Triumph Jobs
Socialist Press1976 1976-12-01Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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When British ... Leyland announced the ending of car assembly at Triumph, Canley, in Coventry workers. were assured that there would be no compulsory redundancy.
However, a report on Leyland's 'Confidential Plans' for Canley's workforce, has now appeared in the Coventry Evening Telegraph. (25.11.76).
The report states that between now and the end of next year some 2,000 of Canley's 4,000 assembly workers will lose their jobs.
At the same time the number of workers producing engines, gearboxes and axles will also fall.
BURDEN
BLu have always said that when the plant goes over full-time to engine production there will be jobs for some assembly workers. Why then will the number of engine jobs fall over the next year?
The burden of finding replacement jobs now falls most heavily on the other Leyland plants in the area Jaguars. Coventry and the expanding plant at Solihull which is a long way from Canley to which many Triumph workers already travel considerable distances.
Management obviously hope that the offer of jobs at Solihull will be turned down by some workers daunted by the major distances involved.
DRAW Those turning down work at Solihull would not be eligible for redundancy pay.
Workers at Canley are worried over job security and have begun to draw back from the changeover.
Shop stewards have refused to allow a test run (at Solihull) of the Dolomite due to begin two-stage changeover in July 1977.
Meanwhile, stewards at Solihull, worried over a lack of concrete job assurances, have resisted the count, and that nigher grade Jobs should go to Solihull workers first.
Leyland management now feel in a position to play off different sections against each other - with the job fears lurking in the background.
This is shown by Leyland Cars Personnel Director, Geoffrey Whalen's comment that:
"I cannot believe the unions will take a „position that will lead to men being out of work, rather than a position that will keep them in work." (Coventry Evening Telegraph 25.11.76).
Leyland would be quite happy to see disputes over jobs break out between the Canley and Solihull stewards.
FULL ACCESS
Stewards in both plants must instead demand full access to Leyland's books as the only way to check on the management assurances of job security and establish a firm basis of unity between all Leyland workers in the struggle for the nationalisation of Leyland under workers' management. gate conference.
This is the outcome of the move by the conference chairman, at the instigation of T&GWU General Secretary, Jack Jones, to rule "out of order" a motion for action in defence of 180 dockers facing redundancy with the proposed closure of port facilities at Preston.
The employers have not attempted to sack registered dockers since 1949. The moves at Preston are clearly a curtain-raiser to a wholesale attack on docks jobs as the employers scent the abject collaboration of the T&GWU leadership, and move in on a full-blown offensive to drive up profits.
While Jones was clearly at the centre of the decision not even to discuss active support for the Preston dockers, this must not divert from the fact that the docks delegate conference itself is now clearly unable to give any independent lead to the membership. Yesterday's militants have today become simply Jones' errand boys - meekly accepting bureaucratic the officials - but instead caved in to the officials demand that they act to lift blacking action from the employers' job-cutting Barge Aboard Catamaran (BACAT) system.
The stewards lifted this black without even consulting the mass meeting which had overwhelmingly voted to impose it - and were rewarded by the officials with the Ieturn of their stewards' credentials!
The fight in defence of jobs in Preston and other docks now cries out for the building of a new leadership prepared to fight on principle against both the employers' offensive and the bureaucratic dictatorship of the T&GWU's army of appointed officials.
*FOOTNOTE. It would appeal that in reaction to the betrayals of the T&GWU officials on Hull docks the 'Blue' union has gained a number of stewards positions in the recently held (and previously twice postponed) elections to the Docks Unofficial Shop Stewards Com mittee..