30.01.1997

Halewood looks to dockers

Last week’s mass meetings at every Ford plant in Britain produced an overwhelming show-of-hands vote in favour of strike action if the company goes ahead with its plans for 1,300 redundancies at Halewood.

Despite that, there is not much optimism that the company will back down. Union leaders are due to meet the head of Ford’s European operations on February 6, although it appears their negotiating position will be that the bosses should “spread the grief”. In other words, instead of demanding no lay-offs anywhere and looking for international union coordination to fight for what their members need, the union bureaucrats (and, it has to be said, most rank and file leaders) are accepting that attacks on jobs are ‘necessary’.

Once that is acknowledged then national or local parochialism - protecting your own sectional interests - is inevitable.

There is, however, a degree of confidence among Halewood members that their colleagues across the country will stand by them:

“I don’t see why there should be a different vote in a secret ballot,” Frank Davies, Transport and General Workers Union steward at the Halewood body plant, told me. “We are talking about every plant if Fords single-source all their products. There will be a lot of people in the same boat.”

Frank is in no doubt that the unions should press ahead immediately with the official ballot, rather than awaiting the outcome of talks with Jack Nasser, Ford’s European chief.

Although verbal support has been forthcoming from several European Ford unions, they will want to see the result of the British ballot before anything further is even contemplated.

At least Halewood workers have a source of inspiration close at hand: the Liverpool dockers. As Frank Davies says, “I know the two situations are different in that we are still in employment, but I am sure we will be taking lessons from them, especially on winning international support”.

Peter Manson