Stalinist and Texas oil rig chief sign deal

FACTURING will be launched in the Clydebank shipyard on Wednesday on a tide of goodwill from unions and shop stewards led by the two Communist Party members James Reid and James Airlie.

Viewers in Scotland got a foretaste of the so-called new era for Clydeside on Friday when Reid, member of the Communist Party's national executive, grasped the plump hand of Wayne Harbin and paid tribute to this capitalist from Texas.

The gesture symbolized the Clydebank settlement. Marathon have come out of the negotiaions with nothing less than a lueprint for corporatism tuckec safely in their pockets. More than this. They have a well-founded belief that with the help of stewards like Reid they can make it work.

This marks a new important precedent in trade union bargaining and vividly exposes the extremely right-wing development of sections of the Communist Party and the trade union bureaucracy.

Marathon is a watershed that can be compared to the introduction of Measured-Day Work into Britain's car and engineering plans.

Everyone, in retrospect, recognizes that MDW was the key factor behind the labour 'shake-out' that has devastated the two industries since 1968.

But what is not acknowledged is that the men responsible for accepting ADW were the Stalinists and the union officials.

For example, it took Rootes management 12 months to introthe first MDW scheme in British industry at their Ryton lant, Coventry. At no time ir his battle did the Communist Party members in the plant come out four square against the They confined themselves the national Party line, which was to resist' these deals, but concentrate in practice in negotiating safeguards.

At the two Rolls-Royce plants in Coventry, Communist Partv stewards did not fight MDW either, but spoke in favour of productivity deals for nonpieceworkers. Once management won this concession they forced pieceworkers to begin trial MDW schemes at the Parkside plant.

This phoney war by the Stalinists against MDW gave union leaders the vital cover necessary to get the deals past a suspicious labour force.

Workers paid the price. Productivity was forced up and tens •mui Reid (left) shakes hands with Harbin for the sake of the TV cameras.

Marathon deal a step to corporatism of thousands of jobs were sold for a few extra pounds in wage packet.

Now, of course, it is fashionable to beat the anti-productivity drum. Everyone is against MDW But five years ago the Socialist Labour League stood in minority of one against the employers' schemes.

And it is the same today on the Clyde. Alone we can warn that the Clydeside working class will pay a bitter price for the Marathon deal.

One clause in it establishes machinery for binding arbitration. Another will mean Marathon can take an entire six months' bonus from workers who strike unofficially for any length of time. The icing of the cake is Reid's servile promises that the deal will be 'honoured' and that no one likes to strike for striking's sake, etc.

The pattern is not difficult to discern. Disputes will be immediately swallowed by a series of negotiations and committees, with the final prospect of outside arbitration.

If the workers should dare to act independently, Reid and his honourable band of men will be down talking about *resolving trouble without conflict', If this friendly persuasion fails, there is always the threat of the penalty clause and a substantial loss of earnings.

This is corporatism in embryo workinattempi to deprive --an the class of independent action and merge its unions with the machinery of monopoly This is a direct result of the ideology now espoused by men like Reid. He has now converted himself to the belief that the class struggle can be abolished, that new arrangements can made with 'enlightened' employers to resolve conflict.

It is the same ideology that allows Reid to share a platform with knoch Powell before businessmen's seminar.

Apart from congratulating the himself ve christ Torv covernment and declaring Christian, Reid said this about the future for Clydeside:

'I am hoping that in the two companies that emerge that sufficient will be learned from recent experiences so that the structure the company will allow the latent abilities of the workforce to express itself.' And Saturday's 'Morning Star' the CP paper, was silent on the bonus clauses, silent on the binding arbitration. All emphasis was placed on the guarantees of employment won by the Clydebank workers.

What these concessions from the Texan oil rig builders?

Marathon are committed to employing only 150 workers. They say they will employ 500 by the end of September, they say they will have jobs 2,000 in months' time.

Meanwhile 1,000 men who are likely to be fired at Clydebank must live on promises-they are apart from • the 2,000 who left the yards during the long demoralizing months of 'work-in'.

All these terrible 'sacrifices' have been made so that a rump labour force can work on in the yard for £40 a week (the same as car workers in Birmingham get without MDW and certainly Bid to split the dockers a generous estimate 1,000, while even the interim report admits almost 6,000 are needed now.

And the jobs shrinkage is a continuing one spurred on by changes in technique and the trade slump.

Secondly the joint committee of union leaders and port employers was a fraud from the outset.

The Road Haulage Association, whose members initiated use of the Industrial Relations Act in the jobs row, maintains bitter hostility to the dockers.

The RHA has said it will fight any attempt to extend the Dock Labour Scheme. Heatons Transport summed up their attitude, after being approached by the committee, when they said they were quite prepared to let dockers stuff and strip their containers as long as the port employers paid.

Just how seriously many employers take the committee is indicated by the resignation of George Tonge, a director of Proprietors of Hay's Wharf, as chairman of the National Association of Port Employers.

Tonge apparently thought even the interim report too generous to the dockers. Hay's Wharf is also thought to be bitterly resisting employment of dockers ONE HUNDRED and eighty-four Process operators, all members the General and Municipal Workers' Union, are into the fifth week of their official strike at the International Synthetic Rubber Company plant at Fawley in Hampshire.

The strike began when the company, part of one of the largest synthetic rubber makers Europe, sent home men operating a union ban on overtime.

The ban was introduced after ISR refused to negotiate on a newly imposed grading scheme.

During the 24-hour picketing the police are present in very large numbers. Sometimes they outnumber pickets more than two to one. without acceptance of a corporate contract).

The Marathon settlement, however, must be taken as a great warning. Worse can follow. Men like James Reid and others in the CP are now disarming the working class with talk of 'good The struggle to force the government to resign, therefore, must also involve a bitter fight against Stalinism which is the most treacherous force in the body of the working class.

at its depots, Dagenham and UK Cold Storage.

Every moment Jones continues on the joint committee is a moment the Tories use to plan the dockers' defeat-as is every moment the TUC spends talking to them about pay and industrial relations.

Dockers must demand that Jones leaves the committee, fights for the complete ending of TUC talks with the Tories and recalls the T&GWU conference to mobilize the full strength of the union in unity with the dockers.

There must be no redundancies on the docks or transport industries. Every docker, container worker and driver must be maintained on full pay until the industry can be nationalized and planned on socialist lines.

The TUC must be recalled on an emergency basis to call General Strike in solidarity with the dockers to force the Tories to resign.

A Labour government must be elected to repeal the Industrial Relations Act and nationalize the docks and transport industries without compensation and under workers' control. Thursday August 10, 7.30 p.m. END THE TUC TALKS

IBOUR

PUBLIC MEETING CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUAR LONDON, WC1.

VICTORY TO THE DOCKERS ALIZE DOCKS AND TRANSPORT INDU MAKE THE TORIES RESIGN Speakers :

Larry Cavanagh, dock worker G. Healy, SLL natlonal secretary