12.12.1996

Workers lose out in ‘racism’ row

Allegations of racism were flying last week, as 300 Ford truck drivers insisted they wanted to leave the Transport and General Workers Union and transfer their allegiance to a truckers’ union.

The row blew up over the method used to select new drivers, only six of whom are black. That represents just two percent, compared to the 40 to 45% of all Ford employees. Seven black workers, rejected for the £30,000-a-year posts, have taken the company to an industrial tribunal, alleging discrimination. The cases, supported by the TGWU, will be heard in January.

The selection system uses existing senior drivers as assessors, with the result that jobs appear to be passed down from father to son.

The union’s attempts to have the selection system changed was resisted. According to Doug Curtis, head of campaigns and communications of the rival United Road Transport Union, the 300 drivers, including the six black members, voted unanimously to dissolve the TGWU branch and individually apply for membership of Urtu.

That led to Bill Morris accusing Urtu of “compromising with racism” and “conniving with management”. More importantly from a union bureaucrat’s point of view, he also accused the road transport union of poaching his members.

Doug Curtis told me:

“My father was a TGWU shop steward. Management fired him when they found out. So I don’t need lessons from Bill Morris when it comes to trade unionism. I’ve spent my entire life being opposed to racism and sexism.”

Somewhat disingenuously though, Doug added:

“We don’t know if the system is discriminatory or not. If the tribunal rules that it is and the drivers are by then in our union, we will make sure the system is changed.”

On the charge of poaching, Doug replies:

“We were approached by a number of drivers and we said, ‘Go back to your own union and see if you can resolve your differences.’”

Over the years the Ford drivers have built up their union strength to the point of being able to dictate to management in many areas of working practices, including recruitment. Like dockers and print workers, whose work was gradually decasualised, they ensured that the jobs of a small number were secure and tried also to guarantee openings for their own family.

Workers can hardly be blamed for taking protective measures to defend themselves against insecurity. But, as the attacks on dockers’ and printers’ organisation have shown, these victories do not last if workers are thrown back onto the defensive, let alone lead to workers’ liberation. For that we need to transcend narrow sectional-ism and organise as a class around political demands.

Bill Morris’s efforts are hardly aimed at achieving that. He went behind the backs of drivers by taking the matter to a tribunal without consulting them or their representatives.

It is highly likely that some of the drivers will have racist views, since these are unfortunately widespread amongst our class, but their exclusivism is not directed at one particular group. Widening access to 300 comparatively well paid jobs still leaves the overwhelming majority of Ford workers, black and white, grinding out their existence on poverty wages.

Demanding in effect that the company be given yet more control in the workplace is not an answer either. Bill Morris’s position - that he has “no quarrel with the drivers”; he is only attacking management for not ending the “inherently racist” selection system - is rather tenuous in view of Ford’s overall black employment record. The company is quite happy to go along with official ‘anti-racism’ - if it thinks it will enhance its popular image. But it would clearly be prepared to pander to racism too, if it considered that to be more effective. That was demonstrated earlier this year when it ‘whited out’ black faces on its advertising posters aimed at Europe.

Urtu is no better. Pleading hurt feelings over Morris’s soft-on-racism jibes, the 18,000-strong union is refusing even to talk to the TGWU. And simply agreeing to abide by the decisions of a boss-backed industrial tribunal is unlikely to satisfy the drivers, let alone bring them gains.

Ford truck drivers should stay in the same union as their fellow workers. But they must in their own interests abandon narrow sectionalism and unite with the entire workforce to demand better conditions for all. If they do not do this, no union will be able to protect them from the cold, Thatcherite blast that has swept into other former union strongholds.

Peter Manson