STEEL: RON SMITH'S PLAN MUST BE REJECTED by Tony Topham
The national Steel Corporation's proposals for "worker directors" in nationalised steel are a recognition of the pressure and demands advanced by the steel unions and the Voice workers' control campaign. But the content. of the proposals is deplorable and must be resisted. They distort or ignore much of what the unions are asking for. The Board's ideas were drawn up by Ron Smith, (ex-U.P.W. General Secretary) who confessed that their inspiration was to be found in the TUC evidence to the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, The plan provides for: 1. four or five Group (regional) Boards for the industry. 2. each Board will have between 14 and 16 members. i of these, up to three will be worker "representatives". 4, this of course means that they will be in a permanent minority. This alone would not prevent them being truly representative of workers, if they were truly accountable to the workers, But the proposals go on: 5. . they will "share the corporate responsibility for the Board's
decisions", 6. if they are shop stewards, they will be asked to give up that
post, during their term.of office. - 3 The they will be selected by the N.S.C., from names submitted by
the TUC. They will not be elected, in any way, by the workers. 8, they can clearly therefore not be subject to any form of
"recall" by the people they are supposed to represent, 9. they will sit on Group Boards OUTSIDE the Group in which they
work. The only useful proviso is that they will be part-time, which means that they will not be completely severed from the shop-floor. In every other particular, the plan deliberately sets out to separate the representatives from the workers, It's effect will be to take away the most experienced present workers' leaders, (shop stewards) and immerse them in management's responsibilities and ethos, In some ways, the proposal about sitting on outside Boards is the most objectionable, Presumably one chooses directors who have some knowledge to contribute, The Smith plan aims to make damned sure that the workers' representatives are at a disadvantage from the start: that their special knowledge cannot be properly used in their own Group. Smith and the N.S.C. are afraid of that knowledge, and afraid it might be used in the interests of the workers, In simple human terms the proposals are an insult to the idea of workers' representatives. If they are carried through, the result will be disillusion with what is only the shadow of true workers' control, and disillusion with nationalisation will follow, The most deadly consequence would be that the worker directors would be held responsible for the whacking cuts in man-power that the industry will experience in the future. The Benson Committee foresaw the need to cut the capacity of the steel plant of the country by 25% by the mid-seventies, which would mean a reduction of 100,000 (a third of the present level}in
the working force. This huge redundancy will fall especially heavily upon isolated backward plants, such as at Ebbw Vale, Consett, Workington, and perhaps Corby and Shotton, The "Daily Mail" correspondent gave the game away last week, when he reported that through the device of the worker directors, the government "hopes to avoid a clash with the unions" over redundancies and closures, This idea may square with The Director's enthusiasm for a form of industrial democracy which makes "the unions ... share the responsibility for some of the expected unpopular decisions". But it is an outrageously cynical way to treat the idea of industrial democracy, The workers' demands, expressed through their unions, are not a mattér for this kind of manipulation. The unions and their allies in the socialist movement must return to the attack, The left M.P.s must challenge this plan in the House, Specifically on redundancies the workers representatives on Boards must be free to dissent from decisions, and free to Veto a closure until they are fully satisfied that hundred per cent provision of available alternative work has been made, Generally, the unions should stick to their original programme: they must not regard Smith's effort as the last word on this subject. Last year the National Joint Craftmen's Co-ordinating Committee for the industry adopted'a specific programme of worker controls. This year, the biggest (Yorkshire) District of the production workers' union, BISAKTA, adopted the same proposals, They are briefly:
l. the election of half of the Group Board members by the unions
and the plant level workers’ councils.
2. the right of veto for workers' representatives at Group level,
and for workers' councils at plant level, over all managerial
appointments, including the Group Chairmanship.
3 the opening of the books to workers' representatives and
Councils, who must be able to report back their findings, The Smith plan is a development which may be repeated in other industries in the near future, The need for increased vigilance and activity from the workers' control campaign is evident, The response should be to summon the maximum attendance at the Coventry workers' control conference, on June 10th-1l1th,.