June 261h sh go down in history as the day in which Wille Jack and Jimmy Jack reached complete agreement-on a policy for steel in Scotland. Unfortunately, William Jack is President of the Glasgow Chamber of Comsen Jack is Secretary of the Scottah TUC- wlach leads un to ask a few an about the way the fight to stop the clovunes is being conducted.
Of course, steelworkers are entitled to demand every ounce of weight from the trade unions in and out of the industry in a fight to save their jobs. But at the same time, they should consider the following questions:
What conceivable role in the struggle is there for the series of Productivity Deals, particularly the Green Book Agreement, conducted by BISAKTA? Why is it only now that the fuss is being created? The rationalisation plans were laid a year ago in detail, and have been BSC's goal ever since it was created. Union chiefs knew of the plans, knew what was being done in England, and almost certainly what was planned in Scotland. Copies of the BSC internal report giving details were there for the asking, and the STUC had considered a report a year ago in which the likelihood of big steel redundancies was raised. What is more, the proposals in the report are along the same line as those proposed in the Benson Report, published as far back as 1965.
There was every chance to begin a year ago setting up structures to lead the fight: action committees in the industry, support committees in dependent industries, etc. There was every chance to begin laying plans: there was every chance to begin informing the men of the plans and any proposed strategy to fight them. The UCS stewards had laid plans for their action months before the closure of the yards was announced-as a result it was possible to launch immediate action when the news broke officially.
The policies of BISAKTA could not have been better designed to pave the way for the closures. The Green Book Deal (signed without any consultation with the workforce) gave the BSC management precisely the control over manning and siting that it needed in order toset up the closures. Unless the unions now begin to demand absolute veto over movement of labour and plant, unless they systematically deny BSC the chance to carry through the terms of the Deal, then not only are they left with no sanctions to use against the management, We should say, unlike other left groups, that it but they allow BSC to create a situation in which it has trained and organised the workforce and shifted the plant so that the closures flow logically, easily and naturally from the set-up it has created. How is it that now the news has 'officially' broken, everyone from BISAKTA to the STUC cannot move fast enough to set up "action" committees, whose main function, far from organising the workers for struggle on the factory floor, is to repeat the ageworn demand for a steel plant at Hunterston-and campaign for it entirely through rallies, National Assemblies, deputations and cosy chats with Labour MPs? Steelworkers may be very surprised at the reaction of these same people if they imitate what has been done in other parts of the industry and begin organising their own rank-and-file action committees to organise a real struggle.
The struggle can be fought: if the steelworkers are determined to put their own livelihood Jirst; before the profits of the industry: before the profits of British industrialists receiving cheap subsidised steel from the BSC; against the hygienic visions of the BSC planners of a rational industry with the workforce on the scrapheap. Some obvious measures, for example, are: 1. A refusal to observe the terms of the Green Book agreement; total refusal to implement management proposals for manning, workloads, plant siting until there is a guarantee of no redundancies in Scotland. This particularly applies to movement of plant and overtime working. 2. Worksharing according to a Sliding Scale of Hours with no loss of pay-which is being advocated strongly in action committees in other parts of the country; this means the work should be divided up amongst all workers in the industy in Scotland. This means an initiative by Ravenscraig (the main factory remaining open) in taking action in support of this demand, and in implementing it in conjunction with workers from elsewhere in the Scottish industry. The workers should fight for the right to the sliding scale-after which the BSC can distribute its plants and its work as it pleases. 3. This cannot be fought for unless the workers in the industry have full access to the Union and the Action Committees. If BISAKTA is serious about the Action Committees it is setting up, then the first move must be to make them subject to democratic control by the workforce. If, as we sadly suspect the Committees are little more than cheerleaders and pressure groups, then rank-and-file in the industry have a tough fight on their hands: setting up their own action committees will become an important first step.
will not be easy for shopfloor militants to wage struggles on working class lines in a union like BISAKTA. There are two years in which to create a fighting base to smash the closures: the time to start is now