The ins and outs of the five strikes that nearly brought British Leyland to a halt last week are as complex as Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction, near which SU Carburettors is located.
It was the month-long strike by 32 toolmakers at this latter plant which had the Government, press, BL management and the Executive of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers falling over themselves to get a return to work. In the end the 32 workers were summoned from their beds early on Saturday morning and virtually marched back by union officials, after a 4-hour secret meeting with management and union officials the previous evening had failed to persuade the men to obey the AUEW Executive's diktat to return 'forth with. ASTMS last year received a £150 back-pay lump sum for a similar claim to that of the toolmakers in BLMC. And the striking toolmakers in the Rover plants actually won a victóry in their demand for an extra £1.85 a week backdated to January 1975, because specific dates were written into their last agreement with BL management.
so wnal were management up to in these disputes, in which both sides have emerged bruised but neither beaten? As always, implementation of the Ryder Report was not far from the surface.
Leyland today has 58 separate wage bargaining units in its 34 plants, a situation which snop stewards were able to exploit in the boom years to ensure a continual leapfrogging of wages to improve their members" standard of living. At a time when a massive new productivity offensive is opening out - Leyland plans to increase production • from 14,000 a month in December to 22,000 a month this autumn, with a workforce that has been cut | from 130,000 a year ago to 114, to eliminate sectoral strikes.
Committees are one half of this.
The other is the attempt to establish collective agreements covering all workers in the plants. Only the toolmakers refused, insisting on 114,000 today - BL are determined The class collaborationist Joint maintaining the 1940 National ToolThe toolroom strikers have for able.
But this alone does not explain BL's hysterical reaction to the tool- SCICCID British Leyland management nearly Rising jobs.
BRITISH cut its own throat last December when it put a four month freeze on capital investment to make the boys behave'. In the two months previous to this, £22 million of Ryder money had simply gone on paying current debts.
Now, in a situation where the car market is expanding faster than expected, BL is literally ill-equipped to take advantage of it. Last month Leyland's share of the British market fell to 27 per cent -behind Ford, 5 per cent behind imported cars, and a long way behind the 33 per cent market share desig nated by Ryder as the minimum necessary to make Leyland profitThe disputes have also highlighted the scandalous policies being pursued by the AUEW Executive. Their claim that they could not support the strikes at SU Carburettors and Triumph, Coventry because they broke the £6 limit was a smokeThe truth is that the AUEW Executive, lefts and all, have accepted the Ryder Report and its implicaBL chief Alex Park: "So far we have managed to avoid any permanent damage from the four months standstill on investment)... But we nave vir tually exhausted any leeway remain ing to us.' And he isn't just bluffing.
- where there was a successful three-week strike against speed-up late last year - militant shop stewards were unable to win support from other sections for the toolmakers, and their picket lines were in the main ignored. By plac ing the fight against Ryder and the defence of living standards at the centre of their struggle, wider support could have been won Finally, the most important effe effects of the toolmakers strikes lay outside Leyland as such. The Government and the trade union bureaucracy now realise that to have any chance of making son £6' stick they must include some system of pay differentials and pro productivity bonuses.
Jack Jones's conversion to such a policy, announced in his speech at West Bromwich last Saturday, shows where the next attack in the war on workers living standards and jobs will come from. A new productivity offensive throughout British industry is being pushed forward. More jobs are being laid out for the chop. "Son of £6' will be part of this process - and it will no doubt be 'justified' on the basis that cutting inflation is essential to save jobs. Newspeak here we come. Mick Gosling and John Graham