Old style sweatshop methods spreading everywhere them, or at least not opposing strongly.
The concept of team work. "quality" relies on compliance and co-operation from the workforce. This enables them for example to get rid of inspection and to rely on each worker inspecting their own work and of a layer of maintenance workers, relying on production workers to do the maintenance for them.
Flexibility
The same applies to flexibility of labour, workers agreeing to do a thousand and one differ. ent soos at a moments noace without co-operation it would Tall to Dis And the same goes for all the aspects of "just in time' producto reduce their stocks to a minimum, often closing whole areas of factones in the process Such a system can only work force, which means the agreement to work harder, with less breaks, taking more individual responsibility for the interests of the NMTs are vulnerable if workers refuse this system of self-exploitation.
While having no trade union at all is one way of achieving compliance, often it is better to have a compliant union, which can actually mobilise the workers for the bosses objectives.
To do this people have to be persuaded that they are benefitting from the NMTs, and they offer sops, especially to the 'core' sector of the workforce. For example in Rover we were "jobs for life', but of course that doesn't include the increasing number of people who will be hired on short-term "Jobs for life' means our sons and daugh nent jobs. And for the core sectors of workers they start to introduce the most draconian disciplinary measures; at Rover you are disciplined if you have more than three days off a year for any purpose whatever, The sops they offer you, always e anctber side so ubers, to t you closer to the company's inThe problem is, how do we resist these things? It is difficult because they are always brought in with a threat, increased by ment. The threat to close a plant or workpike is arways a ocrastating threat.
When they brought in 1000 short term workers at Rover, we were told, well if you object, we won't employ them. And these people are desperate for a job -2500 people applied.
So it takes a very determined leadership to oppose the NMTs, and at a național level we just don't have that. The TGWU should accept these measures if they 'make the company competitive'. Once you accept this idea, you are powerless to resist.
But however difficult, the NT's have to be fought. We have to resist, because they are a mechanism for fantastically stepped up exploitation. look at how hard they are forced to work, and see how young the industrial workforce is - because the older workers are finished by this kind of work regime by the time they get into Resistance There are many forms of day-to-day resistance, but the key time to fight is when the new management techniques are being brought in. Because even if you lose and the NTs are brought in, you are in a stronger explained to the workforce what this means.
The NMTs are about taking every single moment of your working day and squezing something into it, to get every single possible moment of work from you. So the bosses constantly come with new proposals for work changes, and this gives you the space to resist and To begin that process we from day one from the trade union side on what the NT's actually mean, to stop the bosses information and propaganda monopoly. WE'VE CERTAINLY had our share of the NMTs in the journalism, broadcasting and printing industries in the past ten years, especially through the introduction of new technology. "Flexibility' is an idea very familiar to us.
We've seen jobs previously done by our colleagues in the print industry done by journalists and sub-cantors trough aircer spurting. Asho we've seen the increasing use of short-term con. tracts.
In fact in sectors like broadcasting it's virtu. ally impossible to get a permanent job now thanks to short-term contracts and the increasing use of freelance workers.
One indicator of the state of things is that Reed Business Publishing recently introduced a computer which enables them to check the number of key strokes each of their writers and subeditors has made in a given time.
But the key to air this nas been the assault on the unions and union derecognition. The NUJ has probably suffered the worst consequences of derecognition, but it's a growing phenomenon throughout industry. A survey by Labour had experienced derecognition, but topping the list were the media and print unions, the NUJ and the GMPU, with 41 cases. They were followed by NALGO and the AEEU with 26 cases and the TGWU with 1X cases But the NUJ figures don't include provincial newspapers. If you include them, you see the print and media unions have suffered over half the derecognition cases. In fact one third of all NUJ chapels (branches) have been de-recognised. The worst sector is the national newspapers, but it has gone right down to small local publishers with just one local paper and it is widespread in the magazine and book publishing sector.
This massive employers' offensive really started in the mid-1980s and was intimately linked to the introduction of new technology.
Again, it's no accident that the era of derecognition beginning around 1987, coincided with the introduction of new technology into national newspapers, starting of course with the News In. ternational dispute at Wapping. This new technology, enabling joumalists and sub-editors to do the work of typesetters and compositors, led to the massive wave of redundancies among the print workers.
While newspaper proprietors competed with one another to get the cost benefits of new technology, journalists were suddenly given, by definition, more control over the production situation among empyces. very active. to-day issues. action across the industry. INTERNATIONAL DISPUTE process, because suddenly they were the ones who had the power to stop the presses So from the employers point of view it was essential that journalists' union power was destroyed. So having smashed the print workers, often with the compliance of some of the journalists, they could then tum their attention of the NUJ, breaking up collective agreements and When management talk about derecognition or umons incy usually taik about personsi con tracts, which they claim gives them a 'closer relationship' with their employees. Thus, they gotiations. But of course an individual can't really "negotiate' with a big company: in reality personal contracts are just imposed.
Of course, when collective negotiations are abandoned, then equal opportunities go to the wall: women and black people lose out.
This has atso mit new scopic coming into to the industry; though old contracts are tom up, established workers have often been kept on the old conditions, but new entrants have suffered.
This immediately creates a "divide and rule' Pay increase Rescarch last year showed that chapels which kept collective agreements in every case had better terms ano conditions in terns or countancy, maternity and so on. But also a much larger number of workplaces where the chapel is recornised got a pay increase last year While derecognition has become an epidemic for the NUJ, this is not the same thing as de-unionisation. In fact union membership is going up and many or ine oc-recognisco chapeas are There are many forms of "guerrilla" tactics which de-recognised unions can use. One example is mass personal grievances. Very soon the employers catch on that it's very difficult and time consuming to deal with hundreds of personal complaints, and that they have to start dealing with the union again.
So some employers have started to utilise limica acrecogniton, oc-recognising the union for the purposes of pay negotiations and basic conditions, but dealing with the union on many dayThus in many places it has been possible to hold union organisation together in very difficult circumstances. But whatever tactics are used, in the end industrial action is needed to win back union recognition, including industrial The union leaderships strategy of going to Industrial Tribunals and appealing to bodies like the Ill O has failed. Only collective action will defeat derecognition and reverse it.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.47, July-August 1993. Page 10
ANA AWE MUJ