Back working class action, not bosses' bids!
Occupy now to save Rover
WHAT is happening at Rover? After the initial reaction to the announcement it was to be sold off, there were two positive steps, external to Longbridge.
The first was a meeting of all Rover stewards at Gaydon, on March 21, which decided on a campaign to keep the group together, and at which national officer of the TGWU, Tony Woodley, spoke several times, calling for nationalisation.
The second was the magnificent 80,000 strong demonstration in Birmingham on April 1, which particularly showed local support.
But since then there has been no sign of the planned follow-up demonstration in London, and all talk of nationalisation has been dropped by union leadership speakers.
Instead, having got nowhere with trying to persuade a global car producer to take over Longbridge, Tony Woodley has concentrated on backing a bid led by ex-Rover manager John Towers. It is even reported in some of the papers that the unions are part of the bid.
All Woodley’s efforts, and those of the Joint Negotiating Committee, have now gone in this direction. At the first full meeting of the European Works Council of BMW, on April 13, he called not for action to make BMW backtrack on the sale, or try and get IGG Metall to reverse their position of support for the company, but to ask for more time for the Towers bid to develop.It is reported that Woodley also met the company on his own to support the bid.
The proposal for workers to stand outside BMW dealers and persuade people to put off their purchases, was also seen as a mean to give Towers more time. The unions have even successfully threatened an injunction to delay the Alchemy takeover – again to give more time for the bid.
The problem is that none of the stewards knows what the bid is, and nor do the workforce. Woodley has become a one-man band promoting the Towers consortium. Why is the bid so secret? Does it involve the closure of Cowley, for example? Is it right that a union official who does not even work for the firm is able to do this in secret? Are the workforce just fodder to pay subs, with no voice in such an issue?
Most importantly, in Longbridge there is total confusion. No action whatsoever has taken place. There have only been two shop stewards’ meetings, and no mass meetings.
All the initiatives are in the hands of the company. Eighty per cent of the workforce is laid off for three weeks. The real question is whether they will all return to work?
The first step was to divide the Rover workforce. That’s one reason why Solihull was sold to Ford, while Cowley workers were told they were "safe" with the transfer of the mini from Longbridge. This left Swindon facing an undetermined future under BMW, engineering staff allocated all over the place, and Longbridge sold to Alchemy.
Now the company is dividing Longbridge. With Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) (TUPE) legislation, they are saying that about 300 workers on the mini will have the right to go with their jobs to Cowley, and they have issued them with letters saying they are under BMW.
But they have issued others with letters saying they come under Alchemy, and a further group letters saying that they are multi-branded. These latter must now argue over who is to be their employer. All of this means that they have varying chances of jobs, and varying amounts of redundancy money. This is classic divide and rule tactics, against which the unions have offered no alternative.
The workers still don’t know whether they are in a fight or not. Woodley has already asked BMW about redundancy terms.
The company knows that this will weaken the possibility of getting a fight off the ground. If the workers don’t move to occupy soon, it will be too late, the workforce will be too divided and the moment will have been lost. There should be an immediate mass meeting, and the choice of occupation put to the workforce.
If action is taken, it would be a real alternative to the present pathetic begging by union leaders for scraps off the capitalist table. An occupied Longbridge could be the focus of resistance for the 100,000 workers in the midlands and Essex who would be affected by the closure of Longbridge and the threatened closure of Ford’s Dagenham plant.
Others could be asked to support them, and the demand for nationalisation put forward. This could also give hope to the shipyard workers and others facing massive potential job losses. If no action is taken, then divisions will be sharpened and workers will be fighting each other.
In Cowley, where the shop floor is on a four week layoff, the workers have the impression that all Woodley is worried about is keeping the mini at Longbridge, and that the closure of Cowley would not worry him.
In Solihull, workers have been lulled into a false sense of security by the continuing production, and even the continued employment of agency workers.
The major lesson of Rover is that going to the employer cap in hand, as Woodley did in 1998, giving all kinds of shift and productivity concessions does not save jobs, and in fact only worsens conditions for the working class.
Now we are going back to the same position, the spiralling down of conditions. Far from representing salvation for jobs and conditions, John Towers was the man who forced through the ‘Rover Tomorrow’ document in 1992 – the first major systematic attack on conditions, in which he argued that we had to follow Japan to survive.
It was this document that contained the ‘jobs for life’ clause, also endorsed by BMW. Clearly, this clause given by the company in exchange for conditions meant nothing.
Towers will doubtless be looking to gain further concessions, seeing how desperate Woodley is. The workers at Cowley will be asked to make sacrifices to get the mini. Meanwhile Ford will use the opportunity to move models between plants to make deals at the expense of Solihull workers. This vision can only be fought by a united struggle, led by Longbridge taking action. This must be around the call for the nationalisation of Rover and Ford, not to compete in mass car production, in which working conditions are forced down, but to line up with a renationalised railway industry, in the development of a properly planned public transport system, that should be run by the workers and consumers.
All negotiations and bids must be in the open
Unions must represent members, not join employers as part of bids
Occupy Longbridge now
Unite car workers, end concession bargaining
Call a demonstration in London
Nationalise Rover and Dagenham, under the control of the workers.