ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism, No.73, December 1974, pp.19-23.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
THE STRUGGLE against mass redundancies among the technical staff at C.A. Parsons in 1971-72 was one of the most determined and best fought battles of the time. The issues involved were complicated and involved the Industrial Relations Act as much as the fight for jobs. The dispute was fought mainly by the TASS membership in the company and it marked a major turning point in the history of that union.
C.A. Parsons, a member of the Reyrolle Parsons group of companies, is one of the largest turbo-generator manufacturers in the world. The company had carried out some ‘rationalisation’ in 1969 when they sacked 1,200 workers at their Erith factory, although the technical staff forced the company into an agreement to establish a permanent design office there.
In 1970, however, the company made an effort to enter the American market in alliance with the North American Rockwell Corporation and embarked upon a massive campaign of recruitment for technical staff. The venture quickly collapsed as no American orders were won.
As 1971 progressed, the policy of massive recruitment still continued but rumours started to spread around the factory that the company was in financial difficulties. As a result, the then Managing Director, Dr K.J. Wootton, gave a talk to stewards and representatives during which he stated categorically that the position of the company was in no way bad enough to envisage any redundancy for 18 months or 2 years. A few weeks later he was kicked upstairs and a new man – F.C. Krause – was brought in. Krause had a notorious reputation among trade unionists as he had a long history of forcing through redundancies elsewhere. Parsons’ employees were relatively well organised. The works personnel being fully organised into unions and are integrated at shop-floor level.
The clerical workers are almost fully organised into APEX, but as far as technical and supervisory staffs are concerned, the picture is less clear, and it was here that additional problems arose. DATA, which subsequently became TASS, had recruited many technical staff in the sixties and had a high degree of organisation in traditional technical areas at Parsons, and a lesser degree of organisation elsewhere. One thing the technical staff had in common, although many would not admit it, was that salaries and conditions were based on those negotiated by TASS. ASTMS had also picked up some members in the white-collar area.
The fight for 100 per cent organisation had been going on since 1968. DATA members had had enough of non-unionists enjoying the pay rises and conditions fought for by the union members. Consequently, when concluding the details of a pay agreement in 1968, DATA refused to sign unless it carried a clause stating: ‘payable to DATA members only’. After a bitter dispute, DATA won an agreement which gave them negotiating rights for technical staff below the level of assistant head of department, and all new employees were required to join as a condition of employment (a post-entry closed shop). Existing ASTMS members among the technical staff could retain membership, but all non-unionists were given one year to take up membership or leave the company. 1970 saw the emergence of the ‘United Kingdom Association of Professional Engineers’ (UKAPE). This organisation, which claimed to be a trade union, was opposed to any form of militant action. UKAPE began to recruit at Parsons, particularly among the more senior professional engineers.
By the deadline of May 1971, many members of the technical staff had not joined TASS and the company, stating that they had no wish to sack anyone, continued in the attempt to implement the agreement by argument and not by force. TASS approved this line for some time, but it became obvious that there were a hard core – mainly UKAPE members – who would not join whatever the pressure. The company then issued statutory notices in line with the conditions of service to 38 members of the technical staff. UKAPE applied for, and failed to get, an injunction claiming unfair dismissal, and used one of their older members as a test case. However the Court of Appeal ruled that this UKAPE member should not be dismissed with only the statutory notice because of his length of service with the company.
Many TASS members thought that this was an excuse to delay the issue until the Industrial Relations Act, outlawing closed shops, was implemented.
At the end of November a meeting between the company and George Doughty, TASS General Secretary, resulted in new dismissal notices to the 38. The first was due to expire on 29 February 1972. It was significant that the date now quoted for final implementation of all the clauses of the Industrial Relations Act was 28 February, but initially had been 1 March 1972.
THE REDUNDANCY fight was looming. After an initial attempt to sack 14 TASS members, successfully resisted, speculation (of massive redundancies) then began in the press.
Then in an announcement to the stewards on 16 December Krause stated: ‘I am here to convey to you decisions that have already been taken,’ and proceeded to announce 950 redundancies by the middle of 1972 – 650 staff and 300 indirect works labour. Following that, there were to be a further 600 redundancies in 1973, mostly manual workers. Krtuse then invited questions from unionists on how this was to be carried out. Instead all he received was one statement from the Works Convenor, Mick Wallace, speaking on behalf of all the unions. He summed up the mood of everyone when he said: ‘Before leaving we would like to state that we totally reject the philosophy of redundancy and will use all the power we can command to do so.’ The trade unionists left the meeting.
Shop stewards immediately imposed overtime and subcontracting bans, and a committee representing all unions was set up to co-ordinate all actions. And so Parsons employees attempted to enjoy Christmas with the axe of redundancy over their heads. The running ‘joke’ throughout the company, was that there were only a few more chopping days to Krausemas.
After the break, APEX and TASS made arrangements to implement four-day working, plus ‘minimum co-operation’, as the company had indicated that it was unwilling to enter into negotiations on short time working as a basis of withdrawing redundancies.
The first day off for TASS members was 10 January and three were pickets on the doors to prevent a few renegers attempting to go in against the general meeting decision.
The management then offered a 21-day stay of execution on the redundancies, but as they weren’t due until the middle of the year this was thought to be totally meaningless. The Joint Office Committee did feel, however, that if the company came forward with a proposal of no enforced redundancies then the way would be open for further discussion on possible voluntary redundancy schemes. To maximise the effects of sanctions: the day off was staggered among different sections to ensure greater overall impact. The propaganda war continued with threats from Krause in pay packets and a sympathetic front page spread highlighting the union case in the local evening paper.
UKAPE however issued a statement that it would have nothing to do with the ‘disruptive measure of four day working at Parsons’, and accepting the need for some redundancy. There was also news that the company had applied to the NIRC to sort out the question of union representation for technical staff in view of the 28 February deadline.
The sanctions in the works were having a serious effect. The overtime ban stopped many continuous processes – and production in many shops was down 40 per cent.
The company were feeling the pinch, and Krause made his next move. The weekends were a time when those who felt their necks under the guillotine could at least try to forget about the situation a little. However, there could be no escaping the dispute at breakfast time on Saturday 25 January because there was a letter from Mr Krause to read at the breakfast table. He went over the reasons why the company had to reduce its workforce and proposed voluntary redundancy, short time working, and following that ‘last in – first out’ – an attempt to split the workers.
One of the most obnoxious tactics was the sending of letters to members’ houses to arrive on Saturday mornings. This had the advantage of getting right at the family. Many men were put under considerable pressure from their families and with the letter arriving on Saturday, it was two days before they could get back from being an isolated case to being part of a group of workers, and so the co-ordinating committee were quick off the mark with counter arguments to the letter.
Then on 1 February the co-ordinating committee received a letter from Krause suggesting that the company would be prepared to negotiate a settlement to the benefit of all workers. The committee met the company to test the water and intimated that they would talk about ‘ways and means’ provided there were no sackings. This represented the first major change in the policy of the unions. The previous call had been for the retention of all the workforce – basically a political call – but now it was for no enforced sackings. Active members still realised that this was enforced redundancy for some – school leavers, but the policy of the unions was now to look for agreements covering early retirement, voluntary redundancy with redeployment of personnel. However terms of reference could not be agreed.
With the Industrial Relations Act drawing periously near, the notice of dismissal to the 38 non-members was withdrawn. On 29 February, the NIRC referred the matter to the CIR for an investigation. On 1 March resignations were received from TASS members (eventually it was to total 60). The TASS Joint Office Committee met and proposed blacking of resigners and nons and a call to the EC to approve this action.
And so, in addition to the sanctions in support of the redundancy fight – four-day working and minimum co-operation – these further sanctions were added in support of the membership agreement. However events had occurred to change the picture of the redundancy fight.
The proportion of redundancies on the shop floor was not large and because of pressure from members, who were losing a considerable proportion of their wage because of the overtime ban, the Works Negotiating Committee made a separate approach to Krause on behalf of manual workers and came to an agreement that there would be no redundancy in 1972 and prior consultation before any intended redundancy in 1973. ASTMS also gained an agreement on behalf of the works supervisory staff.
Consequently TASS and APEX made a joint approach to see if there had been a change in attitude by the company, who stated that it was not possible to give the staff employees the same guarantees as the works, but would be prepared not to implement any sackings provided that, in addition to voluntary redundancies, there would be short time working. Despite reservations on some points, the letter seemed a major step forward with at least the basis for further discussions having been laid.
Negotiations continued until, at a meeting on 13 March, the management dropped the ‘Erith Bombshell’. They stated that there had been a ‘slight omission from the letter’ – none of it referred to the TASS members in the Erith design office who would be given notice and the office closed by the middle of the year. Naturally, this was totally unacceptable to TASS, who stated that this was in complete violation of the Erith agreement of 1969 and immediately withdrew from the meeting. APEX, not involved at Erith, went ahead and gained an agreement similar to that of ASTMS.
The most notable aspect of the whole dispute was how TASS had become isolated as the company came to an agreement with each union in turn until by viciously refusing to give any guarantee on Erith TASS was alone. At this point it is worth asking what the dispute was all about.
It certainly started over redundancy. The company needed to cut back numbers, and it doubtless thought it could achieve its aim by initially wielding the big stick in the form of large numbers and then softening up at a later date if everything was going well. A significant change took place in the company’s attitude between 14 February, when they would not agree to terms of reference for talks, and 28 February when the Works Negotiating Committee won their agreement. It was at this time, if not earlier, that the company realised that it could use the redundancy issue to get rid of a problem which, it believed, could cause much more trouble. At this time there was no other issue over the Industrial Relations Act on the cards bar the one at Parsons, and the company felt that when the notices were rescinded at the end of February, all hell could be let loose. What the company did was to separate TASS so that, in order to gain an agreement on no sackings similar to the other unions, TASS members would give up the membership agreement and Parsons would not be the battleground for a fight on the Act. Had they settled the redundancy question with TASS at the time of settling with the other staff unions they would have cleared the way for a straight fight on the membership issue which they felt could seriously damage the company.
A general meeting of the membership followed, to which the entire membership at Erith travelled by coach (a journey of well over 200 miles). The meeting overwhelmingly endorsed the action of the TASS Negotiating Committee and called on the company to withdraw from their intention to close Erith. Further sanctions were also resolved at the meeting: including no visits or meetings on company business and no queries by phone – memos only.
During March the TASS EC endorsed their members’ stand and raised the matter on the AUEW NEC. At the beginning of April Krause met George Doughty and offered to keep the Erith Office open for six months, provided TASS agreed to the company’s scheme for manpower reductions, but there was no possibility of an agreement over this. The next day the Parsons Joint Office Committee met to prepare resistance to any attempt to carry out suspensions, sackings or the issue of redundancy notices. The meeting agreed that no suspension or notice would be accepted and members would continue working. If there was a general lock-out, then members would occupy the offices. Because financial support could well be needed, it was decided to call a general meeting and recommend a return to five day working with a two pound levy for a strike fund.
On Saturday 8 April members of the technical staff had more breakfast reading matter courtesy of Mr Krause. In each individual letter he went over the issues and offered his voluntary scheme plus the closure of Erith. Finally, he stated:
‘The company is reluctantly compelled to inform all members of the technical staff that those who refuse to resume full normal working as from Monday 17 April will be deemed to be in breach of contract and will be dismissed.’
A TASS general meeting took place on 10 April, with members of the TASS EC present to see a motion on fighting until a satisfactory agreement which included no redundancies carried overwhelmingly. Surprisingly a motion on fighting to defend the membership agreement was carried only on a split vote. The Negotiating Committee’s arguments on the need for unity and the carrying out of the democratic decisions of the general meeting were strong enough to stop weaker members opting out.
On 2 April the CSEU agreed support for the TASS stand, including refusing to accept any work from blackleg or substitute labour.
The Joint Office Committee finalised plans for action in case any departmental heads attempted to dismiss members which were based on the principle of ‘harassing the harassers’ – other members were to identify with the individual selected and inform the manager that all were working sanctions. If only one or two members were suspended in a department, then they were to carry on working as usual with the other members.
Action came quicker than anyone had imagined. On the afternoon of 14 April telephone reports came through to the General Drawing Office that redundancy notices were being handed out in various parts of the organisation. Most offices had responded forcefully to this action with the whole office backing up the member declared redundant in refusing to accept the notice or throwing it back at the manager. Next day all those who had received and returned one notice got another through the post.
250 received notice, including all at Erith – about 20 per cent of the total. The percentage of active members was higher and on the Negotiating Committee five of the 13 members were declared redundant including the Joint Office Committee Secretary and the Branch Secretary. Departmental heads who were known to be vehemently anti-TASS had chosen the most active members in their department. This leads on to another critical aspect – Krause delegated dispute handling to the middle management whom he fully realised were in many cases extremely reactionary UKAPE members.
Immediately on returning to work on Monday morning a mass demonstration was arranged to the directors’ floor (the ‘Golden Mile’) of the main Heaton Office block to return redundancy notices to Krause. The whole of the membership responded and packed the length of the Golden Mile, spilling onto landings and down the stairs. They formed a massive human tunnel through which the members who had received notice passed to return them to Krause who was caught in his office.
In the press that night, a company spokesman was quoted as saying that everyone had been working normally!
The next day the management must have decided that the staff were not working normally, because the first sackings took place – 100 on the first day. The first member to be challenged was a design engineer who was one of the leading figures inside TASS opposed to a fight on the membership issue. It seemed to many that he had been deliberately chosen in an attempt to split ranks. The member challenged, although disagreeing with the decisions of the general meeting, refused to work normally and was sacked on the spot. His departmental colleagues challenged the manager that they were working sanctions – and were sacked en masse. Other sackings followed, bringing the total to 100 on the first day.
Sackings continued the next day and news came that four reluctant TASS/UKAPE members had handed their cards in. Draughtsmen in the General Drawing Office immediately stopped work on all contracts associated with these people. A challenge was certain, and eventually the Engineering Director sacked the whole General Drawing Office.
It became apparent that those who had been sacked were not going to get their pay for the previous week. The sacked members demonstrated outside the accountant’s office – and duly received their pay. The same day it was reported that the Works Negotiating Committee had pressed the management to make some moves to settling the dispute because the implementation of the CSEU agreement for support would close the company. As a result, the Works Negotiating Committee obtained some terms of reference from the company which they communicated to the Negotiating Committee.
All redundant and dismissed members had been turning into work every day. The reasons for this were several: to give point to the policy that all members would be re-instated in any settlement; to remove the feelings of isolation of sacked and redundant members; to prevent managers and ‘nons’ from blacklegging; and to discuss the situation and distribute leaflets to other trade unionists throughout the company.
It was apparent that activities would have to be organised to involve the sacked members while inside the plant and that the financial side would have to be organised. All the sacked members would receive 60 per cent net pay from the union but it was widely felt that the member who had been challenged should not be placed at a disadvantage to those who had not. A general meeting consequently decided that members still on the payroll would pay 20 per cent net pay into a dispute fund to be paid out to those sacked. As the members were about half sacked and half in employment at this time, in theory everyone would receive 80 per cent net pay.
Representatives from all the dismissed departments met to elect an informal general committee to be responsible for the policy and co-ordination of the dispute, plus three sub-committees: an education committee to organise a programme of talks and lectures given both by Parsons employees and outside people, guided tours and discussion groups; a publicity committee to produce a weekly newsletter plus bulletins; and a finance committee to implement all the machinery for the collection and dispersal of the levy money.
During the second week of the dispute the total of sackings rose to 704 and the sacked members received their cards, holiday money etc. through the post. A demonstration was organised where all members filed across to the Personnel Department to hand the lot back.
On the other side of the fence, new moves were being made. UKAPE had applied to the NIRC for an injunction against TASS members’ operation of unfair practices. TASS, in line with its policy, refused to appear. Sir John Donaldson granted the injunction until 2 May when TASS would have another chance to answer the allegations.
The education and publicity committees began to organise events and publications, and the members began to tour other TASS branches to win support. The Coventry division produced particularly good financial support. The Annual TASS Conference, which began on 1 May re-affirmed its policy of not appearing before the NIRC. As a result of the Works Negotiating Committee’s initiative, the new President of TASS – Arthur Scott – and the General Secretary met the company on 2 May and, although no agreement was reached, a further meeting was arranged.
By the third week of the sit-in the Negotiating Committee members began to travel to some of the outlying factories to keep members’ spirits up and show them that they were not forgotten by those at the main establishment. Some of these visits led to incidents with local management.
On 9 May the second round of talks between Parsons management and the TASS National Officials took place, with the Negotiating Committee in attendance. Krause offered a package deal – no redundancies in 1972, voluntary schemes in line with those offered to other unions but with a cash bonus to those who had been recruited in the earlier campaign of expansion, mutually agreed short time working ... and a sting in the tail. All sanctions had to be removed, including those in defence of the membership agreement. This effectively meant throwing out the 100 per cent agreement. While the details were ironed out, the industrial action continued.
A general meeting was held on 12 May. Arthur Scott, TASS President, again stated that the EC had no intention of instructing or recommending that Parsons’ members stop the blacking, but that the decision was that of the members alone. Despite a recommendation for rejection of the package by the Negotiating Committee the deal was accepted on an estimated 70-30 vote. A motion expressing the continuing support for 100 per cent membership was passed, as was a motion condemning those who had not paid their levy and urging everyone to pay up so that sacked members would not suffer.
THE LOGIC of a profit-making capitalist society meant that the management had no option but to try to force redundancies. The call to fight redundancies was therefore essentially a political statement: ‘We will not accept that people can be arbitrarily thrown out of work.’ At first the call was for the continuance of the existing workforce. Many saw that the size of the workforce had been based on stupid assessments of orders by management and felt that it was unrealistic to maintain the same numbers. After a few weeks of the dispute, workforce reduction was accepted, but not the sackings. It was only on this basis that the trade unionists were strong enough and united enough to fight on. Many trade unionists recognised that this was a compromise as a reduction in the workforce meant a total disappearance of the jobs and thus meant unemployment for others – in particular their own sons and daughters leaving school.
The settlement eventually achieved led to a total of 322 members of the technical staff accepting voluntary redundancy during 1972. In some cases the company asked that voluntary redundancy should be curtailed as they had lost so many from a particular department. With large numbers of members from some departments taking the opportunity to leave, redeployment was a necessity, and with reductions came inevitable cries from management for overtime working. The Negotiating Committee gained an agreement on overtime which basically meant that any overtime had to be taken as ‘time off in lieu’. But in some cases paid overtime was allowed. Although paid overtime was anathema to some, this led to TASS, achieving full control on overtime working.
The defence of the membership agreement was also a political fight. The Industrial Relations Act appeared to be the ideal springboard for ‘bogus trade unions’ like UKAPE to gain a foothold, and any attempt to insist on a closed shop was bound to break the law. After the dispute, the Commission on Industrial Relations reported to the NIRC on the Parsons situation. They came down heavily on the side of TASS, but the 100 per cent agreement was lost. Eventually 80-90 people on the technical staff dropped out although since several have left or rejoined. The company eventually issued a statement urging all nons to take up TASS membership and recognising TASS as the sole bargaining agent below the line. The company could have sacked the nons, but obviously it would not so long as there was no threat of industrial action to balance against the NIRC fines. (It did in fact sack one manual worker on exactly these grounds.)
In any dispute of this nature, the union always finds itself on the defensive, taking decisions as a reaction to the latest edict from management. This was no exception and there was little choice of action from start to finish. It was either a case of fighting to preserve the membership agreement and fight off redundancy or going under. At the beginning of the redundancy dispute, with the works involved, pressure could be brought to bear where it really hurt the company – at the point of production. However, after the works gained their agreement, they gave little help to TASS.
The reasons for this are many. The shop floor unions in Parsons do not have a history of fighting redundancy, so for them even to fight their own redundancy problem was an achievement, never mind putting pressure on to help other unions. Sanctions such as overtime bans were not regarded by many TASS members as being particularly strong, but because of systematic overtime, bans in the works were much more of a sanction and a sacrifice than among the staff, and enough for the works to gain a satisfactory agreement for themselves.
As far as the 100 per cent agreement was concerned little was in reality done by the shop floor in support. All moves to support TASS came from the officials and no rank and file action was taken by shop floor workers. Even the CSEU agreement on 12 April was never really implemented.
In criticising the lack of involvement by the shop floor, it must be stated that TASS in Parsons is not blameless. Neither the TASS Joint Office Committee, nor the Works Negotiating Committee had made enough effort to meet, get to know each other and discuss common ground. During the sit-in itself TASS did little to explain what was happening to the shop floor, and it was only in the last few days that the shop floor was leafleted at all.
And what of TASS nationally? In line with conference policy the EC had no intention of telling members of TASS to abide by the Act and had the dispute persisted, it is conceivable that the union would have been heavily fined. Nevertheless, the Executive must have been getting increasingly worried that they would be the first to have a showdown over the Act, particularly at a time when the TGWU had agreed to pay a fine over the blacking of Heatons transport.
As far as the conduct of the dispute itself, there was no work done by the EC to involve other members in factories to support the Parsons’ members and it is not unreasonable to state that the last people the Communist Party-dominated Executive wanted involved in this type of dispute were International Socialist members on the Parsons Office Committee. The only TASS division to organise levies and donations was Coventry – not a Communist Party-dominated Division. It was obvious to the Negotiating Committee at the settlement meeting that the details had already been agreed in private between the TASS EC and Parsons’ management, with the Negotiating Committee having little say on the package except for minor details.
The Parsons situation could not have looked the best battleground for the Act in a situation where there was little support from the shop floor and a split vote on fighting for the membership agreement had been registered at the general meeting of 10 April. However, had the TASS and the AUEW officials given a lead to their members both locally and nationally then more might have been achieved. The whole tone of the TASS President’s statement at the general meeting called to discuss Krause’s package deal was one of ‘The Executive will not tell the members what course to take, the decision must be yours.’ He gave no leadership to those who wished to fight on. Subsequently in articles the President hailed the Parsons’ decisions to accept as a great victory for democracy and some members of the Executive later criticised the Parsons’ leadership, maintaining that they were misled on the resolve of the members to fight for the agreement. Yet the situation was always clear to the Executive. Indeed, it could not have been misrepresented by the Parsons leadership as the President, Arthur Scott who lived nearby, was present in the body of the hall at every general meeting.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 2.7.2008