planned for this Friday.
in December over parity payments.
Leyland.
In a full page advert in the Financial Times of 6 December 1978, BL management spelt out the now disputed agreement was all about.
After listing what the offer involved - essentially a 5 per cent increase and towards parity in the different the advertisement emphasised:
"All of this is being paid for - not by the government or customers but productivity in the form of demanning and increased outpur per man.
•Unlike some productivity deals, this one will only be paid Socialist Challenge 8 February 1979 page 4 AN ALL-OUT stoppage at British Leyland claim management has failed to honour an agreement made In fact it is the union leadership which is primarily responsible for the loss of earnings now threatened at and when the production has been delivered."
Management are now claiming that this extra production has not "been delivered". cite the lorry drivers' strike and the strike at the Drews Lane LOISISSOI plant mingham last November as the move reasons for the failure to meet the production target.
Consequently, they say, the company will not pay parity wages for November December 1978. extra have also asked that January and February payments deferred until March.
Grenville Hawley, time official of the Transport and General Workers Union was responsible for the negotiations with Leyland, has said that the that union side were misled b management into signing the December agreement.
But BL made it very plain at the time that higher tivity was necessary to fulfil the parity obligations extra Rather than being "misled"
the union negotiators must be faulted for not spelling out in detail the They involved when they recomAmended acceptance through a secret ballot of all Leyland in Bir- workers.
When cune offer made, Socialist pointed out that the parity had ANCCICBE financing and described the and offer as 'a raffle ticket'. Management But others were only too keen to be Particulariv to the fore was shop stewards chairperson and the full- Communist Party Derek Robinson.
At a mass meeting at the produc- Such agreement Virror agreement efficient, concerned liable.
was first Challenge to be self The promote the deal.
BL's member Longbridge plant in November, he described those opposed agreement. to the deal as 'the lunatic left, workers the Trots and their henchmen". themselves insisted: are situation. prepared to be reasonable.' support for the has won warm praise from BL's boss Michael Edwardes, who commented in a recent interview in the Daily *If anything I would say that the Communist shop stewards in Leyland are among the most ana lc The 'reliable' leadership of Robinson, Hawley and others has now landed BL's workers in entrenched the worst of possible worlds.
December agreement limited wage rises to 5 per cent, il pleagea une umon to accepi 7,000 redundancies, and now it first has enabled management to postpone parity payments.
workers are to extricate themselves from this mess, it is obvious that the first thing that has to go is the Otherwise would soon find in a Catch If they strike against the postponement of parity payments, then the resulting loss of production would allow man- the agement to put off paying up even further; but if they don't strike, there is no way Leyland will backtrack Apart from the future of the be.
WHILE the presses at The Times remain silent, the print and journalist unions facing an OSTEEE OVC HCY technology have produced their own version of the Thunderer The Times Challenger Planned to be a monthly, the 16-page issue CORZILS reports and opinion columns from chapel officials and union leaders on the fight against Lord Thomson. agr cenicul, now be taking a long hard look BL workers will both the participation' machinery which promoted this agreement and those on the union side who spoke up for it A new fighting leadership is needed at BL. If the events of past few months prove anything, they prove that Derek Robinson and his allies have never been that fighting leadership, nor do they want to Funded from labour movement advertising, 100,000 copies of the paper have been produced.
Several articles raise the issue of press freedom, and this will be one of the themes of an open conference on the challenge at The Times to be held by the NATSOPA print union Saturday 10 February, 2 to 5.30pm at the "Y' Hotel, Grea Russell St, London WC1.