TGWU Broad Left slams Kitson by Tony Richardson

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MEETING in Birmingham on Saturday, the TGWU Region 5 'Broad Left' passed the following resolution:

''This meeting of Region 5 Broad Left condemns the role of Alex Kitson, acting General Secretary of the TGWU, in the Leyland strike.

•'The sum total of his actions was to sell out the "He, together with the other General Secretaries and the TUC, went in over the heads of the Leyland Negotiating Committee to make a sellout deal of •As General Secretary of the union representing over half of all Leyland manu•al workers his 'sitting on the fence' when Duffy, Boyd and the other General Secretaries were urging a return W:. w..ch was interpreted by everybody as going along with the deal.

'Brother Kitson's actions were directly contrary to union policy which is to fight all government wage horms and he should have been urging Leyland workers to do this rather than holding them back.

Petition

Region 5 covers most of the major Leyland plants and this resolution was passed after an hour'ds discussion with stewards from several of these factories participating.

The meeting decided on an active campaign to take the resolution through union bodies and to pennon the shopfloor against the sell-out.

This meeting was in Kitsồn stark contrast to the Birmingham AUEW 'Broad Left' which discussed Leyland for two minutes and didn't decide to do anything. through if they wanted to go in and who on the second morning agreed with the police to limit the 'official' pickets to six. Most of the pickets took no notice of this.

There were three arrests on the picket line, the first arrests on the gates since 1934.

This latter fact is a pointer to the conservative tradition that is now beginning torraci.

PSF (the Body Plant) was the first of the plants in Oxford to be unionised in the mid-30s. Its present leadership has not had to struggle for unionisation as in the Assembly Plant or other plants.

Diverse

It became a very insular plant with high piecework rates and very right-wing leadership. The piecework rates were raised by jobcutting and so the workrate was very high.

As with all Leyland plants with the development towards centralisation, piecework was abolished and Measured Day paint shop.

For two months prior to the wages dispute the 3,500 TGWU members had been on an overtime ban because of the way the bonus scheme was working. The bonus had risen to £l1, before falling to f6. Two weeks before the dispute it was £4.26. Last week's bonus was 57p.

It is no surprise that both mass meeting votes in the Body Plant, including that on Tuesday morning, were almost unanimously for strike action.

There is a change taking place in the plant. This is shown not only by the picketing, but also by last week's election for Senior Steward - where SO supporter Tony Richardson got 52 votes against right-wing convenor Bill Roche's 64.

Another SO supporter Howard Lloyd got 43 votes worker-priest Tony Williamson's 67 for chair.

The old leadership is fast becoming politically redundant, not just at the Body Plant, but all over Leyland.

The two days of strike showed the potential forces for change: