Who controlled ti voting? Why are plant result suppressed? How many workers know what the deal contains?

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E COA TRICK strike clauses.

Foisting this package of policies upon Leyland workers is a major step on the road to Leyland's ultimate goal: the introduction of US-style "master contracts" in which all negotiations are taken out of the hands of elected union representatives and given to appointed national officials.

But such measures could only be forced through with the assistance of union Plant convenors have been softened up by involvement in "participation" committees which have sucked them into open management roles and focussed their attention on the "state of the company" rather than the conditions of their members.

ProposedAnd the officials who head the Confederation and Engineering Unions not only endorsed the package but even proposed to Leyland the tactic of the secret shopfloor ballot.

The ballot tactic is of course a long-standing favourite with anyone determined to break union ranks.

Secret ballots were a crucial element of the Wilson government's union-busting In Place of Strife' White Paper and of the Tory Industrial Relations Act.

Their purpose is to force workers to act as individuals subject to Tory press propaganda and management lies, rather than as part of the organised labour movement.

No information This objective was made easier by plant convenors. Even while the press campaign for a 'Yes' vote hotted up and management put out a completely falsified version of the package, virtually no convenors produced information on the deal, and only a handful called mass meetings.

Those few mass meetings that were held overwhelmingly rejected the management proposals.

This showed clearly that even if only TGWU convenors had mounted a serious fight on the issue in mass meetings, thousands more workers could have been swung against the deal.

Leaflets

Only the Workers Socialist League and the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement, through mass leafleting of all major factories, launched a serious campaign against the proposals.

Communist Party led Longbridge stewards failed to challenge the right wing, refusing to make any recommendations either way on the ballot.

Stalinist convenor Derek Robinson had opened the door for some workers to vote for the package as a last ditch attempt for a pay rise.

He used a march by a handful of right wingers as a pretext for cancelling a strike for the annual pay review.

Living standards

In contrast with this the Workers Socialist League has consistently argued that Leyland workers should lodge immediate claims for £100 a week linked to cost of living clauses in order to regain and defend lost living standards.

Through confusion deliberately createli by right wing and Stalinist leaders, Leyland have now secured victory in the ballot.

But some questions remain to be answered even on that.

Who, for instance, controlled the ballot and its timing?

Why are plant-by-plant voting figures suppressed?

Where are the 59,000 workers who allegedly voted in favour of the new scheme?

And the harsh fact remains that the ballot was rushed through by management in such a way that almost none of Leyland's 120,000 car workers knows even now what he was voting for.

The answer is clear. Workers cannot be bound by the results of such a ballot. The whole charade must be rejected.

*All changes forced in as a result of the ballot must be resisted.

*All existing manning levels must be defended.

*Corporate pay bargaining must be rejected and whereever possible plant claims submitted, rejecting the 10% limit, and including cost of living clauses to protect against inflation.

*Elected trade union comLongbridge workers earlier this year mittees must demand full access to Leyland books to reveal the true "state of the company" and show the need for nationalisation of Leyland along with the motor and component industries and the banks.

*A campaign must be launched in the unions against all secret ballots, and for mass meetings to tecide policy and to conduct elecmons.

Such policies would inevitably bring a collision with the Lib-Lab coalition government and the job-slashing National Enterprise Board whose task it is to force through speed-up in Leyland.

But only through such a tight and in the building of a new political leadership to carry it through can Leyland workers hope to protect jobs and living standards against the next spate of attacks.

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