Right to Work Ver to Profit

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Royal Pride: a pay fight grew into a fight for jobs The Gardners occupation - ended with 300 'If the NUM can be persuaded to black the products of Snipe's companies, then I would predict that this (Laurence Scotts) dispute can be brought to a victorious conclusion within one week' AUEW Divisional Organiser, May 1981 WHEN THE Eastern Leg of the People's March reached Sheffield it was met by the Plansee strikers who had for many weeks been actively fighting against unemployment.

But march stewards prevented the strikers collecting for their dispute and Plansee convenor lan Paisley was refused permission to speak from the platform.

When the march reached the Midlands, regional secretary Brian Mathers was given a prominent place in the platform to condemn the Tories and argue the need to fight rising unemployment.

Yet Mr Mathers had just had a golden opportunity to do just that in the strike by TGWU members at Ansells brewery, opposing closure.

In fact he did everything possible to get the strikers to accept unemployment. The Ansell workers present heckled and booed his contribution.

These incidents illustrate a central problem in the labour movement today.

Momentum

Since the Tories' retreat in the face of the miners in February the Labour PartyTUC campaign against unemployment has gained momentum. In the workplaces the fight against unemployment has flared at several small but important potential centres of resistence - Laurence Scotts, Lee Jeans, Ansells, Plansee.

But the leadership has done nothing to develop and Link up these strugzies, and make them the centre of its campaign. It has carried on its campaign quite separate from these struggles and left them isolated.

The official campaign' refuses to build links. It offers words as a substitute for the failure to place all the resources of the movement behind existing struggles.

Dissipated The mass shop floor support for the demonstration and the People's March shows that the makings of a fight are there but it is being dissipated.

Support for the fight that is actually going on now is ignored in favour of Michael Foot's vague rhetoric about the future, ". "... need to get the Tories out at the earliest possible opportunity."

We agree with Michael Foot on this objective. Unlike him we believe in creating that opportunity.

To wait on the next election provides no answers to the problems workers face today.

It means aluwuis LIN due do allanino the Tories to batter away at the workers' movement for another 24 months. It means a disillusioned, demoralised movement which can swing to the right.

We support Lee Jeans and Laurence Scotts:

*Because they are actively fighting unemployment and defending the movement. They are doing; not talking. Victories for them will strengthen the unions and raise the confidence of other workers.

*Remarico their struxgles open up the possibility of unity with other groups of workers whose interests are the same, and the potentiality of an escalating movement to achieve what Foot just talks about - bringing down the Tories.

We therefore call on Michael Foot and Len Murray to make available to the fighters the resources they are making available to the talkers.

We are not saying that there are not problems in moving in this direction. We are saying that the official leadership is not attempting to confront and grapple with these problems.

The present fightback is limited. There is genuine fear on the shop , floor. Many workers cannot see a direct answer to the dole queue.

Let us look at some of the practical problems which will have to be overcome if these struggles are to be made more effective and develop into the kind of challenge to the Tories the leadership are not prepared to mount.

Central to success is winning the battle of ideas.

Earlier this year the Coal Board set about closing 30 pits.

Sell jobs

They had a case. They argued that the existence of these pits pushes up the average price of coal and pulls down NCB profits. The loss the NCB makes is directly attributable to them.

What did the miners do? Start arguing within this framework of capitalist commonsense that the pits were really viable? Bring in their accountants to show they knew better than the Coal Board? Try to negotiincreases in the redunate dancy payments of up to $ 28,000?

No. They didn't allow this kind of argument to distract them from the real struggle. They acted on the basis that nobody has the right to sell working class jobs at whatever the price; that • the needs of the workers come before the needs of state capitalist industry; that all the employers understand is the John Tocher, we ack lakı application of well organised and swiftly administered brute force; that it was no good waiting on the leaders before taking action.

They didn't allow themselves to be sidetracked. They got stuck into the real struggle and they forced Thatcher to retreat.

We need to learn all these lessons, but above all that pur starting point must be work sharing on full pay, not enterprise profitability.

The viability argument may even allow some workers to win a short term victory - but at the price of dividing the workers from brothers and sisters elsewhere and binding them tighter to the capitalist logic.

What shall we say to workers who have fought on the basis of profitability when our accountants later tell us the cupboard really is bare?

It is the years of basing pay claims on the need of capital, on the bosses' ability to pay rather than the workers' necessity to live which makes so many officials and stewards today hyponotised by workers making sacrifices to boost viability by increased productivity, voluntary redundancies and no-strike clauses.

Viability

Whilst avoiding the tempiation to brand every single settlement as a sell-out, we also need to point to limitations of victories won largely on the viability argument. At Gardiners, for example, the settlement involved 300 voluntary redundancies, a short working scheme and a figure wage deal.

Workers struggling in plants not owned by profitable multinationals might receive an impetus form the fact that Gardiners fought and organised. How far the example of Gardiners would help when the going got tough is another matter.

Open the books? Yes! But not to debate on the terrain of viability but to educate in the workings of the system, to take the workers forward to selfmanagement.

Immediately

A threatened workforce must act immediately in the face of redundancies. Otherwise enthusiasm can be dissipated. At Talbot's Linwood plant, like at Dunlop's plant on Merseyside, much time and energy was put into. lobbying on the basis that the plant was viable and organising financial and good will promises before the workers took any action.

This was a diversion from mobilising the workers inside the plant. Outside support can be lined up once an occupation starts. It is no substitute for a struggle to achieve it.

The initial battle must be won inside the workplace.

When Linwood stewards talked of a meeting of 700 West of Scotland stewards, many of the more cynical workers, aware of the limitation of this, shouted promises, promises.

Yet at Laurence Scolt's the officials put lo the •The piatform on wi dispute was no closu redundancies. So if! would amount to a s force who have stucl heartedly throughor difficult dispute.

«Scotts has becor local struggle. It's a resistance against ti workers that in view of the employer's threat to withdraw redundancy money if they occupied, they might end up with nothing; but they were still prepared to occupy. More and more workers are seeing the limitations of redundancy pay as a substitute for a job when there is no alternative work. The sugar on the pill is wearing thin. The miners for example fought against the acceptance of six or seven times the maximum £4,000 accepted at Chrysler.

A lot, of course, can depend on the past traditions of struggle and politics.

The irony is that it is often sections relatively new to struggle such as Laurence Scott's, Royal Pride and Lee Jeans who have come to the front with aggression and determination.

Lee Jeans Lee Jeans, for example, have only recentiy been 100% organised and had never previously been in an important " strike. They looked at the situation simply: "with 16%, unem.

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ADAS 88:50.28 PHOTO: JOHN SMITH (IFL) Inside the Lawrence Scott meet 4 w tüik AoCs * -

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