Rover - Open the Books!
THOUSANDS of Rover workers are laid off, forced to sit and wait without any practical involvement in the fight to defend their jobs.
There is no information available to them, except BMW’s claim that they have been losing £2m a day. Workers don’t know any details of what the Alchemy bid entails, except that their track record is of asset-stripping venture capitalists, and thousands would inevitably be made redundant.
We have been told even less about the "alternative" Towers bid – except that it is supposed to mean fewer redundancies than Alchemy, and that it is backed by TGWU chief negotiator Tony Woodley, who claims that "We are actively involved with John Towers."
Why all the secrecy? Who is demanding things be kept so quiet?
BMW has already touted Rover round all the major car companies, so they already know the financial details. The TGWU leaders appear to know what is happening: even Trade Secretary Stephen Byers seems to know.
So the only people being kept in the dark are the shop stewards and the workers they represent, the people whose jobs are at stake.
Some component workers are already losing their jobs and there are reports that a major Corus steel plant may close.
These "business secrets" have only one purpose: to keep workers divided and prevent them taking action.
The only new facts likely to be exposed in the latest bid is the extent to which BMW itself has already asset-stripped Rover.
The Towers bid apparently asks to keep the mini, which BMW say they intend to produce as their new lower end model, and the R30 (the Longbridge medium car) which BMW planned to build elsewhere as a new BMW 2 series.
If BMW do not take these models away from Longbridge they will not have made any major gains out of the sale. If they do, the Towers bid cannot be regarded as serious, since Rover could not survive as a volume producer if it were left with only the Rover 75, MG and two other ageing models.
All of this underlines the need for the books of Rover and BMW, and full details of all the bids and their implications for jobs and plant capacity, must be opened up to an elected committee of Rover workers.
Instead of allowing rival capitalists to find new ways of squeezing profits from the workers of a dying firm, Rover should be nationalised.
The Midland Region of MSF has already called for the books to be opened up to scrutiny: make sure all trade union bodies add their voices to the demand.