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combine and substitute corporate-level negotiations has come from the wages sub-committee set up by the Confed. in March of this year.

The committee, composed of selected Leyland conveners, was set up as a basis for a return to work by the 3,000 toolmakers who struck for four weeks in February demanding separate negotiating rights and parity with top-paid toolmakers.• Its function was to review the wage structure within Leyland. Its recommendations, backed_up by threats of closure from Industry Minister Eric Varley, were adopted by a meeting of 200 conveners representing manual grade workers in the 36 plants of Leyland's Cars Division on Friday May 27.

Central to these recommendations was acceptance that the right to bargain wages at plant level will be ended not later than November 1979.

As so-called "strings" to the deal, the conveners voted to demand staff status for manual workers be conceded within the two year period and that incentive schemes, negotiated at plant level, be introduced.

The conveners have no intention of sticking to these demands. They will be more than willing to see them twisted to the advantage of management or reduced to vague promises for the future.

Leyland management have in any case been looking for the chance to reintroduce their infamous fringe benefits' document decisively rejected by workers in January this year.

That offered staff status in return for no-strike clauses and new disciplnary measures jointly policed by management and conveners.

The demand for incentives, as well as assisting attacks on manning levels, is designed to allow conveners to argue that an element of plant bargaining has been retained.

Fear of the membership on the shop floor runs through every move the conveners now make. They remember the heavy defeat they suffered in January when they voted 3-1 to accept the penalty clause document, only to see it thrown out by a massive majority.

This is clearly why the meeting of conveners was timed to take place the day before the ten day spring holiday shutdown.

And the meeting to negotiate the deal with management has been arranged for June 10, two days after the plants reopen.

This effectively means that not only have the conveners gone over the heads of the members but there is no opportunity for opposition to be organised in the plants.

Despite these manoeuvres, the battle must now begin. Union branches, stewards committees and sections on the shop floor must be mobilised to reject this deal.

The conveners have conceded the major plank in management policy-to take wage bargaining out of the hands of shop stewards (who are vulnerable to the pressure of the membership) and place it in the hands of national officials who can sell out from a greater distance.

The struggle to defend plant bargaining in Leyland has a long Soon after coming to power in 1964, Wilson's Labour government showed its commitment to capitalism by declaring war on workers' living standards.

So called "wage drift" was identified as the main problem facing capitalism by the Royal Commission headed by Lord Donovan.

The cause of this was identified as the growth of the shop stewards' movement, which, based on the militancy of the working class, was taking advantage of piecework and bonus schemes and the right to bargain wages at the point of To tackle this, fake "left" Barbara Castle was given control corporatě bargaining. of the newly-created Prices and Incomes Board and George Cattell was brought in from the Rootes Motor Corporation to make use of his experience in introducing Measured Day Work there.

The giant piecework plants of Leyland (formerly BMC) were the national pacesetters on wages, and the prime target.

After an initial success with forcing in Measured Day Work (after the sell out by the officials of the AUEW and TGWU of a six weeks strike against MDW in the Cowley Assembly Plant) the company faced resistance to the breaking down of established agreements and to the standard work rate required under the MDW system.

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With the publication of the Ryder Report, corporate bargaining was retained as a central thrust and seen as key to the long term control of wages within Leyland.

Management 'participation' committees were enlisted to speed the process.

This is why the latest concessions on corporate bargaining made by the 200 conveners is so valuable to management. Corporate bargaining would be a blow, not only against Leyland workers, but against the right of independent action on wages of the whole working class.

This is why a campaign against the new deal must be launched at once.