Leyland workers to face new Edwardes plan?

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12cn Thar are nranncino to reviet he recornised that this was a The British Leyland Shop Stewards Combine met last Wednesday.

According to shop stewards who attended there were 50 shop stewards and convenors in attendance-by far the smallest meeting the Committee has ever held.

There are • something like 150,000 manual workers in BL; 5,000 shop stewards and 400 convenors. Each factory has delegates to the Combine Committee based on membership figures.

This collapse of attendance (previous meetings were about 200) was no surprise. The meeting was the first held since Derek Robinson was victimised last November.

Since then the Combine has been totally defunct; not even a letter to the plants has been sent out.

Adams Presumably, the Communist Party, who dominate the Combine, consider that nothing worth discussing has happened in BL during the past year.

Last Wednesday's meeting was eventually called because the AGM was due and the Committee would have gone out of existence if new officers were not elected.

Predictably, Jack Adams, TGWU convenor of the Longbridge complex, and a leading Stalmist, was elected as chairman. The AUEW convenor of Longbridge, B.M. Chambers, was elected secretary.

Grenville Hawley with NION Reports from the plants revealed the results of the collapse of the car market.

They showed extensive short time working throughout BL, a rapidly declining labour force, and plant closures under the Edwardes plan going ahead on schedule.

Further cuts have taken place on the Rover SD1, with extensive short time working at Solihull.

The Allegro scheduled at Longbridge has been cut by 50%; and most significantly the he ted Metron to the NOCICu MetTo. HOL launched, has already been cut from 6,500 per week to 3,3003,500 per week.

In Cowley the new Ital (Marina face-lift) has been cut back from 5520 per week after only two months of production.

The Princess is to be cut back in October.

The closure of MG Abingdon next month in the absence of any trade union resistance to it will result in cutbacks in three plants producing components for it.

Three quarters of the labour force at the Swindon Body Plant are on short time and redundancies are expected. Llanelli Pressings have been on short time for months. Radiators in North Oxford are on a four-day week.

In the Canley Assembly Plant and the Castle Bromwich Body Plant the closures have been accepted long ago by the unions and the rundown is well advanced.

The Castle Bromwich labour force is down from 7,000 to stall AT THE 1350.

The plant has been split in half ready for closure since the Jaguar body will be built in the remaining fragment until 1984.

Worst crisis

Convenors from Leyland Vehicles (heavy trucks) reported an even worse situation. They said it is undoubtedly the worst crisis ever in the history of the UK heavy vehicle industry.

In Scotland, two thirds of Albion Motors' 2,700 workers are on short time, and shortly the Edwardes plan will create. 400 redundancies as work is moved out.

Bathgate are working one week on and one week off. The labour force has shrunk from 5,500 to 4,500 through 700 redundancies.

92% of workers in the five Lancashire plants are on short time, and a bad situation at Guys in Wolverhampton is getting rapidly worse.

AIl BL. workers on short time or lay-off are receiving full wages. This is not from BL, but under the Temporary Short Time Working Subsidy, introduced by the Labour government.

This means in effect that if workers are unable to work a full week due to factors such as trade recession, the government makes up their money for maximum of six months.

There are now many hundreds of thousands of workers throughout industry receiving this subsidy and the Tories are complaining that it is far too expensive.

INSTEAD OF WHICH, WHAT HAVE I GOT?!

JUST BLOODY PHONE CALLS - ADWEST STRIKERS, BRIXTON PICKETS AND LEYLAND WRECKERS — OuT THERE GOES THE BLOODY PHONE AGAIN... IT MAKES ME SICK!..

They are proposing to review it in October. If they were to withdraw or restrict it, this would transform the situation in BL at a stroke and undoubtedly prompt BL management to declare mass redundancies. All this simply underlines the real depth of the crisis faceral and BL in particular. !! is a desperate situation and it is developing fast.

The likelihood facing BL workers in the short term is an Edwardes Plan Mark 2, proposing further drastic cutbacks in BL's manufacturing base.

• Nothing to say So how did the Combine Committee face up to this problem? According to stewards there, they had absolutely nothing to say, apart from dragging out the reactionary CP line of selective import controls. They proposed to campaign for this in the plant, using a petition.

Then came the crucial issue of the bu annual wage review, negotiations on which should have begun on August 1 for settlement by November 1.

With BL wages having plummeted over the last ten years from a level well in advance of the national average wage to a position of £30.00 per week behind it and with Edwardes having successfully imposed a miserable 5% deal last year, wages are a massive issue with BL workers.

To meet this situation the CP presented to the committee a proposed wage claim less than the rate of inflation and substantially less than the Combine Committee claim last year.

Adams proposed a 20% "single item" claim applied "across the board' to all five grades.

This would mean on each grade. it was, the said, necessary to be "realis WORKERS SOCIA LEAGUE RUNCORN Public meeting Royal Hotel Runcorn Old Town 7.30 p.m.

Monday 25 August ...STUCK HERE IN A DISTRICT BESIEGED BY MALCONTENTS HOPE OF PROMOTION!

OFFICE WITH NI (I'M GOING TO POLAND... THERE'LL SOON BE SOME VACANCIESBUT WHY'S THAT, O'FISHALL? he recognised that was "survival claim".

Although the Committee adopted the claim, it will not automatically become the figure claimed by the unions. The Combine Committee is not recognised by either management or trade unions.

In fact TGWU National Official Grenville Hawley has very different ideas. As chairman of the trade union side, he has written to all unions (as opposed to membership) in BL and asked them for comments as to what the claim should be.

He will be reporting the results at the end of the month.

This led onto the final item on the agenda-the crucial issue of the reconstitution of the Joint Negotiating Committee.

Adams reported that the last meeting of the JNC broke down on the issue, mainly on the question of how many delegates each union would have. It had been decided that the old JNC would continue until the new one was formed.

In front of the meeting was a proposal from the Cowley Assembly Plant calling for an annual delegate conference of BL 'workers, which would control the course of events during the wage review and would elect a negotiating committee.

The negotiating committee would be responsible to the full conference and through that to the membership as a whole.

The motion had been circulated in the Cowley Plant and had been signed by 1500 TGWU members in the plant who had discussed it.

Opposed

This did not stop Adams from opposing it, or from immediately putting his own proposals to the meeting.

These called simply for a JNC responsible to a convenors conference-a body which few ST. BENEDICTS HOSPITAL MASS PICKET Tuesday 2 September 6pm to 8pm St. Benedicts Hospital Church Lane, Tooting LONDON SW17 Tube: Tooting Broadway Refreshments would argue is representative the workforce.

Cowley delegates argued for their policy, insisting that the crucial point was to take the question of policy making back to the shop floor and involve workers in it.

They pointed to the process which started with the introduction of Measured Day Work and took a great leap forward with the introduction of corporate bargaining-where only convenors were involved..

Now workers face the policy of Edwardes where only fulltime officers-who don't even work in BL-will be involved in negotiations.

They pointed to the committee of national officials which had met on May 15 and signed a controversial agreement covering grading appeals over the heads of everyone in BLmembers, stewards and convenors.

They pointed to the recent replacement by the TGWU of the Castle Bromwich convenor on the JNC (who has taken voluntary redundancy) with a full time IGWU Regional Official, Bill Lapworth.

Despite this the Cowley motion was heavily defeated, and Adams' motion, designed to preserve a situation where the CP have greatest influence was accepted by the Committee.

It means that BL workers enter the pay fight with severe handicaps.

They have a JC with little authority, due for reconstitution; a Combine Committee committed to preserving an unrepresentative set up; and since the capitulation of the TGWU to the Edwardes plan, an official leadership of each of the major unions which is committed to putting the viability of BL before the wages and conditions of their membership.

But, for all this, BL workers remain strong. The defeats of the past year have been forced on them by the betrayals of their leaders-not by the strength of management of the weakness of the workers.

Workers were ready to fight last year and they will be ready to fight again this year.

It may well be that despite the new alignment between Evans and Duffy, both will prove unsuccessful in stopping a wages struggle in BL in 1980.

Since this article was written British Leyland have launched another attack on the Combine Committee. Delegates in several plants who attended Wednesday's meeting were called in front of management last Monday and warned not to attend "unofficial" meetings in working hours.

1Y CAN'T I BE A REALLY BIG :ATOR-LIKE CLIVE JENKINS...

FRANK CHAPPLE

JIMMY HOFFA 'COS IF THERE'S ANY DAMN TROUBLE THERE, I'LL SIMPLY CUT OFF THE PHONES OF THE WHOLE REGION, AND IF THAT DOESN'T WORK, I'LL CALL IN THE RED ARMY!

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PRESS sT Far from wanting to "ban" the fascists, the police went to great lengths