Change course at Rolls Royce!

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DIRECT workers at Rolls Royce, Hillington (Glasgow) voted by 670 to 610 at last week's mass meeting (12th November) to continue the strike begun on 20th October.

Shop stewards' convenor and Communist Party member George • Mc Cormack summed up the situation after the vote by saying "With only 60 votes in it, we have to recognise that we don't have a real mandate to continue the dispute. We're walking on a tightrope"

Friction

The strike began as a fight against yet another speed-up at the plant, due to the implementation of • Standard Data times. But within a week, McCormack had transformed the goal of the dispute into 10% extra on the rates for direct workers in exchange for the introduction of Standard Data times.

Whether this demand is won or lost, the dispute (unless its nature is fundamentally changed) can only result in victory for management.

If the 0%' increase conceded, it would mean trading off jobs (lost through the speed-up) for money and increase the differentials and friction between direct and indirect workers.

And if the workers go back empty-handed (which at the moment looks the most likely outcome), then this would obviously be a defeat also, and encourage further attacks from management.

"If they go back now, then we're in for a hiding. Like one of the BL workers said on TV after their vote, it means going back for a beating from management - and when they give you a beating, they don't stop at one. It's like lambs to the slaughter", is how one shop steward summed up the situation.

Such a defeat, for whatever reason, would come at a crucial time for the workforce. This year's pay agreement runs out on November 19th. To return to work defeated is, for the workforce, hardly the best opening fork. negotiations about this year's pay claim.

And four weeks on unofficial strike, with no strike pay or donations of any significance, has also drained the direct workers thus reducing the chance of another strike in the immediate future over this year's pay claim and coming attacks on jobs.

Moreover, the 39 hour week, due under the agreement which ended the 1979 Confed strike, should be implemented on resumption of work. A defeat now would leave the door open to all the kinds of chicanery now going on at BL in connection with its 'introduction' This is the gravity of the present situation at Hillington. It underlines the need to fight to spread the strike throughout the combine to avoid defeat, by taking up the question of this year's pay claim and threatened job losses.

Even last week, three weeks into a divisively conducted dispute for a divisive pay claim, the tables could still have been turned on management.

On Wednesday, the day before the mass meeting, Mclean, director of Rolls Royce operations in Scotland, publicly stated that further job losses at Hilldefinitely because of the strike.

McCormack could easily have called a mass meeting the following day for the entire workforce (instead of just the direct workers) to launch a united fight for a shorter working week to preserve jobs. And since it was the last meeting before mass expiry of this year's pay agreement, the opportunity could have been used to formulate a pay claim democratically agreed upon by the whole workforce, and fought for as of that But McCormack did none of these things. Instead of looking for ways of broadening out the struggle and sharpening its demands, McCormack covered the same old ground about the need for more money to compensate for the introduction of Standard Data times.

Jockeying

Workers at Hillington and Communist Party members/supporters in particular, must recognise that this is the outcome of McCormack's CP politics in which jockeying for posbur *positions in alliances are given priority over independent rank and file mobilisations against the union bureaucracy and againet the capitalists.

Revolutionary socialists must fight to change the course of this dispute, away from the divisive demand for 10% extra solely for direct workers, and instead fight for: work-sharing with no loss of pay, inflation-proofing of wages and opening the books.

KICK OUT THE TORIE Labour democracy fight for a Sociodist WORKERS Pamphlet Orgoniser GOVERNMENT plus postage 1 Socialist Organiser, liddle Lane, London Government figures put inflation currently at 14.9%.

At the last round of talks, on 12th November, the board raised its offer to £8.70 for face workers and £6.30 for surface. The £1 on incentives remains and some new proposals were forthcoming on servicerelated holiday bonus. But that was all.

This, the board claimed, would add an average of 9.1% to the wage packet.

Despite President Joe Gormley's much publicised approval of the deal, the executive which met the day after the 'final offer' voted unanimously to reject it.

Both right and left on the NEC voted to reject the offer. Obviously the forthcoming NUM Presidential elections were a spur to Trevor Bell and Ray Chadburn to try to impress the rank and file by a sudden display of newly discovered militancy.

Only recently, Trevor Bell, the original right-wing candidate, was reported in the press as supporting 3-year contracts instead of annual reviews and Ray Chadburn's moderation

Streets

An all-out fight on and hours by the N would spur the worl class movement to 1 behind the miners a 1972 and 1974. The go nment's pay limit and I eting restrictions woul decisively smas Thatcher would be force do another 'U-turn' would probably end like her predecessor 1974, Ted Heath, out or streets.

Advertisement ALTERNAT ECONOMIC STRATEGY A revolutionary Mar critique Workers' Acti ip plus postage from l 30x 135, London N1 not.

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 19 November 1981 Page 15