Reject Joint Speed-up Committees Reject Joint Speed-up Committees No Participation in Management

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Last Friday was an import: designed to shackle 200,000, the employers.

As selected convenors from various British Leyland plants ended three days of class collaboration at the plush Allesly Hotel in Coventry, senior shop stewards from the Chrysler combine were voting to "continue talks" on bogus worker participation pro posals which will open the door to major attacks on Chrysler workeTS.

Despite the efforts of the trade union leaders to suggest they are separate issues, the Ryder plan and the Chrysler proposals are identical in their principle aims:

Both aim to integrate convenors and shop stewards in to the structure of management, and use their influence to achieve rationalisation speed-up and redundancy. At the same time they seek to destroy their ability to lead resistance by making them party to company initiatives.

Both have the longer term aim of Ford-style national wage negotiations which transfer all wage: bargaining into the hands of the full time union officials. It was plant level bargaining (together with the piecework system long since sold out by the union leaders) which made car workers for years the leaders in the wages fight. Both employers and union leaders want to see this ended.

Both sets of proposals are linked (with the complete agreement of the union bureaucracy) to new disputes procedures which it is hoped will further tie the hands of shop stewards, and make them liable to victimisation. Union leaders as well as employers want to curb the independent power of the shop stewards movement which has dominated the industry (and improved conditions) in the past.

DETAILED PREPARATIONS At the meeting of BLMC convenors, which will resume on September 8th, details were drawn up for the plant-by-plant introduction of the Ryder speed-up committees throughout the Corporation. The discussions took place around a plan produced by management.

The Ryder plan itself had been acepted not by a normal meeting of the BLMC Combine Committee, but by a company convened meeting, including staff representatives - which resulted in a high percentage of those voting being either foremen or industrial engineers, whose job it is to speed-up workers anyway! This is the vote that has been nsed as the authoritv to introduce An Chr STV( Stoke stewards meeting for nearly an hour, and in this way obtained agreement. Local as well as nation al union bureaucrats are thus being used by the employers to railroad in their policies.

The capitalist press has also played its part in foisting these fraudulent schemes and committees onto the working class, by falsely presenting the committees as giving workers an 'equal' say in the running of the factories.

Ryder Nothing could be further from the truth. The ownership of the plants is not affected, and the final say on all questions is left quite firmly with management. In addition, the terms of reference, which determines the nature of the committees, are defined as "the mort : fficient production of motor cars"

This means the job of the committees is to organise production. It means the participating in management. It means doing the job of management - and that means as they see it, increasing the rate of exploitation of the working class.

The Workers Socialist League is completely opposed to these committees and to any trade unionist working on them. We believe that as battles begin in Leyland and Chrysler against redundancy and in defence of conditions, they will be fought against these committees. It is therefore a matter of principle to be separatec from them.

BONUS indication of the value of cipation" to the employe: ysler paying a £50 bonus 1 ne of their 27 A0n emnla the year if in full.

The implementation of these schemes is a big victory for the employers, given to them completely in the motor industry will be a by the union leaders. The experience base to extend similar schemes throughout industry.

These moves have taken place with' virtually no opposition. In Chrysler, the key decision at the Stoke plant was taken last Thursday, with a leading Stalinist and T&GWU Executive member, McClusky, on the negotiating committee which made the (unanimous) recommendation. Both the IS and the WRP have a steward in the plant, but at the mass meeting 10 king of opp osition or any campaign was visible.

The only consistent fight has been put up at the BLMC Cowley Assembly Plant, where the 5/293 branch has voted not to participate and the shop stewards, after being denied a meeting by the right wing convenor, are organising a campaigr for a vote on Ryder, which is being Chrysler boss Lander forced in over the heads of stewar and members.

. We emphasise that these schem are not simply a "car industry" issue. In every industry workers are being told if they co-operate with speed-up and 'voluntary' re dundancy it will "save jobs".

In reality it is the participation of the trade union leaders in management attacks which now direci threatens jobs through speed-up and rationalisation.

* No participation in Speed-up Committees!

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