Land Rover Workers Stand Firm in their Wage Claim

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Land Rover Workers Stand Firm in their Wage Claim

Ford Denies Plans to Close Jaguar Plant

Car Workers Must Organise According to the New Reality

Government Says New Aircraft Carriers Are Not Being Built to Save Shipyards

Workers at Ford-owned Land Rover based at Solihull in the West Midlands voted overwhelmingly last week to reject a pay offer worth 6.5% over two years. The 9,000 members of the Transport and General Workers Union at the company turned down the proposed deal by 5,055 votes to 1,117. Union officials are set to meet to decide their next move. The union would have to hold another ballot if it decides to threaten industrial action.

            Dave Osborne, national official of the TGWU, said: "This is a clear indication of the real sense of anger and betrayal felt by our members. The company should reflect very seriously on this overwhelming rejection and we would urge them to reopen negotiations so that a sensible settlement can be found."

            This pay deal has to be seen in the light of the announcement by the giant transnational Ford to move production to the Jaguar plant at Halewood in Merseyside.

            Workers throughout the Midlands are faced with organising to oppose major capital movements by large transnational corporations and banks. Bank workers at HSBC, manufacturing workers at Alstom and Goodyear and many others including Longbridge are wanting the full weight of the unions put behind what they believe to be true: that something must be organised!

            From Canada to Genk in Belgium, workers are in motion against the giant multinational Ford.

            The 6.5% deal at Land Rover Solihull has been used by the company to pressurise workers to give up and accept poor working practices to boost productivity and profitability. The thin end of the wedge is being used to extend these working practices across the board to Halewood and beyond by introducing them under duress at the Solihull plant, planting false hope about the planned future of the site.

            Workers and their unions refused to endorse the two-year offer and demanded parity for the same work at Jaguar. The shop floor has dubbed the plans as "Martini" contracts, where the workers are to be made to move, "any time, any place and any where!" What does the company have in store? Move workers to any plant without compensation or redundancy payments? One worker said, "What people here are saying is, would you sign a blank cheque and give to someone you didn't trust?" Another said, "Everyone is saying that for £12 a week we will have to give up everything and be prepared to do anything."

            The wage struggle is part of the preparation for the big political battle against the transnationals. From this standpoint workers remember that Unity Is Strength! Workers are preparing for class battles in future and must not be divided on the basis of the threat of closure. Instead the workers know that through tempering themselves in the struggle over pay and conditions they can meet the capitalist offensive with a counter offensive of their own.

Ford Chief Operating Officer Nick Scheele has denied a report that the US car giant will close one of its three plants in Britain that make Jaguar luxury cars, which have sold poorly recently.

            "The answer is no," Scheele told reporters at the Tokyo Motor Show on Wednesday, October 22, when asked about the report. "This is really speculation that’s been running around now for six to nine months."

            The Sunday Times newspaper has reported that Ford plans to close its Brown’s Lane plant near Coventry in the Midlands, threatening 1,500 jobs. The plant has been making cars for 50 years. "We just launched the XJ in that plant," Scheele said. "We’re not planning anything."

            Ford of Europe is expected to post a loss before charges of roughly £700 million this year. Ford said last week it would take a £350 million charge for further European restructuring.

            According to agency reports, Scheele said on Wednesday that the European restructuring and new car launches would also help boost results in Europe next year, but he declined to say if Ford’s European operations would return to profitability.

            "The European market today is brutally tough. The marketplace is under pressure, the German economy, which is the engine of the European economy, is labouring and the German industry is down at levels which I don’t think anybody anticipated," Scheele said.

            It is clear that whatever Nick Scheele says, the workers can place no faith in it. The actions of Ford and the motor industry worldwide show that the only thing that motivates them is the need to provide a return on their capital in the context of dealing with the dwindling rate of profit as the crisis of overproduction intensifies.

An article by K C Adams in The Marxist-Leninist Daily, daily on-line newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist), of October 17, 2003, reports that Ford Motors recently announced a stupendous destruction of its production capacity in North America, a reduction of one million vehicles produced per year. DaimlerChrysler also ordered a two-week shutdown in Windsor affecting 6,000 workers. Soon after, the Auto Industry Reporter ran an article quoting leaders in the Ontario car industry pleading for $200 million in government handouts, motor industry corporate tax reductions and new spending on "export" infrastructure at the Windsor border to encourage Ford Motors to invest over $1 billion in new production capacity in Oakville and attract other auto monopolies to invest.

            Dealing with the argument that the government needs to invest more in the car industry, the article points out that the cost of bribing the industry to invest in Canada has gone up and that the new reality is that the old social contract surrounding the Ontario car industry and all industrial production has crumbled with the steel industry and other industries already in crisis and demanding labour concessions.

            The article says that in Mexico, Alabama and Mississippi, car workers are expected to make concessions, remain unorganised, work for less than half the wage in Canada and be satisfied that at least they have a job for now. To make the illusion complete, all the workers have to do is agree with it even though every fibre in the their bodies tells them it is not real.

            Over 90 per cent of vehicle production in Ontario is shipped to the United States, the article writes. Those vehicles are dumped into a marketplace saturated with new production. Around 20 million new units are produced for the US market per year, a market that struggles to sell at best 16 million using rebates and wasteful expensive advertising. GM is the single biggest advertiser in a US economy pounded by endless war, turmoil and stupendous debt.

            Others would also argue that the car culture itself is a problem and becoming worse especially in growth cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles and Phoenix. The clogged roads and cities, merciless slaughter on the highways, the endless burning of fossil fuels, the heavy air smothering the lungs of the youth and the siphoning off of crucial investment funds are just a few of the social problems of the car culture. Many argue that new socially responsible, sustainable investments in social programmes and a self-reliant independent national economy are needed.

            The author argues that industrial investment in car production requires an enormous amount in robotic machinery that is made primarily in Japan, also in Europe and the US but not in Canada. An unmentioned issue is that car monopolies, car parts makers and steel suppliers expect more from Canada than simply matching the financial incentives coming from Alabama, Mississippi and elsewhere. They expect a similar anti-labour climate where unions have no legal standing or if they do exist are co-opted by the companies and offer concessions on wages, benefits, pensions and work rules.

            The article concludes that the working class and its collectives must think deeply about the new situation. Who has first claim on the social product produced by labour? Where should the social product go? The working class must shake off the old habits of an era that has disappeared. It is a new ball game where the monopolies demand everything and give nothing in return. The working class has to organise and act according to the new reality starting with rejecting concessions and fighting all suggestions to pay the monopolies.

The government's plan to build new generation of two "super" aircraft carriers has been scaled back.  The aircraft carriers, which were expected to cost £1.5 billion each and weigh 60,000 tons, are to be cut back by 20%.  The carriers are part of work planned by the BAE Systems yard at Govan, Swan Hunter's yard in Newcastle, Vosper Thornycroft's yard in Portsmouth and Rosyth. The contracts were expected to create work for up to 15,000 workers, many of these in Scotland, but the new announcement is reported to be threatening the jobs of shipyard workers and the future of at least one of the yards, Rosyth.   

            Adam Ingram, armed forces minister, told MPs in answering questions in Parliament during a debate on defence procurement: "This is an evolving situation. We are not building these ships for industry or for shipbuilding areas, but we are building them to meet the needs of the Royal Navy as part of their contribution to the expeditionary force and punch we need to deliver alongside the RAF and the army."

            Bernie Hamilton, the regional officer for amicus, was reported as saying that the likely scaling-down of the order would be a great disappointment to workers at all three yards. He said: "It’s very disappointing. These were supposed to be the pride of the fleet. It will have an impact. It will mean less work, it will mean we will not be able to use the yards to the extent that we had hoped."

            However, what is significant is that the armed forces minister is declaring that these new aircraft carriers will be needed to commit further crimes against the peace and against the sovereign nations and of the peoples of the world.  He openly declared that saving shipyard jobs and the shipyard industry is not their concern. Shipyard workers should not shut their eyes to this direction that the government is taking the shipbuilding industry.  The destruction of the shipbuilding industry cannot be reversed by relying on military contracts as the government openly admits. On the contrary such procurement is becoming a factor for its increased destruction as the national economy is itself abandoned in favour of exporting capital and as different shipyard companies compete for    remaining military contracts.

            For the workers the issue continues to be one of defending their interests and taking a lead in the upholding the general interests of society. Their own alternative programme must be a modern shipbuilding industry that contributes to a society where the people are empowered to take the decisions and where the economy is run to meet the needs of the people.