On 16th March, 1000 workers at GN's Bredbury steel plant near Stockport occupied the factory after the management threatened a lock-out. This threat came after the workers at Bredbury decided to ban piece-working and overtime in advance of the target date set by Manchester area engineers to put the same measures in to force across the region. This regionally co-ordinated action is in se pport of their claim for a t4 across the b and increase and a 35 hour week. As we went to press everal other plants had followed the ex ample of the Bredbury men. These actions will be the prelude to mass occupations in several hundred firms if the employers carry out their threat of mass-lock-outs when 200,000 engineers ban piece-work from Monday, 27th March. The prospect of a confrontation on this scale has already frightened some of the weaker members of the employers associations federated in the Engineering Employers Federation. Six or seven plants have already caved in and conceded increases ranging from £3.00 to $5.50. The EEF has responded to this lack ployer solidarity by expelling at least the firms involved. apation is a very imporwill be the firs face one of the most serious struggles they have had to deal with so far; on the other hand to allow the men to pro Fact of forces in rkable developments are the decisions taken in both the Manand Sheffield regions to fight all the ms in engineering in a co-ordinated This represents an attempt by engineerakers to break out of the policy imon the membership in January by the ration of Shipbuilding and Engineeras following the breakdown of namy talks with the EEF at the beginthe year. malcy of waging a national struggle at icel is the result of the reluctance of SEU and particularly the AUEW, the union in the CSEU, to fight the EEF We have analysed this before (The it. 34, January 1972). This goes the annual conference of the AUEW 1971. At this conference, the milie a determined effort to break out onal pattern of wage bargaining try. This pattern has been as folitionally, national negotiations concerned with such things as mines, length of holidays etc. There been a tradition of three-year deals. p of engineering workers howade up of a large proportion of , bonus, and overtime working. mum rate for a skilled engineer I earnings in many areas, especially ngham and Coventry area, can this figure. The strength of the a workers is on the shop floor. he recession into which British Has plunged since early 1970 has mely difficult for engineering sh up their earnings by the ethod of bargaining on pieceLievel, There are several obvious reasons for this. The fall in the volume of work in the capital goods sector means that many engineers are on a short week. The appearance of significant unemploymen (even in Coventry) unders mes their barg ing power. Thirdly, the lack of demand for capital goods means that employers can afford long strikes and take a very tough line with the shop floor. The re-appearance of lock-outs in the industry last year is a very ominous development. Face with these adverse conditions on the shop floor and with rampant inflation, engineering workers sought some way out of the situation. The militants put forward demands for straight across-the-board increases, to be backed up by national action if necessary. Scanlon argued against this policy and defended the traditional pattern, but was forced to accept the demand in diluted form. The EEF have since adamantly refused the engineers" demands for a "substantial increase" in addition to rises on the basic rates. The talks finally broke down after the EEF refused to offer more than £1.50 (from next July!) and the CSEU instructed its members to negotiate the claim at plant level. The CSEU has called no national action to back up its demands. National engineering strikes have not occurred for half a century. action which would have had a similar effect without exhausting the union's weak financial reserves, such as national overtime and piecework bans ete. Nor has such action been taken on the other major issue of the industry-the York procedure agreements. These agreements- in which all disputes were settled by virtual panels of employers from district to national level, a long pipe line into which disputes and demands disappeared for monthswere cancelled by the unions in 1971 after several years of negotiations in which the unions demanded more 'adequate plant procedures. The industry is now without procedure agreements, which the men are also having to renegotiate at plant level. Hence two million engineering workers are now struggling in isolated plants to gain from the employers that which was refused at national level, trying to use their shop floor strength which the present economic situation has undermined. This pollcy has had its successes and its failures. In British Leyland for instance, the demand for the 'status quo' and 'adequate' plant procedures has been conceded. British Leyland can no longer initiate changes on the shop floor without going through procedure (the aim of this concession is actually to shift the balance of power away from the mass meeting to the procedure). The other side of the picture of course is the use of the Industrial Relations Act on the more isolated groups of workers in the industry who are fighting the claim in their plants-the court injunction on Kaymet workers in South London is one such example.
If significant concessions are won by the better organised workers then the CSEU will take the laim back to the EEF who, the AUEW hopes, ould be less amited and less able to present a olithic face. In the process however, many of the weaker groups of workers will have taken a battering, the Act will have been used on numer the ruling class, so far completely unable to solve the crisis which the trade union offensive has created for them, will have been let off the hook The most powerful trade union in Britain will not have been mobilized for an offensive. This is not accidental. The 'left' bureaucracy knows that it must do a deal with Wilson on some form of incomes policy if the Labour Party is ever to appear as a credible enough alternative bourgeois leadership to Heath. Another victory like that of the miners makes this much more difficult. The 'left' bureaucracy are also under the thumb of the right in the TUC. For the TUC the present offensive is extremely dangerous and threatens to sabotage their hopes of 'growth' in the British economy, by further undermining the confidence of investors.
The EEF may be the toughest employers organisation in the country, but they rely on the structural weakness of the Confederation (which represents some 18 unions) and the political weak-ness of its leaders. In the 1967 CSEU claim, the EEF managed to stall the negotiations for 18 months. The mere threat of national action in late 1968 was sufficient then to make them cave in. Although in the present recession such a cave in would be more difficult to provoke, Scanlon's credibility in the AUEW has suffered from the failure to mobilize the union nationally on the demands made at last year's conference. The event: in Manchester and Sheffield, however, reverse some of the negative aspects of the AUEW policy, and if these regional offensives are followed through they will speed up the process of winning a victory over the EEF on a national scale. The leadership of the AUEW has so far had no option but to endorse the actions of the men.
Manchester IMG
More detailed analysis and interviews will appear in the nexr issue of The Red Mole.