By Pat Hickey, TGWU Solihull MICHAEL EDWARDES is just too smug for words. Like some elderly headteacher the end assembly, he chides those at the Park Royal bus plant who failed to pull their socks up and pats Speke 2 on the head for being good boys and girls.
But instead of handing out school prizes he's. taking away thousands of jobs.
Winners 'Backing the winners' is Edwardes' new motto. Unfortunately there will be none among Leyland's 165,000 workers.
Those who still have their jobs will face speed-up and ditions. Every fight for a increase will be used as an excuse for more sackings, as Edwardes has made clear over the national engineering claim.
So who are the winners? They are shareholders who for received protits that ploughed back into investment - the real reason for Leyland's problems And they are the private financiers to whom the Tories want to return Leyland after Edwardes has got it back on its feet at the expense of Leyland workers.
Edwardes can afford confident if the unions carry on as Grenville Hawley, officer for the TGWU, has said that the union's policy has always been not to accept compulsory redundancy'.
Yet that has not stopped 18,000 jobs being lost since January 1978, or the closure of the Speke and Southall plants. The union leaders showed no sign of giving a national lead then, and there is no sign of one today.
Lambeth Trades Council, personal Rover only is going on, of term facts.
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years were never without answers charges of 'unprofitability" resisted. extra-large seemed an casier way Dul.
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to be change their whole approach. national minimum time the 'market forces' profit.
Council is planning to close all nursery schools in the area. Its provision of nursery places was stupendous before crackpot discuss industrial action until we know what says Grenville Hawley.
So instead of that, the national Joint negotiating committee has set up an emergency committee to find out the The national combine committee, which is best placed to give a lead when the national officers don't, has that no. plant should action. if the On paper that policy could defeat the latest 'plan' of Edwardes. Rover workers could veto the movement of as they the Cowley workers could refuse the new But in the real world things are different. When Speke No 1 plant was the closed the combines policy was never The workers at Speke - faced with having to mount an isolated struggle, Edwardes' - never Southall the lure of redundancy payments If there is finally to be a fightback in Leyland then the unions need to The TUC emergency resolution is just one more example of how they have accepted the logic of Edwardes argument. Their answer is to insist on imported cars and put import controls on those cars without that minimum.
unions said that workers' jobs and livelihoods can no longer be dependent on the whims of and ine It's time they said that the work available in Leyland nationally must be shared out without any loss in la familiar case of divide land rule. In July this year the Education Committee was going to cut school meals. Before that it had pay, and that they oppose any job loss, voluntary or otherwise.
And it's time they national plan for immediate action to show they mean business.
It should include occupation of those plants and sections closure; national strike stoppages to back that up; and the boycotting of work transferred from other plants.
Mass membership meetings, plan stewards' conferences and a nationa stewards' conference can prepare the Lead A clear and vigorous lead at this point can inspire confidence in the membership and wipe the smugness Edwardes' face. Prevarication and delay are a recipe for confusion and demoralisation. The biggest fight facing BL workers is that of forcing unions, and the combine committee, into giving that lead. Agreements honour the mutuality agreements which specify that changes have to be agreed by both sides reducing staff and Incl them again if this proved necessary after talks with the The SD1 stewards insisted that the status quo should remain until after agreement is reached with the union.
The works committee said they should 'test management's integrity'. The stewards decided unanimously recommending that the strike should continue at the mess meeting that day.
But the harm had already been