SO leaflet for 20 January demo - Occupy Luton Vauxhall now
Occupy Luton Vauxhall now
Today’s demonstration must be the start of a fight back in the whole of the car and component industry. A glance around the industry poses the question of what will be left if the current round of closures are allowed to go through?
GM is closing their Luton car assembly plant as a part of its decision to axe 4,000 jobs across Europe. It refuses to give even the most half hearted guarantee that any of its UK plants will survive in the short to medium term. It will give no guarantees what-so-ever over the future of Ellesmere Port.
Nissan is set to destroy thousands of jobs in Sunderland if it switches its new Micra model to Renault’s Flins plant in France. Renault has a 36% stake in Nissan. Nissan is currently the biggest manufacturer in the UK with the capacity for half a million units. The decision on this will be made next month. It might not result in the immediate closure of the plant, which produces other models, but it would be a big step towards it.
The end of car production at Dagenham has been accepted after a disastrously inadequate campaign by the unions and a consequent vote for acceptance by the workforce. The closure is a part of a crisis of Ford UK and is not the end of the process. l Rumours abound that Peugeot is planning to close its Ryton plant in 2003. l Rover jobs hang by a thread as the Phoenix set-up goes from crisis to crisis.
Then there is the component and supply industry. If the Luton plant follows Ford Dagenham and closes component firms and jobs will follow. This has already been happening. As the industry shrinks it loses its economy of scale and becomes even more vulnerable.
Corus steel has all but announced the closure of its huge Llanwern steel works with the loss of 3,000 jobs - which has been on the cards for some time - with further job losses at its plants in Scunthorpe, Teesside and Rotherham and the closure of another major plant.
The response of the stewards in Vauxhall Luton (and the other UK General Motors plants) to the closure of the Luton plant, has been good to date and is a welcome break from recent negative experiences in the industry. Despite the lack of action (even a mass meeting) in Luton before the plant shut down for a month (a few days after the announcement), the stewards have responded more strongly than those at either Rover or Fords. The demonstration on Saturday is a very positive step - something which never happened at Fords.
The battle at Vauxhall is being seen as a combine wide battle. There has already been solidarity action at both Ellesmere Port and at the Luton warehouse. The failure to fight on a company wide basis was a crucial reason why the vote to oppose closure was lost at Dagenham. The direct action of invading management offices when the closure was announced at Luton was brilliant.
The decision of the GM European Works Council trade unions to call a one day strike of GM plants throughout Europe, on January 25, is a massive step forward and needs to be seriously built both here and across Europe. In a leaflet to the membership the stewards say "this is a European problem" and they would "seek to create a European fight with General Motors of Europe". They called on the work force to "Reject the package and defend our jobs and our plant (…) by whatever means". The Luton stewards say in their statement; "This is our plant, General Motors of Europe have given up their right to call it theirs". But positive as a European day of action is, on its own in will achieve nothing. It needs to be built on.
Timescale
At Ford the long debilitating time-scale of the ballot procedure was a key factor in killing off resistance. This should not be allowed to happen in Vauxhall. Just like at Dagenham,Vauxhall management have offered a few alternative jobs (at the van plant) and given workers until January 19 to apply for them. Early retirement and redundancy packages are being offered. When the unions met GM’s European bosses in Zurich last Monday it was made absolutely clear that management would not shift an inch and that the closure was going ahead. This was rejected by the unions but then all they proposed was to hold a ballot which will take ages to carry through. An immediate occupation would give a focus for current anger and give much better conditions for winning a ballot.
Don’t let resistance die
It would be a disaster if instead things got strung out. By the time management have done their job with redundancy offers and propaganda about how useless resistance would be, the vote could go the same way as at Fords. A lot is made (rightly) that it is easier under to close plants in Britain under British industrial legislation. But it not just that. It is also easier in Britain because the union leaders have sabotaged any fight back at every stage.
And one defeat leads to another.
A week after the Rover unions accepted the Phoenix deal, and the loss of thousands of jobs, Ford announced the closure of car production at Dagenham. A week after the vote at Dagenham to accept the closure, GM announced the closure of Luton.
In car manufacture companies are moving towards super-plants, so that if one model doesn’t sell they can concentrate the workers on other models. A single model plant does not give them this flexibility. This is why Toyota has bucked the trend and increased its UK investment - although with very small increase in the work force (10%) and a 20% increase in production. It is an attempt to fully utilise their present facilities and give them the flexibility they need.
The issue for Nissan/Renault on the other hand is that they see their future as inside the Euro-zone. Seventy five per cent of its production is inside the EU.
British capital, under new Labour, finds itself in a position where it is inside the bosses club (otherwise known as the European Union) but outside of the Euro-zone, which is the economic driving force of the European union. This is an unacceptable situation for most of manufacturing industry which has its biggest market inside the EU and want to avoid currency fluctuations.
The Chief Executive of Nissan said recently: "The only problem we have is in Europe. It was practically impossible to make a profit in 2000 if you were not manufacturing in euro". Similarly, Corus wants to concentrate production at its Dutch plant is because this is inside the Euro-zone.
Concession bargaining
The other key problem that constantly undermines the struggle to defend jobs in the car industry is repeated rounds of concession bargaining. In Luton the deal done last year made a number of concessions including linking wages to the strength of the pound. This included a guarantee on the future of the plant, which turned out to be not worth the paper it was written on. Management just took the concessions and tore up the guarantee. And what about the role of new Labour and its new relationship with big business and globalised capital?
Stephen Byers knew about the closure in advance and withheld it from the unions. He has only said that he will try to help the workers get other jobs. In other words he acknowledges that GM has the right to close the plant. Tony Blair in his message to Luton promised a rapid reaction force from the Employment Service to find Vauxhall workers other (non-existent) jobs. But not one word about stopping the closure.The principle that management have the right to close the plant is completely accepted. But how it is possible to have a manufacturing industry if plants are closed every time there is a change in the political or economic conditions or the value of the pound?
If GM cannot guarantee these jobs then it should be nationalised as should Fords and Rover. If cars are not needed, and destroy the planet , then useful alternative production, such as vehicles for much needed public services, should be undertaken. The Vauxhall stewards have done well up until now, but the big danger is time. If management is allowed to set the agenda they will do what they did at Ford.
The plant should be occupied now and workers should prepare to widen the struggle. There would be huge support across the industry, and across the trade unions generally for such a lead being given by workers at Vauxhall