SOCIAL EPS Workers Condemn T&GWU Collaboration MEANS SACKING

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By decision of the Cars Council - highest body in the British Leyland Ryder participation structure - the entire Leyland contract is to be withdrawn from the Export Packing Services factory at Chipping Warden, near Banbury. The withdrawal of this contract - over half the work of the plant - immediately threatens 400 jobs and must lead to the closure of the factory.

The response to this was immediate. Nearly half of the 1,000 T&GWU members on the plant (which packs export components for the car industry) travelled last Wednesday in coaches to Cowley and marched through the car factories behind the slogans "Must Participation Mean EPS Extermination?" and "Ryder Out, Nationalisation In".

IMPACT

After the march, which had a big impact on workers in the Cowley plants who came out to watch. it go by, EPS workers mounted a mass picket on the Cowley factory gates.

The previous day they had sent over a token picket and had visited the 5/55 T&GWU branch. But at the right-wing controlled 5/60 Cowley Body Plant Branch they had been refused admission - on the basis that a two-thirds majority vote was needed to let them in!

An EPS delegation to the T&GWU District Office was then told by David Buckle, District Secretary, (and member of the 5/60 Branch) that the T&GWU supported Ryder, that the convenors at the KD (export packing) plant in Cowley were involved in participation, and that the policy of the participation committees was to "in source" work.

REAL FACE

This is the real face of "participation"". . When the scheme was agreed by hand-picked convenors at the plush Allesley Hotel in Coventry last August, we headlined the demand: "NO PARTICIPATION IN MANAGEMENT"

Our lead article went on to say that the aim to: ..integrate convenors and shop stewards into the structure of management and use their influence to achieve rationalisation, speed-up and redundancy."

We went on to stress the need for all-out opposition:

*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 British 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 separated from them."

The powerful response of EPS workers to the lead given by the shop stewards committee demonstrates that while the bureaucracy seeks collaboration with the employers, there is a willingness in the working class to fight every attack by the Labour government and the employers against jobs and wages.

EXTEND

This strength must now be used to extend the campaign. Demands must be placed on the trade union officials - who almost certainly have been involved in behind-the-scenes meetings before EPS workers were told of the move - to refuse to allow work to be withdrawn into the Leyland factories, creating sackings.

The task of union officials is to defend the whole of their membership, not to play off one section of workers against another or organise mass redundancies.

At the same time demands must be placed firmly on the leading trade union members of the Cars Council. These include rightwing Cowley Body Plant convenor Bill Roche, (who shares the secretaryship with management) and Communist Party Stalinist Derrick Cont'd back page, col 4.