Dangers of trade union reform: a warning to engineers

IMPERIALISM has always needed to shroud some of its political figures in myths to sustain certain illusions in Engineering and Foundry Workers' Union a num. ber of new branches have recently been formed on a factory basis. What is behind this ?

"Trade union reform' is one of the most deceptive and dangerous catchwords of the day.

Others, knowing that shop stewards are closer to shopfloor issues and to the rank and file, suppose that all that is necessary is to place more and more of the functions of the unions in their hands, and to work for organized links between stewards nationally.

Undoubtedly such links are necessary, but the essential question in the unions is one Many workers will accept this, and are extremely hostile to their present union leaders. But what is most often not understood is that the basic question is one of political leadership.

In the present period, it is inevitable that the trade unions come under attack from monopoly capitalism.

The aim of the attack is to integrate the unions into the capitalist state. There is no return to the old type of trade unionism, building up strength in an atmosphere of 'free collective bargaining'.

Those who think that the existing 'strong' unions only need one or two 'strong' and militant leaders are making a mistake which will have drastic consequences if not corrected.

Either the unions become instruments of the mobilization of the working class for the revolutionary taking of power, or, under right-wing or 'leftwing' reformist leaders, they

In such a conflict, all those leaders who start with perspectives of the survival of capitalism and not the struggle for workers' power can only betray.

Three of the biggest unions in Britain are led by so-called 'left' leaders: Hugh Scanlon in the Amalgamated Union of Engineering and Foundryworkers (AEF), Lawrence Daly in the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), and Jack Jones in the Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU).

They are supported by the Communist Party, in line with their tactic of 'left unity'.

With this line, taking advantage of the desire of many workers for united action against the employers, the CP deceives the workers into thinking that their demands can be met through supporting this type of leadership.

They are, in fact, preparing even worse betrayals than those already perpetrated.

It should be remembered that Scanlon is now sharing chairmanship of a committee to deal with strikes in the car industry with British-Leyland boss Lord Stokes, after having signed the engineers' claim in November 1968 and handed to Ford's a victory on their 'penal clauses' All these leaders accept wholeheartedly the need for "productivity' and speed-up, which flows inevitably from their acceptance that capitalism must continue and prosper.

Scanion, still with the full backing of the Stalinists, now concentrating on speeding up the procedure agreements in engineering.

He combines this with proposals to place all negotiations on wage-rates in the hands of the local union officials.

Barbara Castle also speaks about the workers on the shopfloor and at local level as being a real 'power' in industry, while at the same time preparing anti-union and wage-cutting legislation.

It is intended to have the national organs of the unions tied to the state, if necessary through the TUC, and the Koestler's questionpoison brought out in several papers.

Local arbitration boards dominated by company representatives and local union bureaucrats of the unions, mostly. appointed by the national executive, constitute another aspect of the 'new reforms'.

The ETU, led by the rightwing Chapple and Cannon, is already far along this road.

At the present stage of trade union struggles in this country, these issues are of great importance.

In the engineering industry, the big employers are impatient to reap the profits harvest of the productivity promises made by Scanlon in the 1968 package deal. Yet at the same time theological poison.

La crucial battle is beginning at British-Leyland in Oxford over the proposed imposition of Measured-Day Work.

The Stalinists go along with the bureaucratic manoeuvres of Scanlon for two reasons:

firstly, they hope it will help to consolidate the positions they and their friends have taken in the official machine;

secondly, and more important, their own counter-revolutionary politics actually coincide with the aims of the employers and the union bureaucracy.

If a situation is created where wages are negotiated and settled at local and plant level, then of course the national officials are freed from the test of any clash with the employers and the government, Strip away the existentialist jargon and we find ourselves standing outside the pearly gates, waiting for opening time.

and the 'left' leaders can go on talking left without ever engaging in struggle with the right wing.

The official machine is free to get on with the job of policing the unions.

In at least one district of the AEF, an attempt is being made to constitute new branches on a factory instead of a local basis. This should be strenuously opposed. The present union rule does not specify either locality or factory.

Marxists in the unions today, like Communist Party militants in the past, fight to. build political groups in their factories.

In the fight against the trade union bureaucracy and its right-wing politics and class-collaboration, such groups of Marxists in the factories need to organize their work in the various union branches in the area.

The industrial strength . of the engineers in centres like Sheffield, and any potential political strength, has been built up because one or two strong factory groups have in this way, through the various local branches, been able to influence and educate by example the workers in the weaker factories.

In fact the Stalinists have sapped that strength and turned it into an electoral base for their own and 'left' candidates in AEF elections.

In the present period of political struggles, what is the future of this type of political work?

The Stalinists encourage the factory-based branches (already set up in two plants in Sheffield where they dominate the district committee) in order to 'freeze' the present situation and obstruct the development of alternative leadership in the union.

They understand very well that this fight for alternative leadership, is essentially the struggle between Trotskyism They anticipate a situation where branch meetings take place on company premises, subscriptio employer stopping subscriptions wage note, and with the employer and the local officials collaborating to get rid of 'undesirable' militants.

Factor randies a on d. or the politically advance branches l nas no ad vantage whatsoever.

They are already able to fight for and carry out the responsibility of industrial and political leadership within the plant through the stewards' committees and through their politically organized work.

Where they are in a minority position, they will be weak. ened, because their activities will be constitutionally confined to the factory through the branch.

Undoubtedly, working in the All Trades Unions Alliance and the Socialist Labour League through the Workers Press, politically advanced workers will know how to continue the fight for revolutionary leadership, and no bureaucratic manoeuvre by the Stalinists and their friends will stop this.

But an essential part of this fight to build leadership is to struggle on this very issue, part of the fight for proletarian democracy in the unions.

No backdoor changes of union structure to tighten the grip of the bureaucracy!

Not 'trade union reform', but a revolutionary struggle for leadership, against opportunism and Stalinism in the unions!