The Economist magazine recently carried an article on the UK car industry:
The Car in Front is British. They talked about a revival and a return to the
‘heyday’ of the 1970s.
But most UK car workers would think they’re reading about a different
industry in a different country. They would be wondering why there is so much
insecurity within the industry and why pay, conditions and pensions appear to
be under so much threat.
A TGWU shop steward in the car industry explains what the reality is for
the UK car industry and for car workers.
ON THE day The Economist article was published, right on cue, Ford
announced the end of car manufacture in the historic Jaguar plant in Brown’s
Lane in Coventry. This directly threatens 2,000 jobs and tens of thousands of
others throughout the West Midlands and the rest of the country.
This, the week after Ford management pushed through a major assault on
working conditions at Land Rover’s massive 8,000-strong Solihull plant, lifted
the lid on the reality facing thousands of workers in the car industry in
Britain.
Of course, The Economist is a management journal, so attacks on workers are
always justified if they result in a boost to profits. The warning is clear to
car workers – the future is one where you work much harder for less pay.
The executives may be paid in millions but the price British car workers
will have pay to keep their jobs will be in their pay and conditions.
In reality, this is a continuation of a managerial counter-revolution which
has taken place within the industry over the last decade or so. Today’s car
workers in Britain stand on the shoulders of the past (the 1970s in
particular), when good wages and conditions were won through industrial
action.
Willingness to fight
Even now, union membership is almost 100% in the main plants. None of this
was given by the big car companies such as Ford and Vauxhall (General Motors
(GM)). It was a result of the shop-floor’s willingness to fight. But now these
gains are being targeted by an increasingly confident (or desperate)
management., which is using a wide variety of tactics to achieve their aims.
Some companies like Ford have deliberately moved to break up their national
‘combines’ which they correctly see as a major source of strength of the
workforce. With over ten plants, representing about 30,000 workers negotiating
together, the unions were able to set up national agreements, on pay,
conditions and pensions.
Real improvements were won because of this, with workers in low-paid areas
like South Wales especially benefiting. During the decade up until the late
1990s, workers won concessions with often only the threat of strike action.
Ford moved to break this up. Firstly, they followed GM’s Delphi Corp in
‘spinning off’ their component manufacturing plants into ‘Visteon’, which
meant in Britain that four plants were immediately outside the Ford ‘Blue
Oval’.
Real purpose
At first workers in these plants were told that they were ‘an enterprise of
Ford Motor Company’. But after Visteon was launched as an ‘independent’
company in 2000, the real purpose behind the move became apparent. While
existing workers remained on Ford terms and conditions, new hires were
employed on a ‘Visteon’ contract with pay 10% lower (later revealed to be 14%
lower!) and no entry to the final salary pension for ten years (now nine).
Without a vote from the shop-floor, the unions allowed management to employ
workers on different wages working alongside each other, doing the same work
for different pay. As always, weakness invites aggression, with the company
now pushing for a third tier of wages! They now want Visteon plants to be seen
as ‘Tier 1 component manufacturing’, rather than ‘car assembly’ – with the
same lower wages.
Also, the company has seen the spin-off as an opportunity to become much
more aggressive in cutting costs, usually at the expense of the shop-floor.
This has consisted of contracting out ‘indirect work’ – things like security,
tooling, stores etc, with the loss of jobs. In fact, Visteon has become a
testing ground for attacks on working conditions that Ford is increasingly
using in its assembly plants.
For instance, the use of temporary workers as well as ‘teamworking’ – using
skilled workers in production, thereby reducing the number of semi-skilled
workers and therefore staffing in general.
Agreements
As well as Visteon, the Ford umbrella in Britain includes Jaguar, Land
Rover and Aston Martin as well as the remaining Ford plants, all on separate
agreements on pay and conditions.
It is becoming clear that companies within the industry are learning new
methods from each other. TRW, which makes steering components just outside
Neath, created a separate factory unit within their workplace, called Neath
Vale Unit. This enabled these workers to be employed on a new inferior
contract.
One consequence of this is that if redundancies occur, and over 160 have
just been announced, the established practice of ‘last in first out’ could be
ignored if those ‘junior’ workers’ product is still required.
Now Visteon have developed Visteon Regional Assembly Plant (VRAP) – a
similar development with new workers on a third tier of pay, possibly on a
local pay rate.
The big car companies are using the ‘carrot and stick’ method to force
concessions out of their workforces. On one hand, the threat of outsourcing
work to Eastern Europe or China etc is made to push through new work
practices.
Threatening
Although, with Solihull, Ford used the big stick of the threat of closure
to wring long-desired concessions from the workforce. Apparently, this
includes putting video cameras on production lines! In Krupps Camford
Pressings in Llanelli, the company are threatening the 500 workers with
closure after Christmas if they don’t make ‘savings’.
On the other hand, the company gets different plants to ‘bid’ for new work.
This has resulted in shop steward committees competing with each other in
giving up their members’ conditions to secure new product into plant.
Inevitably, this can lead to a breakdown in solidarity between plants, with a
‘dog eat dog’ attitude.
Also, in this way, national agreements can be bypassed if it makes
‘business sense’, for example, allowing new shift patterns or a new lower tier
of wages.
None of this is specific to the UK. The rest of the EU is catching up with
British ‘Thatcherism’. Until recently, workers in British manufacturing were
often made redundant because it was cheaper than laying off better-protected
workers in France or Germany for example.
While the trade union leaders have confidence in the EU to protect workers,
its not shared by German workers. They are having to face the reality of
Schroeder’s ‘agenda 2010’ which makes it easier (and cheaper!) for them to be
sacked.
German workers
For example, DaimlerChrysler workers outside Stuttgart agreed to an
increase in the working week to stop production and jobs being exported to
South Africa. German Ford workers accepted a pay freeze to stop outsourcing,
while similar concessions have been given by French Bosch workers in Lyon.
In the USA, the assault has been even more vicious. Car unions, mainly the
UAW, have given huge concessions in order to be recognised by the car
manufacturers. In April, the union signed a seven-year agreement with Visteon
ushering in a two-tier wage system with the ‘new hire’ rate set at $14 an hour
– $10 an hour less than those with Ford contracts!
To take advantage of this ‘cost-saving opportunity’ fully, management and
the union have agreed to Ford and Visteon offering early retirement ‘buy-outs’
and transfers of Ford contract workers from Visteon to Ford plants while being
replaced on the new hire rate! In another plant in Michigan, the new rate was
reduced to $10.30 an hour. Alongside this, both Visteon and Delphi Corp have
made thousands of redundancies over the last year.
However, it is not all one way. Car workers internationally have shown that
they are willing to fight to defend their conditions, even against the odds.
Land Rover workers went on strike this year in Britain, against pay
differences with Jaguar. The deal at Daimler was hammered out after 60,000
workers went on strike, securing some concessions from management.
America
But in America, the brutal attacks have been met with at times, violent
defiance. Twelve pickets at the Bedford Visteon plant had to be treated in
hospital after confrontations with security guards in a strike over a new
contract. The company tried to break the strike by bussing in scabs in a
dispute that was started when the union rank and file overturned an agreement
signed by the union officials.
In this most international of industries, only by building links across
countries and even continents can workers stop the multinationals switching
production to undermine their jobs and conditions.
Workers in companies such as Jaguar should demand that the ‘books’ are
opened to ensure that they are not being cooked to show losses to justify
closures. Both Fords and GM are now in profit on a world scale.
Despite what big business journals such as The Economist say, the British
car industry is not entering a new heyday. Any prospect of a home-grown car
giant has disappeared over the last decade, to be replaced by Japanese and
German companies alongside mainly long-standing American multi-nationals.
Proof
The car industry is proof that the ‘social peace’ of the 1990s is well and
truly over. The car giants have decided that their workers have to accept the
realities of ‘change’ – low wages, worse conditions and inferior pensions.
In Britain, local and national trade union leaderships with the mindset of
the 1990s and the aftermath of the miners’ strike defeat, have so far failed
to match up to the attacks and closures.
The steel industry is a warning to car workers that endless concessions
will not safeguard jobs in the long term.
For younger workers, there will not be the same ‘attractive’ redundancy
offers, just more insecurity and less protection. Only through mobilising the
shop floor on a combine or even industry-wide basis can the bosses’ assault be
challenged.
Car workers still represent a massive force within society with huge
potential power. With the main assembly plants, component manufacturing and
associated engineering etc, there is a force of hundreds of thousands of
workers.
Even if national agreements break down, local battles can revive the shop
stewards’ committees, particularly with pressure from an angry workforce.
Socialist society
The history of the shop stewards’ movement of the 1960s and 1970s should be
studied by the new generation to show that there is an alternative when
confronting an all too confident management.
The madness and anarchy of capitalism is all too clear as well. This is an
industry that world-wide makes nearly 60 million cars and trucks a year. Its
products consume almost half the world’s oil and rubber as well as a quarter
of its glass and 15% of its steel.
Ten huge multi-national companies are involved in intense competition with
each other, drumming up more customers to eat up ever greater amounts of
scarce resources, which further pollute the environment.
Yet the productive capacity that has been accumulated could, in the right
hands, be used to transform the world in which we live.
Imagine how public transport alone could be totally revamped and improved
with these gigantic resources used as part of a planned economy. Also, without
the vested interests of the car and oil companies, cleaner and more efficient
fuels could be properly investigated.
Only a socialist society – by nationalising the massive car companies with
democratic workers’ control – could harness these productive forces on a
national, continental and world-wide basis to start to solve the basic
problems of humanity.
