With up to 30,000 British Leyland car workers facing the chop,and BL convenors still refusing to break the secrecy surrounding the negotiations on Ryder's participation proposals, the Cowley plant at Oxford is once again taking the brunt of management attacks. Eleven hundred manual and 300 staff jobs are to be axed by Christmas.
This savage new attack on jobs mannine aercements and worknE conditions has been accompanied by a propaganda campaign designed to "prove to the unions and workers that LIC Cur DuCKs are necessary to casure me company s survival in addition to me usual tactic or sending individual letters to every worker's home, the management has taken the unusual step of inviting the senior stewards from the Assembly Plant to inspect the factory's What management are offering with their factory "budget' is a series of cooked-up and one-sided statistics aimed at winning the senior stewards' rubber stamp of approval for Leyland's jobcutting plans. But the JSSC will have none of it. As soon as the job cuts were announcca last week, the open tne books comnatice was instructed to draw up a report on the Company's statement so that the members would be armed against the sort of propaganda usco to con workers mto accepung re dundancies and speed-up.
COMMITTEE
The committee met, and its report included a devastating exposure of the way the Company's statement had rigged figures for sales levels and the run-down of the labour force to try and "prove" the case for the proposed cuts. The report provided the workers with a detalled breakdown or now the cuts were going to be implemented - information the Company had hoped to keep secret, since it brought home to workers just what the real impact of the voluntary redundancies on manning levels would The stewards also decided that when the factory budget was revealed to the very much with us.
Oxford IMG and various individuals.
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senior stewares. the open me books' committee should be in attendance, so that they could draw up a further report with a critical assessment of the mormauon provided - and even more Important, or te intormanion not pro vided - by the exercise. Sensing correcuy unar une subjecton or their ligures to the critical examination of a body answerable to the stewards would be likely to upset their schemes to recruit the senior stewards' collaboration in their plans, the Company refused to admit the Open the Books' committee to the meeting, which was therefore Caled on.
DIFFERENCE This episode proves that a world of dillerence exists between the workers demand for the opening of the books, in order to obtain vital information on which to plan a strategy of resistance to the bosses' attacks, and the sort of communications exercise wnich ine employers are now engaging in as part of the implementation of the Ryder This is the danger involved in the acceptance by the BL convenors of the Ryder plan for "participation committees"
It is not just management that is now being fought for information the BE convenors have consistently maintamca me sccrecy over me nerona tions on the Ryder participation committees. The trade union participants on the Kyder Conmittee - such as Harry Urwin of the T&GWU - have equally failed to reveal the secret sections of mne reporto s. workers. all tnis, ine Department or maustry under Benn as well as Varley - has refused to disclose to the workers the details of the secret sections of the Ryder Report.
The demand for the opening of the books at Cowley is an important step to breaking up Ryder's plans for class-collaboration in mass sackings. By fighting for all details of the Company's operation at all levels to be open to inspeclion by the elected representatives of te workers, a strategy to derena Jods from Company and Government attacks can be planned.
Cowley IMG NO MONEY, NO PAPER!
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