Cowley plant walks out

Scan page 9

Backing for Scotts' stand MILITANCY has erupted at the Cowley Assembly Plant. Workers on the Ital track walked out last Friday morning when their bonus earnings dropped from £10 per week to less than £2.

They were quickly followed by workers from the Honda Acclaim track and the Princess track.

By mid-afternoon the whole plant was at a standstill.

5,000 copies of a fourpage Leyland Action Committee bulletin were distributed in major 3L factories in the week before the Combine Committee meeting and got a huge response.

The bulletin argued for an across-the-board claim and explained why bonus payments should not be included in the claim. It gave reports from the factories and called for the reconstitution of a national negotiating committee for BL on a democratic basis. are now quite capable of handling the problems of leadership without 'guidance' from above.

You cannot rely on the full-time officials. But you cannot ignore them. They must be tested and pushed as far as they can go.

The main lesson of the Scotts struggle that has become apparent to leading stewards is this: if you ignore your union branch and District, and are simply active at the level of the plant, then you'll end up getting the union leadership you deserve.

Where we must differ with the SWP is around the central question of fighting to recapture and repossess the apparatuses of labour movement organisations (the trade unions and the Labour Party) for the class-struggle Left. Can anyone doubt that if the class-struggle Left had a majority Boyd drawn ir District Caught between low wages and speed-up, workers in Cowley are more than ready for a showdown with Edwardes. On Monday morning the Honda Acclaim workers remained on strike and sat on the tracks.

A management offer of a paid mass meeting of all production workers at 11 am failed to get them to start work, and they stayed on strike until the mass meetACTION *,1 Amps 198: 1981 2 Annual Review: £20 Across the board Available from 194 Dawlish Road, Birming ham 29 (send SAE) of EC positions in the AUEW a victory at Laurence Scotts would have been attained weeks ago?

At the end of the day, all the rank and file activity at the base of the union will come to nought unless we have a coherent strategy for weeding out both the Boyds and the Hattersleys.

support with‹ defiance of Committee took place.

But the very militant mass meeting was completely sold out by the two convenors Bob Fryer of the TGWU and Doug Hobbs of the AUEW.

They argued that nothing could be done about the bonus, and told the workers to "keep your powder dry for the annual review"

Reduce

When a motion came from the floor for an overtime ban, they argued that it would "reduce production to a 3-day week" . This is true - and exactly the kind of action the meeting was looking for.

But what Fryer and Hobbs couldn't do by force of argument they did by other means.

A vote of at least 3-1 in favour of the overtime ban was declared from the platform to have been lost.

Scenes

Angry scenes followed, after which workers went back to their tracks, had their own section meetings and imposed an overtime ban anyway.

Some sections went home and are still out on strike.

Workers on the plant are angry and confused, particularly at the role played by Bob Fryer whom they have supported in the past for his stand against the management.

Shop stewards аге demanding an emergency stewards committee meeting to discuss the episode and possibly call a reconvened mass meeting to put a principled policy against Edwardes' attacks.

Subscribe Special offer for the new weekly: £3.50 for three months, £6 for six months, £11 for a year.

Name.

Address..

Send to Socialist iser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8.

Scan page 10

Thursday