 'mainly political' would take the trade union movement back to before the infamous Taff Vale judgment in 1901. There the Taff Vale Railway Company was awarded £23,000 damages against the union for losses resulting from the strike.
Under Tebbit, fines are linked to membership figures, and this allows penalties of between £¼ million and £12½ million. Sums of this order would quickly render even the biggest unions bankrupt.
By penalising the unions' central funds, it gets over the problem of enforcing the six picket limit, a problem which has become obvious with militant mass pickets like the BL strike.
Nor would it be difficult for the courts to 'prove' that a strike was 'mainly political', particularly if the government was the employer concerned. In a recent TV debate with Tebbit, David Basnett asked him if he would regard the recent threatened strike against the privatisation of gas showrooms as political? Tebbit didn't hesitate. "Of course it would be", he said.
Victimised
In addition, immunity is removed if a strike is over a 'personal' matter. Again, it is for the courts to interpret the meaning, and there is little doubt that this would affect strikes in defence of victimised workers and shop stewards.
On top of this is the attack on the closed shop. This requires ballots to establish or maintain a closed shop, and provides for massive compensation for anyone sacked for refusing to join a union.
The Bill amounts to direct support for the employers in victimising militants and smashing the unions. They cut very deep into the trade union movement at shop floor level.
Already managements feel the strength of a hard-line government behind them, and are acting accordingly. The logic of monetarism is forcing the weakest of them to the wall, and forcing them to attack the workforce.
At the same time an army of unemployed outside the gates are used directly as the stick to beat those still at work.
On top of this, the employers' offensive has become increasingly organised and directed. Pat Lowry utilises his 12 years as Personnel Director of BL in his new capacity as ACAS chief to tour the country giving tactical advice to the employers.
He recently, for example, told a meeting of engineering employers to use the recession to negotiate the kind of agreements and conditions which will be to their advantage when trade picks up.
In many industries this kind of policies is resulting in the most ferocious attack on shop floor workers. Not just through the creation of mass unemployment, but directly on working conditions, work effort, agreements, and trade union organisation.
Michael Edwardes, the man who apparently pushed Lowry out of BL because he was not tough enough, is undoubtedly the most advanced representative of Thatcherism at management level in British industry.
Initiatives
BL production lines are like battlegrounds. Everyday (literally every day!) there are new initiatives from management — every one attacking established working conditions and practices.
Seniority agreements which control mobility and prevent supervisors using the hardest job as a form of discipline against militants or those they don't like are under constant attack. The agreements are disregarded. If there is resistance sometimes management will back off, but only to attack again the next day from a slightly different angle.
Demarcation agreements which define which jobs will be carried out by a given grade or category of workers are constantly attacked in the same way, by a management who intend to settle for nothing short of full flexibility.
Production workers are pressed to do their own sweeping. Rectification workers are pressed to do their own inspection. Inspectors are pressed to do their own driving. Welders are pressed to do their own gun fitting. The list is endless.
Undoubtedly the most relentless drive is on work effort, or more precisely speed-up. Work assignment sheets are constantly tightened up by industrial engineers (IEs). The "Longbridge agreement" resulting from the recent sell out of the relaxation allowance strike gives management the right to time and allocate work at 101 BSI rating (as against the present 100). This demands more than 60 minutes work in the hour!
On top of this the sell out deal from the November wage review strike gives management the right to restudy each plant to get an even higher standard, which the deal terms 'audited status' (which means you work a lot harder).
This gives management the right to bring in new teams of super IEs to do the job. Already this has begun at Jaguar Browns Lane.
It is now management practice to disregard what they term the "niceties" of sticking to agreements. This is a sharp change from BL's previous attitude, which was to pretend that they respected agreements in order to work with officials and hold workers to agreements that were to management's benefit.
Now anything goes. Sick relief agreements are cut. Slip relief agreements are cut. Processes are rationalised and jobs are contracted out at even cheaper rates.
Top managers patrol the tracks intimidating stewards and pressing workers to do more work. The pressure comes from the top and managers and supervisors who are not prepared to be ruthless are sacked on the spot.
Having established a corporate bargaining structure, BL are out to destroy the shop stewards movement in the individual plants. Full-time facilities for senior shop stewards which have been the basis of organisation in the car plants are being systematically ended by management.
Senior shop stewards are being sent back onto their jobs i.e. "released as and when required". The reality of this is management control. They will release a steward when it suits them and block it when it doesn't.
BL intend to destroy any effective shop stewards movement whatsoever. Every cut in manning levels and relief personnel makes it more difficult for stewards to get released for trade union work. In some plants, management have gone into procedure for a direct reduction in the number of stewards.
Constant threat
Victimisation of shop stewards is now the order of the day. Derek Robinson and the Longbridge 8 were only the forerunners of today's conditions where stewards are under constant threat.
Alan Thornett, an elected deputy convenor at the Cowley Assembly Plant, who has remained unrecognised by BL for the past 8 years, was again refused recognition at a National Conference last month.
Amongst the reason given for maintaining this position was Thornett's attendance at a picket line outside a non-BL plant during the works holidays.
[Photograph of a demonstration; a placard reads "NO TO SELL OUT".]
These hard-line methods of management are being extended throughout manufacturing industry and beyond in what has become known as the "Edwardes syndrome".
The strings on the current Ford offer come straight from BL. They want complete mobility of labour, the ending of all local agreements and flexibility such as production workers doing their own sweeping. The productivity proposals are to be monitored by a BL-style joint committee. Even the sell-out seems to be going along BL lines with acceptance of the deal being recommended by a BL-style body dominated by national officers and full-time officials.
Guinea pigs
Yet how can such a state of affairs prevail when the working class is so strong? How can the workers be used as guinea pigs when their strength was shown so clearly in the mass pickets and the militancy of the 3-day strike?
To ask the question is to answer it. As the economic crisis of capitalism deepens the trade union leaders who reject a perspective of fighting to end capitalism and establish a socialist society become ever more craven in their capitulation to it.
In case anyone thinks that is jargon, they should look very closely at the editorial of the December issue of the AUEW Journal. And when they read it they should remember that Johnny Boyd is not a freak. Not only is he General Secretary of the second largest union in Britain, but when it comes to a sell-out of a major dispute there is not much to choose between him and the rest.
He makes the following points:
"I trust our 1¼ million members will bear with me when I utilise this last 1981 editorial to comment on the recent BL crisis, in which I played a not unimportant role in preventing it being a national catastrophe."
He goes on to openly praise Edwardes:
"This company was bankrupt, finished, until Michael Edwardes, having been appointed by Tony Benn to the NEB, was thereafter transferred by Eric Varley to BL to try to save it.
"It thus became a nationalised industry, with a board appointed on behalf of the Nation to be stewards of our first publicly owned group of car plants".
He goes on:
"I strongly urged Sir Michael Edwardes to be more repentant and pragmatically gracious regarding the offensive letter his Board issued over his signature, but he wasn't; nevertheless, having regard to all the circumstances and the resoluteness of the Government not to interfere by feeding in more money for wages — their intention being to let the Company be dismantled if need be — I decided on balance to recommend the workers to accept, which I did — clearly and unequivocally.
"Whatever happens in BL [Cars] makes national and international news. Many powerful people and institutions, both here and abroad, would like to see it fail.
"Sir Michael Edwardes and his board don't. The organised British Working Classes can't afford to let BL [Cars] fail.
"Thus the new opportunities which the agreement gives to have Shop Stewards fully participate in strategic planning, together with a new procedure agreement, must be fully exploited now, and a new relationship forged between the stewards of the Nation's assets [the Board] and the Trade Union Stewards, under the guidance and control of their union executives.
"If for any ideological reason, individual representatives from either do not wish to participate, then they must be cast aside. This great experiment in this important section of industry cannot be allowed to be retarded by anyone, whatever their position."
Does any more need to be said? It is a complete capitulation to everything from the viability of BL to the victimisation of his own shop stewards. Boyd is fully behind Edwardes who is leading the assault on the trade union movement in Britain.
It is no wonder that the TUC is doing nothing to stop Tebbit. They have not called a conference until March and appear to favour a policy of supporting any union which becomes a victim of Tebbit after his bill becomes law.
The case for the development of revolutionary leaders in the trade unions — who will stand by the interests of the trade union members they represent — could not be made more strongly.
It is not an easy task but it must be tackled now and urgently. It involves developing an alternative leadership, not just of principled people, but people who know where they are going and have a programme adequate to meet the needs of the working class under such conditions.
Conferences
It also involves a fight for democracy in the unions. Proper elections on a principled basis. The right of rank and file militants to be heard on the committees which at present are dominated by the right wing, the lame lefts and those who refuse to confront either capitalism or the Tory government.
Important steps in the fight for such a leadership will be taken at both the conference of BL workers called by the Leyland Action Committee in Digbeth on January 23rd and the conference on Trade Union Democracy called by Socialist Organiser and London Labour Briefing.