Development of the Ford Motor Company in Britain

THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORD IN BRITAIN

by Ferruccio Gambino

Translated by Ed Emery [1979], with editorial additions

FORD'S IMPACT IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE UK CAR INDUSTRY

About two thirds of any car made in Britain today is made up of parts supplied by an outside component company (Lucas, Dunlop, Pilkington etc). This is a very high percentage compared with the international figure, where outside component suppliers provide only 20-50% of the finished motor car [Note 1].

In other words, compared with the motor industry worldwide, UK motor manufacturers have a relatively low level of vertical integration: they don't have so much of the final product under their direct control. [App. 3]

The reason why Britain is so different is because, unlike other industrial countries, in Britain the internal combustion engine was developed as a means of production (industrial machinery, marine engines, pumps etc) for a long period, whereas elsewhere it was already expanding as a means of consumption, [App. 3] and was being developed as art of the mass production of private cars for the consumer market. [Note 2]

In other countries, especially in America, the two types of production developed with much less of a time-lag. Some people say that the reason for the secondary position of the motor car production in the UK was that British capitalists were slow to see the potential of the massproduction of cars. But it was also because it was much harder for British capital to get workers to transfer from the production of internal combustion engines to the mass production of cars as a consumer product - since most of these workers were skilled men, and the change-over would mean a process of widespread de-skilling in the engineering sector as a whole. [App. 1]

Before the manufacture of cars as a mass consumer product could take over from the manufacture of engines as a means of production, there would have to be changes in the existing labour force: it meant that a new and much larger supply of suitable unskilled labour had to be made available, and this had to be organised at a social level, as well as inside the factory (providing housing, schools, health services etc).

So, in the early days, right up to the end of the 1930s, a combination of workers' defence of their skills and a lack of capitalist initiative meant that the production of motor cars was secondary to the production of internal combustion engines. The latter therefore was less of a driving force in the economy than elsewhere (eg America).

However, after. the Second World War things began to change. Far more people were buying cars, and the motor car was beginning to be used within a framework of capitalist policies aimed to promote consumer spending-power (Keynes). This meant that the car industry began to come to the fore.

It was only at this point that Ford (who had pioneered the spread of the motor car in America, and was now introducing a similar distribution in Britain), together with Vauxhall, part of the US General Motors combine, became part of the leadership of the British employing class - although they never saw completely eye to eye with the big manufacturers in other key sectors, let alone other motor manufacturers.

This happened at a time when the working class at Ford had already [File 2] taken a certain political leadership in the struggle, in a direction which the rest of the working class in Britain would later follow.

Ford in Britain was out of line with other manufacturers, but also pointed the way for them in two respects: first, Ford's investment levels were high in comparison to the low level of organic composition [App. 2] in the British motor industry as a whole; and secondly, they began to affect State policy on investment (traditionally the State had been unwilling to provide the infrastructures that are needed for new investments).

The secondary position of the manufacture of motor cars over a long period in Britain had many effects. For instance, it was American, not British firms that emerged as the driving force in the car industry. It also explains why there were so few British companies that combined the production of means of production, with the production of means of consumption within a single firm. For instance, Pressed Steel Fisher - a producer of sheet steel - did not come under the control of the motor manufacturers (BMC) until the mid-1960s.

After 1945 Ford began taking over as the political leadership in the vehicles industry, and this was achieved partly by their use of the State. Ford's recruitment policies follow a pattern: they look for places where there are already large concentrations of labour available - but they leave it up to the State to organise this, and only then step in to take control themselves. Ford made it clear, both at Dagenham in the mid1920s and at Halewood in the late 1950s, that unless this workforce was available, there was no question of Ford investing.

From the moment that Ford began producing in Britain in the 1920s, they made it clear that they were not willing to operate with the low levels of capital investment (organic composition) and vertical integration that were typical of the UK motor industry: from a working class point of view, low integration and low investment result from workers' resistance to the process of de-skilling represented by Ford's way of producing cars [the Ford Assembly Line: App. 1].

This meant that Ford UK linked directly with the high levels of organic composition and vertical integration typical of Ford's production in America, and therefore that Ford struggles in Britain tended to take a similar form to workers' struggles in America. It also meant that Ford workers were having to fight harder than workers in other big UK motor manufacturers and their suppliers - because their struggle stemmed from a process of drastic change in the structure and composition of the work-force [class composition: App. 1], brought about by the higher levels of capital investment at Ford, and which in turn led to further investments and still further changes in the work-force.

However, in the longer term, the extent to which Ford invested in fixed capital (machinery etc) and integrated their cycle of production [App. 3] in Britain and America was brought about by the pressure of workers' struggles within Ford's international operations, and not viceversa: it's workers' struggles that provide the spur to investment. [FILE 3]

FORD'S CHOICE AND SUPPLY OF RAW MATERIALS

When we turn from fixed capital (machinery etc) to circulating capital [App. 2] (raw materials, fuels etc), we see that Ford's operations unite workers in the "developed" countries and workers in the "underdeveloped" countries into one vast cooperative network. They're still trying to involve workers in the "socialist" countries as well (Kama River project, Rumania etc).

The way that Ford choose and obtain their raw materials is also dictated by the state of the class struggle:

Energy: For supplying energy, Ford have their own power sources (eg the electrical power station at Dagenham). But they still depend on the State to provide coal from the nationalised coal mines. The change-over from coal to more labour-saving forms of energy (nuclear etc) is being left for the long-term, although in the United States the decisive shift is planned for the end of the 1970s.

Metals: Unlike the other UK motor manufacturers, for the last 40 years Ford has processed a fair amount of its own metals, after having imported them from Africa. Most of their steel supplies are produced in the UK, particularly in South Wales (Port Talbot), but they also have an antistrike, policy of keeping open alternative supplies from EFTA and the Common Market countries as a self-protecting measure against possible 'shortages' resulting from the frequent strikes in the UK steel sector.

Rubber: The production of rubber is still one of the strong points within the car production cycle as a whole. As the Times 'Rubber Report' (19th March 1969) said: "Industrial relations in the rubber industry are remarkably good". [Note 3] The national Rubber Industry Agreement in 1967, which was based on a productivity deal, was the starting point for a complete re-structuring of the industry. It aimed to eliminate the 'hotch-potch of men, materials and plant' which characterised the industry, and claimed that the present large numbers of workers in the industry would soon be a thing off the past. This was to be achieved by maximum efficiency at all stages of production, which of course mean maximum exploitation of the labour force.

The rubber sector supplies more than 300 parts for the average car, and the tendency internationally is for natural rubber to be replaced by synthetic rubber. In 1948 one tenth of the rubber used in world-wide production of cars was synthetic - by 1968 it was two thirds. But in the UK the position is different - 34% synthetic rubber, as opposed to 66% natural. This is despite the strong position of American companies within the UK rubber industry, and is largely due to supplies coming from Britain's ex-imperialist presence in South-East Asia.

Plastics: As with other UK motor manufacturers; the percentage of plastic in Ford cars is still low (2% in 1968) [Note 5]. Ford might consider using plastics for car bodies - but even if they did, it would be in response to workers' insubordination [App. 4] - ie as a result of workers in the Press Shops and the early stages of the Body Plants refusing to produce, even if this was only expressed by the fact that these workers physically couldn't keep up the number of operations required as the rest of the plant speeds up. Ford, in such a situation, might turn to a fluidification of the work process by means of plastics: this would mean that manual handling is [FILE 4] reduced to a minimum, unlike the present situation in metal-working, which requires constant manual intervention by workers in a series of separate operations. Plastics would iron out this discontinuity.

WORKERS' INSUBORDINATION AND CLASS AUTONOMY

Insubordination is the ability of the working class to organise the struggle against work. It's always there among workers, but is organised to a greater or lesser degree according to the state of the class struggle in a particular period. As class autonomy [App. 4] grows, this insubordination comes more and more into the open, and the 'technological collaboration' so much loved by preachers of 'workers' control' collapses as entire sectors of industry go into crisis (compare the Scanlon Plan at Pressed Steel-Linwood in 1965 with the accusations of 'anarchy' made by MP Fortescue against Halewood workers in 1971).

At Ford the majority of workers are indifferent to the “suggestions box”. This is usually the case in situations of strong workers' autonomy, partly because people aren't concerned to increase the employers' profits, and partly because they know that 'increased efficiency' might end up putting workers out of work. If capitalists need the support of the working class in order to increase productivity, they only get this support in the objective form of workers' struggles, forcing them to re-organise production.

This passive attitude of non-cooperation is widespread among workers at Ford. Of course, when a new machine comes into operation workers cooperate to a certain extent to get it working, on the orders of foremen etc. But apart from that, workers are not inclined to apply their intelligence to the needs of capital.

In situations of less workers' autonomy (Langley compared with Dagenham), any tendencies towards cooperation are directly linked with the individual worker's hopes of up-grading and promotion. But in general, Ford has never managed to solve the problem of how to use the "intelligence potential" of assembly line workers.

THE MANUFACTURE AND SUPPLY OF FORD COMPONENTS

Ford has gone much further than the other 3 major car manufacturers (BLMC, Vauxhall and Chrysler) in re-organising their supply of component parts and sub-assemblies. The company was driven by the wage struggles that were hitting its component and sub-assembly suppliers, into continuously re-organising its own vertical integration (bringing the supply of more and more basic components under the Ford umbrella). This process of concentration has been accelerating since Ford America took over total control of Ford-UK in 1960. Ford policy was increasingly to have at least 2 suppliers of any one component - with the exception of the few components supplied by companies directly controlled by Ford. This policy was an anti-strike measure.

From some points of view it might be an advantage to have a lot of the manufacture of components carried out by companies outside the [FILE 5] production cycle of the big motor companies, since only the supplier companies are in a position to make the economies of scale that would reduce the costs of research and production of components (eg supplying all motor firms with one standardised product; Lucas, Pilkington etc).

But this is really an admission of the difficulty that British firms face with international competition. In order to keep an edge on international suppliers in the components field, British car producers are in danger of following a defensive line of expanding the supplier firms in the UK, in the short term, rather than vertically integrating production. This would mean that they were relying on their components suppliers in order to keep technically ahead of their foreign competitors, rather than having this capacity within themselves.

For a while this independence of the supplier firms was a useful line of defence for the UK car manufacturers, but it was exploded by the wage struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. [App. 5] Then a process of concentration started among supplier firms, which merely paved the way for them to be taken over by the bigger motor manufacturers. In any event, the future of each of the bigger companies supplying transmissions and electrical parts is more dependent on the motor manufacturers than viceversa. For instance, over the past few years, Ford have broken the "monopoly" that existed in the UK sup ly of gear units, by beginning to supply 50% of their own needs. [Note 6] This process was also under way in other sections of industry, and reflects a concern of the capitalist class as a whole to reduce their dependence on component suppliers with a "monopoly" position in the market.

But it wasn't the capitalists of those particular supplier companies that decided whether or not the monopoly would continue: it was the working class. When workers in a particular supplier company use the rigidity of the production process (ie refuse flexibility, mobility of labour, new wage systems etc) as a weapon against that company, capital has to step in and break the workers' strangle-hold at that point in the production cycle. This was the case, for instance, with Briggs Bodies, which Ford took over in 1953.

This means that it will become increasingly rare for a strike in one of the component or sub-assembly companies to bring the larger UK motor combines to a standstill. It will be even harder now that the motor companies are setting up coordination at an international level, which in moments of strike action in the UK will bring in parts from other parts of Europe.

The level of integration in the UK motor industry was too low in the 1950s and 1960s, and this made the flow of production very vulnerable to stoppages in the supplier companies. Ford saw this, and learnt the lesson early. They saw the dangers of struggles by workers who were in a "monopoly" position, and pre-empted these struggles by setting up an international reserve pool for components and sub-assemblies. This is something that is worth studying in greater detail - but at the same time it should be said that the increasing integration of big companies also makes them more vulnerable to the actions of workers.

MACHINES, MEASURED DAY WORK AND SHOP STEWARDS

When it comes to the research, design and introduction of the heavy machinery that makes up the primary assembly lines and the auxiliary lines [FILE 6] in the factory, it's obvious that Ford UK depends heavily on Ford in America and its associates. [Note 7] Investment-per-employee in Ford's UK plants is higher than the average for Ford plants outside America [Note 81. In Britain, compared with the other manufacturers, in 1945 Ford had a level of fixed capital [App. 2] which was slightly below Vauxhall's and double that of BMC. [Note 9]

So, Ford UK is located somewhere between the 'American' level of organic composition, and what I shall call the 'BMC level'. The 'BMC level' was typical of the motor companies in the Midlands, until the second half of the 1960s, when it was plunged into crisis by the combined pressure of Ford and Vauxhall. This went hand in hand with a crisis in the workers' "control" relationship to production, which for a long time was the basic bond between workers and shop stewards in the Midlands. [Note 10] This relationship could be called "piecework discipline": [App. 6] under the piecework system, each steward acted as a policeman to ensure the productivity of his own group of workers. It partly explains why British Leyland could achieve surprisingly high levels of productivity; even though their fixed capital investment was lower than Ford's. [Note 11]

In the Midlands plants, the fact that workers were willing to produce meant that employers could continue to operate with levels of organic composition that were lower than in other sectors of the motor industry - at least, until wage drift [App. 6] eroded the productivity of the piecework system. There were two factors that undermined the workers' willingness to work: on the one hand the wage drive which had been continuous in the Midlands ever since the War, and on the other hand the fact that, during the 1960s, Ford workers had begun demanding parity with the Midlands wage levels.

The Midlands level of capital investment (organic composition) placed the shop steward in a certain role. In wage negotiations, first the Unions and the Engineering Em loyers' Federation (of which Ford and Vauxhall have never become a part define a general framework for national settlements. Then the shop stewards come into the picture: it's the stewards themselves who negotiate real. wages under piecework, and through them piecework discipline is imposed. [Note 12] The Engineering Employers were very interested in this subject, and in their statement to the Donovan Commission (1965) they said the following:

"For those firms in the motor industry where the piecework system is operated, negotiations at national level are much less important than they used to be. With the continuance of full employment, impatient customers, and ever-increasing capital investment, managements are forced, or disposed, to bargain with shop stewards to keep their plants in full operation. This has led to the growth in plant bargaining. Although no official statistics are available, BMC knows that about 1500 items are dealt with yearly as part of the negotiation procedure above foreman level. This, together with the effects of technological change, has meant that the engineering industry's procedure is now used to an extent undreamed of in the past..A further consequence of the increase in plant bargaining is earnings drift - ie the gap between earnings and nationally negotiated rates. The containment of this gap, which is largely unrelated either to the economic circumstances of the country generally or to the productivity of the firm in particular, is difficult to achieve when our present system of bargaining provides no positive link between national and plant levels ... In this part of the motor industry it has been found that the existence of a [FILE 7] well-organised shop stewards committee, fully representative of trade union membership in the factory, can assist greatly in overcoming the problem of leap-frogging wage claims, and also inter-union friction, demarcation disputes, and in controlling their more militant members." [Note 13]

Wage drive in the Midlands was organised jointly by pressure from workers and negotiations by shop stewards. It got to the point where wage increases far outstripped increases in productivity: the balance of the piecework system was beginning to tip against the employer. The recent hard-fought attempts by British Leyland to introduce Measured Day Work are a sign that the Company are trying to restore the balance in their favour. They're aiming to wipe out the position of BLMC workers as the leaders of this wage drive that has affected the car and engineering plants where wages are based on piecework.

With Ford, however, the position is different. They have maintained higher levels of constant capital investment [App. 2] than the average for British motor manufacturing, and have combined this with a system of hourly pay based on the "Ford organisation of work". [App. 1] The Ford assembly line, which controls rigidly and constantly the productivity of the labour force, has enabled Ford to be the first British motor company to free itself from the workers' use of the incentive system (ie using incentives to push up wages without correspondingly increasing productivity), And to make speed-up independent of corresponding increases in wages.

Relative exploitation [Note 14 and App. 2] is higher at Ford than at BLMC. Part of the difference between the two is negotiated - ie the fact that Ford negotiates wage levels that are lower than the other motor companies. But the other part is not negotiated - ie the rate of work (speed-up etc) which is imposed on workers by the Ford assembly line, in which they have little say.

The organisation of work at Ford partly explains the fact that, for a long time, Ford shop stewards were very close to the interests of Ford line workers. At first, in the 1930s, factory organisation was hard to establish, because Ford, like Vauxhall, were prepared to concede wage increases. Then, after the 2nd World War, union bargaining made company planning of wage levels a very precarious and temporary affair, and at the same time, shop stewards were put in a position to negotiate, by the fact that there was a strong rank-and-file drive against work-speeds and conditions of work in general.

As a rule, with the Ford organisation of work, the more that flow production is introduced, and the assembly line is "fluidified, smoothing out the bottlenecks and discontinuities that are typical of the UK engineering industry, the less room there is for anyone to negotiate the particular conditions of any one group of workers. At this point, either the shop steward "rejoins the workers" instead of fulfilling his role as a go-between in relations between the shop floor and management, or he comes closer to the Union, and tries to use it and make his presence felt in the negotiation of money wages.

The fact that Ford's day wage has been so much lower than wages in the other motor manufacturers has been the main driving force of struggles through the late 1960s and early 1970s - the demand for Parity [Note 15]. As this campaign starts to develop, the motor manufacturers will start to coordinate a double strategy on wages: on the one hand they aim to stop the [FILE 8] wage drive which has developed, based on the Midlands piecework system (as BLMC), and on the other hand they aim to take the wind out of the Ford workers' struggle for Parity.

FORD LEADS THE WAY IN SHOP-FLOOR CONTROL

Because production at Ford is more tightly coordinated than other motor manufacturers, the Company has to maintain a much tighter discipline at shop-floor level. Every time insubordination [App. 4] by a small group of workers causes a hold-up, the whole flow of production is threatened. Ford know this, and in the company agreement of March 1969 they tried to introduce their "Penalty Package". This aimed to modify the Labour Government's anti-strike legislation (Barbara Castle's "In Place of Strife") [Note 16], and bring it into line with the needs of a big company whose concern was to keep strikes at its UK plants within the average level for its plants internationally. The Government was planning a 28-day "cooling-off" period for "unconstitutional" strikes, [Note 17] but the Penalty Clauses proposed by Ford went further. They were designed to play on and exploit the isolation of single groups of workers - which is the other side of the ability of small groups of workers to plunge the whole of Ford's production process into crisis.

If one small group of workers somewhere along the line is in a position to organise a stoppage that will seriously threaten production, then management must exploit the smallness of that group of workers, and use the fact that they are a minority, so as to break any possibility of support and sympathetic action from the rest of the work-force: ie isolate them from the mass of workers. The Company aimed to ensure that the mass of workers would, in the short term, lose more than they would gain from the action of small groups of workers. For this reason Ford went further than the Government's proposals, and once again paved the way for future action by the State. Then, at the crucial moment of negotiations on the "Penalty Package", the management side declared that they would be willing to abandon all the proposed penalties - if the Unions were prepared to accept lower wage increases. But at this point the Minister for Employment stepped in and blocked this move, and managed to get the principle of penalties accepted in the final Agreement. [Note 18]

The clauses introduced in the "Penalty Package" threatened that in the event of an unofficial strike in a given Plant, workers in that Plant would lose lay-off pay, the yearly holiday bonus, and sick pay benefits for a six-month period. This would apply to all workers in the Plant where "unconstitutional" action occurred: the definition of "unconstitutional" was extended to include all forms of action - strikes, overtime bans, even go-slows and working-to-rule - ie anything which stood in the way of the Company achieving "flexibility of operation" and "efficient utilisation of plant".

The fact that Ford concentrated on penalising forms of [MISSING] struggle inside the plant implied that they had plans for still further concentration of production.

were planned to meet the productive needs of the Company in a period of expansion. But in fact the clauses threatening loss of lay-off pay for workers in any plant affected by "unconstitutional action" only played in favour of unconstitutional action, since once the 'truce' had been broken, then workers would have nothing to lose. [Note 18]

When we look at the part played in Ford production by workers at the Dagenham and Langley plants, we see that there's a permanent undercurrent of tension, which accumulates at shop floor level in the struggles of small groups of workers, and then finds outlet in the periodic strike confrontations with the Company and the State. Both Ford and the State accept this structure of "industrial relations" (in fact they encourage it - as in the new "American-style" 1971 Agreement, aimed at a longterm contract, ending in a set-piece confrontation every 2-3 years), and when the confrontation comes, they bring to bear all the pressures possible within the balance of class power at that time. [Note 20]

Throughout the 1950s, Ford were integrating their production at Dagenham (bringing in Briggs Bodies etc), and this process accelerated after Ford-America took over total control of the Company in 1960. The fact that there were a number of Ford plants concentrated round Dagenham, all within a few miles of each other, meant that it was possible for workers to establish immediate contact and common action [political composition: App. 1]. In America, where Ford plants are more decentralised (this is made possible by their higher technological level), this kind of contact is only really possible when a given struggle has been going for some time.

The Dagenham factory is fed by a number of smaller factories proliferating around the main factory, and in the same way Dagenham also acts as a feeder for the Ford factories in the "developed" and "underdeveloped" countries of the world (supplying components, knock-down parts etc). The process of transportation brings into close contact two strategic sectors of the British economy - motors and containers - by creating a link (a link that is also political) between Ford workers and the large numbers of dockers working at Tilbury - a dock that is in the process of being containerised. Ford have their own ships coming into Tilbury. As for knock-down parts, these are exported for final assembly in the countries to which they are sent. [This is happening increasingly, as overseas governments seek to build assembly plants which they hope will eventually be the ground for building up a vehicles-industry that is locally-based.]

This means that West Indian and African workers - who at this moment are about 20% of the 22,000 workers at Dagenham - are preparing material and working on the manufacture of knock-down parts for export and final assembly in South Africa, which, along with Holland, is the biggest overseas market for Ford UK. Needless to say, if they were working in South Africa, they would undergo intense racial discrimination.

Dagenham produces all the engines for Ford cars made in Britain, while Halewood, the other big Ford plant with car Final Assembly Lines, sends out transmission units. The link between Halewood and Dagenham is by rail/Freightliner, yet another intervention by the State in coordinating [FILE 10] a delicate area of the Ford production cycle, reducing Ford's dependence on road transport.

In the event of strike action, the main bottleneck in the Dagenham estate is the Engine Plant. If the old capitalist dream came true and the Engine Plant was working full shifts, 168 hours a week every day of the year, it would be producing 1,000,000 engines a year. But effective production from the plant is no more than half that number, and it's a typical case of the capitalist problem of "full utilisation of plant and machinery", which is the opposite of the worker's point of view - that social life is more important than Ford's needs. [Note: since this article was written, Ford's Dagenham Engine Plant production has in fact passed the million mark - October 1972].

The 5,500 workers in the Engine Plant have a leading position in setting line-speeds for the whole factory, and therefore this plant has been the main target for Ford's attempts to eliminate non-productive time (dead time), using computers and cybernetics. Since the section has not suffered defeats, not even following the 1962 strike, and since Ford has needed to increase productivity [relative exploitation: App. 2] in the Plant, they introduced a system of computerised control of the flow of production, and managed a considerable reduction in dead time. This key position of the Engine Plant also explains why Ford are so worried when these 5,500 begin stoppages or overtime bans, especially when stoppages here are organised to alternate with similar action by workers in the Foundry and Final Assembly.

The Foundry and Final Assembly are two other bottlenecks within the whole Ford process. In the Foundry workers have used the fact that the organisation of work was more flexible, and have managed through their struggles to reduce the number of Grades, which had been very marked in the Plant previously. [Note 21] In the second case, it has been the Final Assembly lines which have borne the full brunt of the strikes in the component and sub-assembly manufacturers, which have become more and more frequent in the last 10 years. This is also the section where workers have been least willing to buy Ford's "job evaluation" scheme, and where the demand came up for back-dated lay-off pay after the layoffs in 1968. [Note 22]

On the one hand, the workers' demand for full pay in the event of layoffs is very damaging to Ford: it tends to lead to long, drawn-out overtime bans, which can then lead into equally long strikes. But on the other hand, Ford were able to use the question of layoff pay against their workers. They could use the demand for full layoff pay in the event of a strike in another section, to exploit the lack of political coordination between individual plants and factories within the Company. This was shown in the lack of support for the women sewing machinists in 1968 when they struck at Dagenham: 200 Halewood workers came out in support, and Ford responded by laying off 5,000. This was by no means the first or the last time that this had happened.

Nobody could say that Barbara Castle's Bill was defeated in 1969. In fact, its main proposals as far as the interests of British capital were concerned, came up again in the Industrial Relations Bill. Tory critics of "In Place of Strife" criticised it, not because it went too far, but because, given the balance of class forces at that time, it didn't go far enough. It was for this reason that the Tories found it necessary to accompany the Industrial Relations Bill with another law the Immigration Act, to limit the basic civil rights of those sections of workers who were not yet part of the settled population - ie immigrant workers from Britain's ex-colonies. This means the 700,000 West Indian [FILE 11] workers, the 300,000 Indians and Pakistanis (not to mention countless Irish workers), who were brought to the UK at a time when unemployment here was low, and the "underdevelopment" of these ex-colonies made them good recruiting grounds for labour to be drained off towards the "mother" countries. [Note 23]

At the end of the 1960s, the capitalist class began a counterattack, which among other things included ways of punishing 'passive solidarity action' between plants (ie anything short of strike action) and introducing a new wage hierarchy by means of job evaluation. Ford was a leading force in both these attacks. As regards job evaluation, Ford took on Urwick Orr & Co as consultants to set up a new wage structure. If we want to understand how they arrived at the "relevant" gradings for each job, we would have to look at the relative strength of the different sections of the factory at that time. There was little "scientific" about the evaluations. The highest ratings were given to the smallest sections. In general, Ford uses the "smallness" of a work-group as a basis for calculating the "worth" of that group of workers.

Thus, it's Company policy to oppose any upward alteration of the grading system when it's a matter of upgrading hundreds of workers: but when it's only a matter of 10 or 20, they're more willing to agree. So, although Ford claimed that the evaluations were made on the basis of "skills" etc, in fact they were made by taking into account only the cost of labour, and of course, any increase that threatens the stability of the factory wage hierarchy is avoided like the plague [Note 241. As it happened, the workers' response to the introduction of this artificial job hierarchy was to use grading grievances as a way of advancing their claims, and for this reason Ford imposed a standstill in grading alterations for the 2-year duration of the 1971 Agreement.

FLEXIBILITY, LABOUR MOBILITY AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST WORK

The managements of Britain's big motor manufacturers have one over-riding interest in common: they are constantly reminding the State of the need for flexibility of labour to be achieved. They made this very clear in the Report that they prepared for the Donovan Commission: [Note 25]

"The 1964 TUC Annual Conference called for the 35-hour week; and similarly the Conference of the International Metalworkers' Federation at the end of 1965 expected European carworkers to follow the United Automobile Workers of America in demanding the 35-hour week. This ambition, however, could only be realised with the greater utilisation of automated machinery, and the latter can only be achieved if it is to run for the optimum length of time. This clearly requires flexibility in shift working and staggered rotas. Thus, if the Trade Unions wish to press for shorter hours, their claims need to be qualified by a corresponding willingness to accept work on a regular basis at times which are now regarded as overtime, outside the traditional Monday-to-Friday 40-hour week. The idea that scheduled overtime might vary in length between winter and summer, and that weekend and afternoon and night shifts can form part of the standard work-time, will require increasing attention." [FILE 12] But we should look at another even more important aspect of flexibility of labour - ie workers' mobility: [App. 4]

In the Dagenham plant at the end of the 1960s, the weekly turnover of labour was running at about 1%. At Langley it was reported as being about 40% in a year. The reason for this was the speed-up. In the words of one black worker: "When the pressure gets them, they run... They finish with Fords."

Langley is the plant out near Slough where Ford concentrated their productions of trucks and vans in 1959. Out of the 2,000 workers employed here, about 75% are West Indians and Asians, compared with Dagenham which at the time of writing has about 20-25%. In both cases the percentage of immigrant workers is increasing from year to year, and this is due to the fact that not many local workers are willing to put up with the pace of production at Ford. [In late 1972 Ford were having to advertise as far away as Liverpool to get assembly line workers for Dagenham]. At Langley, out of every 80 new recruits into the factory, only 10 are likely to stay there for more than 12 months, and many don't even last out the week. There are a few old hands who have been in the factory for years, but by the time they start taking the new recruits in hand, the new men are already on their way out, looking for something better, "because life at Ford is hard".

The introduction of black immigrant labour at Ford was a result of the labour shortages of the 1950s and 1960s. It was a slow process, more noticeable at Langley than at Dagenham. And right from the start there were tensions between black and white workers: for instance the fact that the Unions took no action to ensure a fair distribution of overtime between blacks and whites:

"To give an instance of how this operates: in any section where there are about 30 workers, 25 blacks and 5 whites, four of the whites are sure of overtime, three of the blacks are sure of overtime, about five blacks are given overtime at intervals, and the remainder none." [Note 26]

Management know that for many black workers overtime is a necessity, because as well as paying for food, housing etc, they also have to earn the money to cover the costs of coming to Britain in the first place - and this can take months or years. Also, many black workers travel in from London and outlying areas, and need the overtime to cover travelling expenses. Foremen exploit this situation in order to make life hard for the militant: anybody who is not prepared to toe the Ford line suddenly finds that he's not getting the overtime. Inevitably, bad feeling over the allocation of overtime led to certain attitudes about the Union:

"The vast majority is split, one side saying that it is best to be with the Union, and the other side saying: 'The Unions are no help anyway' ... The result of this is that even though 90% of the men are in the Union, the active support comes from a minority of around 25%, even on issues of major importance, like the present (1969) wage dispute."

However, more recently, the gap between workers and the Union/shop steward structure has,..narrowed. This has happened through the recent shop-floor pressures on the Unions to get wage parity with the Midlands, but also through a consolidation of shop-floor organisation. In some sections workers have fought, and have im roved conditions. This has lowered the level of labour turnover (mobility, which in turn means that groups of workers have managed to force management to respect their rights within the terms [FILE 13] of the accepted custom and practice. This means resisting transfers unless they have been mutually agreed between foremen and stewards, limiting speed-up, and insisting on certain safety conditions, which Ford always tries to erode with the continual introduction of new machinery and methods. This shop-floor struggle has given the stewards a certain base from which to operate.

When a new starter enters Langley, he's not yet part of an established group. The foremen make a point of putting the screws on him, by intimidating him. But very soon a group of workers will take him in hand, to make sure that he's not left isolated, and will make him part of the informal network that exists to look after new workers. The fact that new entrants are forced to make a decision, right from the start, whether they're going to be 'hard' or 'docile' has a lot to do with the labour turnover: high mobility breeds weak organisation.

For many young West Indians, the question of organisation is made even harder by the fact that many of them have a long way to travel between the factory and their homes, unlike the 'old' Langley working class, made up mainly of immigrant Irish workers, who live close around the factory, and who don't seem worried by the fact that it's hard for many black workers to attend branch meetings: "The Union continues to hold branch meetings in the Slough area, after work, instead of pressing the firm for permission to hold them on the premises."

Up until 1967 not one of the 75% black Union members at Langley had ever been elected shop steward. Then there was the drive for 'proportional representation', which led to the election of a few West Indian stewards. From then on, life at Langley became very tough. And the harder it became, the more new recruits fought to get out of the 'Hell' of the lower-grade jobs. This took many forms - like playing up to the foreman so as to get yourself upgraded - but in general it was a losing battle.

The manual labour force at Ford is organised, nationally, fairly rigidly into a wage hierarchy of 5 Grades, and the first crisis of a new recruit at Langley usually comes when he tries to challenge this hierarchy. Before he comes to a position of refusing Ford's organisation of work, he starts by accepting it and trying to better his position within the factory. The foreman begins to smell a rat when a man's eager to show that he can work harder than his workmates, and begins to become a threat to the factory hierarchy.

Sometimes, for instance, a worker who is trying to improve his position manages to get overtime on a job which - for other workers (usually white) but not for him - should carry a higher grading. His first mistake will be to go along to management and ask for a higher grading for the job. The first reply is usually a simple 'No'. So he goes away and comes back with his shop steward. The personnel manager simply ignores the steward, and merely refers to the agreement signed by the worker, which offers a choice: either he can work overtime, or he can be upgraded - but not both. He knows that upgrading will mean an extra 92 a week, but the overtime is worth £8 or £9. He abandons his demand for upgrading, but by now he has lost out on both counts, since by making a fuss, he's probably forfeited overtime in the future. He's been defeated, and from now on he's in the same boat as other workers who have not bothered to improve their position, and others who, after a period of absence, return to find that they've been transferred or down-graded as part of the policy of continual change-round that management manoeuvres in order to avoid giving higher grades to workers.

When the individual solution fails, the worker moves towards fighting Ford's organisation of work, and this is usually based on [FILE 14] collective awareness. His point of reference is no longer the shop steward, but the group of workers who are the real power behind the steward. Class unity begins to emerge when workers start forming informal groups political recomposition: App. 1] to resist the organisation of work, Cd to oppose those who exist to make it work (foremen, chargehands etc). The more the resistance grows and becomes conscious, the more the steward 'joins the lads' instead of becoming separated from the group and spending all his time or, negotiation. This means that instead of refusing work by the individual solution of always negotiating conditions of work for others, he begins to fight for his own material interests, together with other workers. It's these_-, workers' groups that are the main basis for organisation in a situation where high line-speeds mean a constant massive turnover of workers, since it's these groups that make sure that new recruits abide by the "custom and practice" which has already been won in the factory.

It's on the assembly lines that workers' mobility is at its highest, and it's here that Ford has been least able to create a job-hierarchy to divide workers. When Ford introduced "job evaluation" with the Grading Agreement in 1967, despite the fact that more than 2,000 jobs were "evaluated" at a very high cost (Ford spoke of f1m), and despite the secrecy that surrounded the weightings that were given to each job, somehow the mass of assembly-line workers (30,000 out of 48,000 workers) all ended up in the fourth out of 5 Grades (B Grade).

This system creates a mass of workers with a collective consciousness (which is quite different from the attitude in piecework factories), who fight Ford with collective action. An important example of this collective action is the overtime ban.

What an overtime ban does is to unify sections of workers who are usually divided and separated by large differences in wages. It means that those workers who don't fit into management's plans for a flexible labour force (ie those who are not periodically transferred and upgraded, or those who don't get overtime) are joined by workers who have taken a voluntary wage-cut by refusing to cooperate with management's need for overIme to be done. Management knows that when an overtime ban starts, they can expect strike action in some part of the Plant: when it means a small group of workers taking action unofficially, they know they have to act fast, and usually do this either by reorganising the job, or by dispersing the trouble-makers round the factory (internal mobility).

So, since overtime is used by management to divide workers among themselves, so the overtime ban is a way of creating class unity and breaking down the wage hierarchy. But it's also an attack on the factory plan, in the following way:

In any factory there is always insubordination and a refusal to cooperate, at the individual level, by the individual worker. For instance, when new machinery is being brought into operation, and a section of the Plant is speeded-up, workers respond by sending halffinished cars down the line and refusing to cooperate in the speed-up or in getting the machine to work properly. Langley is not built around one single assembly line, but around a number of lines for all the different models the factory produces, and this fact makes disruption easier - whether it's deliberate or not. By creating bottle-necks or disrupting the line, workers know that they are creating extra work, and from a workers' point of view this is a way of fighting unemployment and guaranteeing overtime during periods of slack production. To a certain [FILE 15] extent this kind of insubordination threatens the wage hierarchy, since semi-skilled workers have to be employed during overtime hours to repair defects in the vehicles that have come off the line, and this should bring with it higher wages, because it means doing the work of skilled men: the men are paid higher grade rates, but this is presented only as a 'privilege' during overtime hours. Overall, though, this kind of insubordination is incoporated by Ford in the factory plan, because they make allowances for a certain amount of overtime to put right "production deficiciencies": that factory plan can only be attacked by refusing to do overtime, and this in turn reinforces the effect of insubordination further back down the line.

FORD'S USE OF INVESTMENT AND THE LABOUR MARKET

Ford's recruitment policies, right through their history, have followed a regular pattern: on the one hand they locate their factories in 'underdeveloped' areas (Dagenham, Halewood, Genk, Bordeaux, Valencia), and on the other hand they use immigrant labour from 'underdeveloped' countries, on the assembly lines. This was the pattern in the early days of Ford Detroit, when 60% of their workers could not speak English. It has also been the pattern in the UK, where Ford have passed from Irish immigrant labour to West Indian and then Asian. And it's the pattern in Europe, where Renault, Chrysler, Volkswagen, FIAT and the others all rely on immigrant labour from the Mediterranean countries and North Africa. This policy of labour mobility at an international level is Ford's reaction to workers' mobility - ie the simple fact that workers won't put up with Ford assembly lines for long, and Ford have to look further and further abroad to get workers willing to work for them.

Capital plans development and underdevelopment, and exploits the one against the other. Ford's operations fit completely into this pattern: on the one hand geographic mobility of labour (bringing in labour from 'underdeveloped' countries), and on the other mobility of investment (investing in 'underdeveloped' regions). However, the workers' response to this manipulation is a mobility of their own - a refusal to work for Ford.

The Trade Unions are waking up to the fact that this puts them in a tricky position. Ever since the "Ford Revolution" and the introduction of the assembly line in the 1910s, workers' mobility has been the main form of struggle in the motor industry. The more that workers' wages are tied directly to productivity, the more the Union's existence as a bargaining agent is threatened, because increased speed-up means an increase in labour turnover: high labour turnover (workers' mobility) is a form of struggle over which the Unions have very little control. It also tends to work against the Union itself as a form of struggle.

The precondition for any Union-led struggle against Ford's manipulation of the labour market, and towards international parity within the Company, would be a stable labour force, organised as trade unionists. This would be needed for any such coordinated campaign at an international level - but needless to say, these preconditions don't exist, and it's not the Unions that are going to bring it about. [FILE 16]

_________________________________________

SECTION TWO:

NOTES FOR A HISTORY OF FORD IN BRITAIN

Ford's penetration into Britain follows the successive phases of imperialist expansion with text-book regularity: first exporting finished commodities into Britain; then exporting part-finished goods, together with the initial capital for developing production in Britain; and finally exporting capital, which was added to profits accumulated in Britain,'in order to develop productive capacity in Britain to the point where the UK itself could become a launching-pad for further investments overseas.

Trafford Park

As Ford's penetration began to develop in Britain, there was an unusual absence of tension between existing British capital and this incoming American capital, and Ford was allowed a remarkably stable and secure development. This was due more to the fact that for a long time British capital had little interest in the production of the motor car as a mass consumer product, rather than any common cause between English and American imperial interests. Because of the Ford organisation of the work process, which had been developed in the USA, and because of the remarkable freedom of movement that they were allowed, Ford-UK was able to take the lead as a "driving motor" in the British motor industry, increasing the rate of relative exploitation [App. 2] in motor manufacturing as a whole from 1911 onwards.

Ford started production in Britain with the Trafford Park factory, opened in 1911 on the outskirts of Manchester. This was an assembly plant for knock-down parts imported from Michigan. This took Ford a step beyond the phase of simply importing finished products, which they had started 8 years previously. The factory employed a labour force that was already well suited to the work, since the workers already had experience in the manufacture of vehicles and means of transport in the Manchester area. In fact, the group of workers who started the first phase of struggles at Ford were precisely the coachbuilders employed in the Body section. [Note 27]

The shift from simple assembly of knock-down parts manufactured by Ford-USA, through increasing manufacture of parts in the UK, to the final complete manufacture of the Model T Ford, took place between 1911 and 1912. The Assembly line was introduced at Trafford Park between 1913 and 1914, following a rapid expansion of production dictated by the need for heavy production required by the War effort - a need to which Ford responded by building a plant in Cork (Ireland). [When the War was over, this plant was turned over to producing tractors.]

The Move to Dagenham

The next major development in Ford's penetration into the UK came in 1922-23. At that time, in America as in the whole of the Western world, capitalism's margins of manoeuvre were ex anding again after the period of intense class conflict from 1917-1920. [Note 28] At that time, plans were being prepared for the building of Ford-Cologne, which began production in 1931, at the same time as the new Dagenham plant was being opened in Britain. From 1928, the year in which the Ford Motor Company was formally established, Ford of Britain was made the centre of all Ford's European operations: up until 1950 Ford-UK remained the majority shareholder in Ford-Europe, acted as the coordinator of the relatively autonomous Ford-Werke AG, and maintained Ford's position in the face of the European operations of their rivals, General Motors [Note 29]. Ford-UK was [FILE 17] able to take on this function of de facto management of Ford's operations in Europe [Note 301. During this period, British engineering companies were still dubious about Ford's mass production for the consumer market, and continued to emphasise the production of engines as a means of production.

The spot chosen for the future expansion of Ford's production was Dagenham, near London - thereby following the general shift of the centre of gravity of British industry from Manchester to the South-East. Already in the years preceding the General Strike of 1926, the outskirts of London had seen the growth of a considerable concentration of industry, which had moved there to take advantage of a vast concentration of mass labour brought together by production for the War effort [Note 311. Ford's plan at Dagenham was, from the very start, part of a new kind of capitalist development in the UK, in which the State and the local authorities had an important part to play in creating the infrastructures for these new developments - ranging from the draining of Dagenham's marshlands to the building of houses for the first few thousand workers who were brought to Dagenham.

The announcement by Ford that they had chosen Dagenham for their new site (in 1924) was decisive in speeding up the building of this town - the first of the English New Towns. Ford demanded that there should be a supply of suitable labour ready and available before the factory building programme was started, and this meant making use of the large numbers of Irish immigrants, together with the first wave of workers from London's East End. The main period of building in Dagenham came between Ford's choice of Dagenham in 1924, and the beginning of building operations on the factory itself, in 1929. [Note 32]

The "New Deal" at Dagenham began at the moment of deepest economic crisis for British capitalism, and coincided with the first signs of a political recovery by British capital. Dagenham began production in 1931. Ford was then joined by two other associated Detroit-based companies - Briggs, for the building of bodies, and Kelsey Hayes for the production of wheels. [Note 33]

The availability of such a large labour reserve in the Dagenham area was exceptional by British standards, due to the economic crisis and the unemployment that accompanied it. Ford was well aware of this situation when he set about trying to use the crisis in a characteristic Ford manner. Namely, between 1932 and 1933 Ford began to prepare a drastic reduction of the basic wage rates at Dagenham. Ford claimed that the wage cuts were necessary "because of the crisis", but in fact they should be seen as a preparation for the launching of the "R-100 car" in 1935.

Wage Cuts in America & Britain

During the period immediately preceding the wage cuts in 1933, the first organised nucleus of factory militants at Dagenham was beginning to build up, around Communists who had emigrated from the factory at Trafford Park, and who were especially numerous among the skilled workers in the Toolroom. They were members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, a union which allowed for a broader political outlook on the part of its members, and partly as a result of this tended to include numbers of Communist Party members. [Note 34] So, it was not only the management of Ford-UK which passed from Trafford Park to Dagenham: it was also the group of workers who began the 1933 strike, and who continued the process of factory organisation after the strike had ended.

At the beginning of 1933, Ford announced their wage cuts, and began [FILE 18] to apply them, starting with the factory security men and working their way carefully up through the manual workers and the lineworkers till they reached the skilled workers in the Toolroom. The wage-cuts were being imposed as part of the policy of Ford-USA, and seemed likely to succeed in Britain, with the high lWels of unemployment that existed at that time. But by early 1933 the international cycle of struggles against the wage cuts had already started (it was later to lead to the occupation of the factories and the growth of the CIO in America). After 18 months of continual wage-cutting in the USA, and after the failure of the strike at Fisher Body in Flint, January 1933 saw the strike at the Vernor Highway factory of Briggs Bodies. [Note 35]

The miners and the textile workers in the US were no longer isolated. In a sense, capitalism was creating a new equality among workers, and a new unity. Reducing money wages meant reducing wage differentials, and this became a weapon in the hands of the working class. The opposition to wage-cutting at Briggs was victorious after 2 days of picketing. This was an important moment - the first workers' victory in Detroit since 1920, and the beginning of a process of organisation which was to culminate in the occupation of the factories [Note 361. As Roosevelt was signing the National Recovery Act halfway through June 1933, [Note 37] the other strikes that followed Briggs began to bite, hitting another 7 motor manufacturers, although not yet affecting the Big Three - General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Dagenham entered this international network of struggles in 1933, when the wage-cuts reached the Toolroom. Within a matter of days, Dagenham workers had turned the tide of the wage-cuts - a victory which was not achieved in the USA until the occupation of the factories in 1936. The strike at Dagenham involved all the workers. The difficult work of organising the unemployed (National Unemployed Workers' Movement) so as to prevent the growing pool of unemployed workers being played off against striking workers, bore fruit at Dagenham. [Note 38] The pickets held the day. After three days, Ford was compelled to abandon the wage-cuts.

Workers' Struggles and the Wàr

At the moment when the War began, the initiative seemed to have passed completely into the hands of the employer. Speed-up was rife, and the official working week was increased first to 44 hours (1941) and later to 48 hours. The conversion to war-production meant that the production of big internal combustion engines took precedence over the production of motor cars (more than 262,000 V8 engines were produced in the war years, compared with a normal 16,000 per year before the War). This period also saw an integration between State capital and Ford capital which, until the War, had been unknown at Ford.

The shop stewards at Ford Dagenham remained closely linked with the unionised rank and file workers, and were not drawn into collaboration with the TUC. In fact the TUC, for the whole duration of the War, was battling to stop the spread of the shop stewards' network, while at the same time imposing its "anti-strike" line on the existing shop stewards, by threatening to leave them at the mercy of State repression if they extended their demands to challenge the general working conditions that were prevalent in War-industry.

But as far as the working class at Ford was concerned, at the moment when the War began, Ford workers had won a certain level of autonomy, and no appeal to "national unity" would bring them to knuckle under to the interests of capital. Sectional strikes and stoppages, against speed-up and for a reduction in hours, continued, regardless of the ups and downs of the War - although they intensified when victory against the Axis powers was certain. The workers' struggles during this period had two decisive results: the split between shop stewards and unionised rank and file workers on the one hand, and the TUC and Labour Party on the other, became far deeper; and the campaign for the shorter working week developed, slowly and steadily, to come to a head in 1948.

Briggs Recognises the Stewards

At Briggs, the first all-out strike happened when Britain stood alone against the Axis powers. The response from the management and the Government was uncertain at first. Briggs said that they were prepared to negotiate with shop stewards, but not with the Unions [Note 50]; then they changed their minds, against negotiations with stewards - a position which they kept up till 1944, although they didn't seem to appreciate the dangers of negotiating directly with stewards rather than with Union officials. Finally, in 1944, "following a period of agitation and strikes", [Note 51] and prior to the Normandy landings, an agreement was reached which recognised the shop stewards as a negotiating body, and spread the shop stewards' organisation throughout the plant - although still not recognising the Unions. [Note 521. This put the shop stewards [FILE 22] in a position to promote a period of wage-drive which became increasingly disruptive of the Company's plans, even though in terms of strike action the Company appeared calm right up to 1952. [Note 53]

Ford and the Unions

At Ford itself, the TUC leadership stepped in and prevented the strike spreading "in view of the impending invasion of France". Union officials came into the factory to convince the workers to postpone the strike till the War was over. They noted the tension in the plant, and reported back that, in their opinion, the plant meetings would immediately have turned into strike meetings if they had made it clear that the TUC was prepared to isolate and smash the strike.

After their success in getting the strike postponed, Ford and the TUC signed an agreement in April 1944 which set up the Ford Joint Negotiating Committee, going right over the heads of the shop stewards at Dagenham. This was a blow to the aspirations of the Trade Union left, who had hoped that they would have been able to force the coalition Government and Ford to recognise the Union locally at Dagenham in this period of boom production. In this way, by instituting the FJNC and ignoring the pressure from the shop floor, Ford was able to take a leading role in eliminating the wage leap-frogging usually associated with situations of shop-floor bargaining: this was a fact that the labour movement had to contend with as from 1947 - although Ford's example was not immediately followed by the other motor manufacturers.

Liberalisation necessarily took place after, and not during the War, when Ford reconverted to peacetime production and made plans to launch the motor car as a mass consumer object (one of Ford's models was called the "Popular" - a parallel with the German Volkswagen established under Hitler). At Ford the shop stewards were excluded from the negotiating table, and this was the framework within which the Unions participated in negotiations. From 1946 Ford negotiated the whole of the wage packet, denying any role to shop floor negotiation (although in the other motor manufacturers - with the exception of Vauxhall - sectional bargaining would continue to be the pattern for another 25 years).

In March 1946, Ford-USA had already gone ahead with its counterattack on the Union stewards of the USA. At Dagenham the management decided on a policy of mass sackings, which would enable them to eliminate the most militant groups of workers in the guise of carrying through their factory reconversion after the War.

At this point 95 shop stewards were elected - and the Labour Party (now in Government) managed to defuse the situation - but only after Ford had set up a lockout. This was also the point when trade unionism was recognised at Ford Dagenham, thereby providing some guarantees of a continuation of the wage increases that had become possible with the favourable postwar balance of class forces (increases that were written into the 1948 Agreement).

Post-War Restructuring

After the War, Ford expanded its production. The expansion followed the American lines of a rapid conversion to peace-time production, with an increased mechanisation of production, taking advantage of the fact that, while most other countries' motor industries had been bombed flat, the car factories in the UK and USA were not so hard hit. Dagenham continued to act as the centre for Ford's exports to the Commonwealth. The new investment associated with reconversion increased the amount of [FILE 23] fixed capital per worker by almost a third, and production-per-man-hour increased accordingly. This increased productivity was brought about by the installation of new machinery rather than any intensification of workloads.

The introduction of this new machinery meant, as far as labour relations were concerned, that social democracy won for itself a moment of stability in the plant. This was embodied in the 1948 Agreement, which was won after strike action. An important aspect of this Agreement was that it reduced the large differentials that had existed between different grades of workers, before the War. This was the first sign that the skilled' workers - the workers who had been a leading presence in the first 15 years of Dagenham's history - were losing the initiative. The initiative began to pass to the lineworkers. By now the pay packet of a production worker was only one-fifth lower than that of the skilled worker. But in the meantime another gulf was opening - the differential between men and women: the wages of the lowest Grade (comprising only women) were only a half of the skilled male worker's rate.

Ford acquires Kelsey Hayes & Briggs

The Briggs factory, which had again become the Body section of Ford Dagenham, following the reconversion to peacetime production, was a strong force in the workers' struggles at Dagenham. A group of shop stewards had grown up out of the the new influx of workers who entered Briggs after the War. These stewards were able, in the postwar period, to make their presence felt in plant bargaining at Briggs, on wages and on conditions of employment. At the same time, they made sure that Union officials fell in line with what they wanted, and they were able to avoid any meddling by the TUC.

But management thinking at Ford became less and less tolerant of this wage-drive in its biggest supplier company. But at the same time, Ford's thinking led them to take up quite different conclusions from the motor manufacturers in the Engineering Employers' Federation (who were still far from worrying about the long-term consequences of local plantbargaining). Ford began to coordinate an offensive over the question of local bargaining - but before this, they took a major step towards coordinating the class policies of the UK motor manufacturers: on Ford's invitation, the personnel managers of the biggest motor manufacturers started in 1950 to hold regular meetings among themselves. [Note 54]

The contradiction between the highly centralised system of collective bargaining at Ford, and the "local autonomy" that existed at Briggs was clear. Thus, when Ford took over Briggs Bodies (after having taken over Kelsey Hayes in 1947) the were acting to defend their own interests, and at the same time (as usual they were setting an example for the whole motor industry. When Ford took over Briggs in 1953, they were acting in a situation where the struggle had already been transmitted from Briggs to Ford-Dagenham, and where the Briggs wage drive seemed likely to follow it. Ford's action was designed to prevent this.

In fact, Ford's acquisition of Briggs in 1953 was preceded by a strike which started at Briggs in July 1952, over redundancies and the Government's opposition to further wage rises, and this strike had spread to Ford, when 600 workers were laid off. It lasted for about a month, and 247,000 days were "lost". Ford's takeover of Briggs was thus preceded by strike action there, and was intended to stop the Briggs wage drive spreading to Ford.

The action decided by the shop stewards at Briggs immediately threatened the whole of Ford's production, despite the TUC's attempts [FILE 24] to intervene, and despite the fact that the NUGMW refused to make the strike official. The strikers' reactions to the layoff were swift: they accused the Company of lock-out and reprisal. But they also put 2 important demands before the Company: they demanded either layoff pay for workers who were laid off, or some way of regulating the production cycle so as to smoothe out the effects of booms and slumps on the worker's wage packet.

In 1946 the fight over the question of layoffs had been smothered by the intervention of the Labour Government. Then, in 1948, the Union leadership had managed to sew up the strike in an Agreement. But by 1952 a struggle was effectively being fought for wages for not working, and the obvious strength of the workers' organisation convinced the Ford Negotiating Committee that counter-measures would have to be taken.

Ford and the Unions against the Stewards

"After the 1952 strike, the FJNC considered creating an agreement aimed at entrusting a major controlling-power to the national officials of the Unions. It was difficult to obtain ratification of this plan by the individual Unions, and it became clear to the Company that the delay in getting it signed was due to the resistance put up by the shop stewards." [Note 55]

Ford's takeover of Briggs was decided in Detroit, following joint pressure by both Ford and the US Government. It came at a time when Ford was already taking steps to isolate and discipline workers at Dagenham, with the aim of breaking the strength reached with the 1952 strike, and bringing the shop stewards' organisation under the control of the national leaderships of the various Unions.

Ford had to regain control: this was a necessary precondition for the 1955 Procedure Agreement at Fords, which for the first time gave the employer the possibility of making use of the network of shop stewards who existed, and who at that time were elected on "a craft, departmental or geographical basis". [Note 56] However, since there were no ground rules about which Union a steward should belong to, this made it hard to establish Union control over stewards that belonged to a different Union to that of the men he represented.

However, the 1955 Agreement did not recognise the existence of the Shop Stewards' Committee at Dagenham. There were two reasons for this. First, to limit the power of the shop stewards so that they were no more than middle-men between the shop floor and the foremen (and always confined to the single section, or the single problem). And second, in order to put an end to the wage-drive, which had arisen at Briggs precisely because of the system of direct negotiation between stewards and management.

As a rule, as organic composition (the amount of capital, machinery etc per worker) increases, shop stewards become less and less responsible for bargaining over wages and piecework rates. [However, this role of the shop steward continued, in the Midlands motor factories, right up to the early 1970s, because the Midlands plants have had a far lower level of organic composition - Note 57].

At Briggs, however, there had traditionally been a gulf between rank and file workers, and the Unions. This was not due so much to the interference of Union officials in the struggle, as it was at Ford, but rather to the fact that the indirect part of the wage was increasingly being taken out of the control of the stewards, with the compliance of the [FILE 25] Unions. This led to a situation where the stewards were brought closer to rank and file workers, and fought together with them to defend working conditions. The employer had to break what the Court of Enquiry called: "the unio rithin the Union". At the ex-Briggs plant, in the period between 1955 and 1957, there were more than 500 strikes and stoppages, and Ford decided to make a move.

"In 1956 the Company decided that, with all the appreciation due to the good offices of the Union at all levels, the Company itself had to take measures that would be adequate to the need to restore order." [Note 58]

New Investments and Decentralisation

It took Ford another 2 years to defeat the forces that were defending their existing conditions of work. This came after the "bell-ringer" strike of 1957, with the Standardisation Agreement of August 1958. This agreement brought Briggs' "conditions of employment" into line with those at Dagenham, and gave management power to operate whatever internal mobility they thought necessary. Ford were only able to win this battle through the intervention of the State - through the Cameron Court of Enquiry, which had managed to defuse strike action at Briggs. [Note 50]

The political stability resulting from the steep increase in fixed capital between 1954 and 1959 was fairly precarious and short-lived [Note XX] The motor industry was expanding, and production of popular cars for the domestic market was slowly rising (thereby reversing the situation from 1946-1954, when export production was higher than production for the home market) - although exports were still growing by 57% in the period 1951-1955 compared with the previous 5 years. [Note 60] Ford-UK's function within Ford's overall multinational operations was redefined: it lost its function of controlling investments in Europe, it had no role as an international coordinator, and it was relegated to a simple exporter of cars. [Note 61]

Already, by the early 1960s, exports as a percentage of the total sales of Ford-UK, were far higher than the other big UK motor companies: Ford was 6th in terms of turnover, but first in the number of cars they exported - a position they maintained ₁₀a number of years. Ford's situation, therefore was different from other multinational companies based in Britain - but this was a result of the decision by the management of Ford-America that Ford-UK should function specifically as an exporter of goods.

The next phase of investment was in 1959-64, as part of Ford's strategy to knock out the possibility of workers defending their interests merely at shop-floor level [Note 62]. A crucial element in this new phase was Ford's policy of increasing and decentralising production. [Note 63]

The new plant at Halewood, with its 15,000 workers, was built on Merseyside, which was at that time a "development area", with a large pool of unemployed labour, which represented a certain political threat to the State. The State paid the costs of laying the infrastructures for the twin development of Ford at Halewood and BMC at Speke. Sub-assembly and engineering work previously done at the Dagenham plant was farmed out to other factories around Dagenham, some of them new, and some wholly reorganised. Langley was doubled in size, and was developed from being a parts factory (after having produced war-planes up till 1946) into a centre for assembly of all Ford trucks, coordinating with the ex-Briggs Bodies plant which Ford had taken over in Southampton in 1953. Decentralisation and expansion prepared the ground for the moment when Ford-America moved from being the majority share-holder in Ford -UK, to take complete control of the British [FILE 26] company (1960).

Ford's intention was to put the American company in complete control of the operation of Ford-UK [Note 64]. And, ironically, at this very moment Ford was organising conferences for shop stewards, in which they were explaining that Britain's imminent entry into the Common Market was going to require maximum "cooperation" from everybody concerned!

Meanwhile, as Ford workers had expected, the take-over by Ford's American management meant Detroit-style policies in the plant. Management set about demolishing what remained of the old "custom and practice". They began flying most of Dagenham's higher supervision off to Detroit and Cologne so as to show them how Dagenham workers could be made to keep up the workloads and linespeeds common in Germany and the USA. [Note 65] Here we see American capital intervening at a point where a section of the British working class was relatively strong; we see Ford's international control-centre intervening in order to bring the UK level of struggles down to the international average level for that period.

The Attack on the PTA

The first testing ground for the new policies imposed by Ford-America was the PTA plant at Dagenham (Paint Trim and Assembly), where, for the first time in the history of Dagenham all the operations of painting, trim and final assembly of cars had been organised into a single, continuous assembly line. Management in the PTA had been strengthened by an injection of American personnel. And workers in the PTA found that they were increasingly bearing the brunt of the mechanisation of operations further back up the line.

Resistance and organisation against the increased line-speeds began in earnest in the PTA in 1959, with small groups of workers organising stoppages on the line. At this time (1960), the average number of strikes in other Ford-UK plants was ₂hour per m , at Dagenham, excluding the PTA, it was 15 hours; and in the PTA it [MISSING] 78 hours per worker - a total of 100,000 in 1960. In 1961 this figure rose to 184,000, and in 1962 it stood at 454,000; 69 strikes and 114 overtime bans. [Note 66]

"After lengthy negotiations the stewards had sometimes made the offer of a slight improvement, and Supervision, in desperation at the continuous struggle, unwisely compromised and, in accepting only a small proportion of the effort which they were entitled to expect, were left with even more determined resistance to overcome in order to achieve a normal day's work."

"The Company maintained that in most areas of the Assembly Plant there had been a complete and organised effort to restrict output, and any attempt to achieve an improvement had brought the threat of an overtime ban or a stoppage of work." [Note 67].

Ford's policy at this point was to create differences of workload within the Dagenham plant, and then to play on these differences. They chose to attack at a point where the workload was relatively light. And the attack was able to use the fact that struggles of individual sections were isolated from each other. Ford profited from the fact that there was no generalised workers' offensive against the overall organisation of work throughout, the plant: this meant that the Union leadership was able to [FILE 27] support the Company's policy without being challenged, and it meant that other sections of workers who were laid off by the strikes in the PTA remained largely indifferent to the struggle there.

Early in 1962 the PTA Shop Stewards' Committee tried to even out the workloads in the PTA - taking the most militant sections as the 'norm' by which other work standards would be judged. The stewards' resolution went a long way in applying the old model of workers' sectional control of line-speeds to the new reality of an assembly line that is increasingly rigidly controlled from above:

"This Committee is opposed to speeding up our members, and recommends the following policy:

1] Don't agree to timings (see below). They are not acceptable.

2] Operate on the basis of a fair day's work with a decent standard of quality, with the following alternatives: a) don't do the number if there isn't adequate labour; b,) go down the line to prove the job isn't workable.

3] Collective approach - ie the ratio of jobs to the number of men is to be held.

4] If the Company threatens workers, insist on the operation of the status quo (see below), either a) on the original basis of jobs and men, or b) on men going down the line. This to operate while the problem goes through procedure.

This policy could operate. But if there is any victimisation of any member, we will recommend members to go into dispute because the Company would not operate procedure to the full before taking action.

[Note: Timings, that is the use of the stopwatch on jobs; Status quo, that is the situation to remain as it was before the dispute started.]

The Unions did not support the PTA stewards' policy - and this policy remained limited to the PTA. [Note 68]

In July 1962 Ford attacked - at another point. They informed the steward and Convenor that they intended to reorganise the Garage Department and promptly took 45 of the 179 workers off the lines. When the Garage walked out in dispute, the rest of the plant was locked out. The 179 were isolated from the rest of the plant - with the traditional accusation of having a "cushy number". They were defeated, and the Company started on a general speed-up throughout the rest of the plant.

Then, in October, Ford management attacked again. This time they were consciously and deliberately in breach of agreement: they chopped and changed positions, [Note 69] while workers on the line were organising stoppages, ignoring grievance procedure. And Ford, instead of taking disciplinary action against the section, decided to sack their steward instead (Bill Francis). A strike was called - but the feeling of the Unions was that the aims of the strike could not and should not be spread to involve other workers - and the Dagenham section of the Communist Party fell in line with this approach. [Note 70]

The strike was defeated, and when the workers returned to work, they were lined up in their sections so that the foremen could choose who they were willing to keep on their old jobs, and who they wanted transferred. Ford wanted to sack 600 men - but in the end the Unions were allowed a few crumbs of comfort: through a series of long negotiations, the [FILE 28] 600 was reduced to 17 - all of them stewards, and all of them sacked.

It is not easy to calculate the increase in relative exploitation which followed the defeat. However, workers' accounts tally with Ford's own estimates - that the Company's average productivity rose by around 18% from 1962-63, while at Dagenham the figure was nearer 20-30%, without any significant increase in capital investment (organic composition). [Note 71]

The speed-up resulted in a high level of labour turnover, with older workers being sacked if they could not stand the new workloads, and younger workers being brought in [Note 72]. This saved Ford considerable amounts of money in overall labour costs, since it relieved them of paying 'merit money' (a discriminatory payment, based on loyalty and seniority), and it meant that the younger new starters could be made the basis of the new productivity drive. [Note 73] The PTA from that moment on, had difficulty finding candidates to stand for the annual stewards' elections. However, Ford did manage to bring about an unexpected increase of insubordination in the plant, when, overestimating the victory they had won, they sent a hundred or so chargehands to work on the lines, and workers responded angrily.

Ford's New Factories

If we want to understand the changing balance of class forces at Ford in the period since 1962-63, we have to take account of the level of workers' struggles internationally in the 1960s - both inside and outside Ford's international cycle of production. We also have to understand Ford's new thrust in Europe as a whole.

The keystone of Ford's expansion plans at the end of the 1950s - both in Britain and in Europe - was the injection of a young labour force onto the assembly lines: this became a coordinated company policy. The new plants of the period were Halewood on Merseyside, and Genk in Limburg, Belgium. Both of these were 'development areas', where Ford received State aid worth £11m and 10bn Belgian francs respectively, for setting up their factories. Both were high unemployment areas, with large labour reserves, so that Ford could reasonably expect easily planned wage [FILE 29] costs for many years ahead. And both were located in regions of declining industries - apparently promising a degree of medium-term political stability.

However, their hopes proved ill-founded, because workers at both the new factories maintained a continuity of struggles with the old "declining" sectors - engineering on Merseyside, and coal-mining in Limburg [Note 75]. At Halewood, the building and starting-up of the new factory was accompanied by strikes and overtime bans from 1960 to 1962 - and this culminated in 1962 with the breakdown of the agreement between the Union (GMWU and AEU) and Ford. (In 1960 the Unions had accepted longer hours and lower wages than Dagenham in return for preferential unionisation agreements). [Note 76] With the struggles of 1962 we see the start of Halewood's unification with the rest of Ford-UK.

The unification of Ford-Genk with Ford-Antwerp took longer. Ford-Genk began production in 1964, with a young labour force that was mainly of Southern European origin - some of them came to Ford after a spell in the Limburg coalmines, where about 60% of the workforce in the 1950s and 1960s was imported migrant labour, and some of whom came in a frech influx of immigrant labour from Southern Europe and North Africa (many Turks and Italians among them). This meant that by 1965 the average age of the Ford worker at Genk was not much over 27 years. This exploitation of young people's muscle power on the assembly lines opened the way for a speed-up of such intensity that it created a unity between old and young workers - united in their refusal to work at Fords: of the 500 ex-Zwartberg miners who entered Ford-Genk when it opened, only 200 were left by 1968. Between 1964 and 1968, 9,000 workers had left Ford-Genk in protest against the 45-hour working week, the high line-speeds, and the fact that Ford-Genk paid 12 francs an hour less than Ford-Antwerp.

The 8,000 workers at Ford-Genk had their first trial of strength with Ford's international management, in the strike that lasted from October to November 1968; the demands of the strikers were similar to the sorts of demands being made by Halewood workers in relation to Dagenham: wage-parity with Ford-Antwerp; rank and file control of the struggle; and the need to establish coordination with other Ford plants in Europe. The Union ended this struggle with an agreement that was supposed to run for 5 years of "labour truce" - but this truce was broken in JanuaryFebruary 1970, when Genk workers re-opened the struggle, and joined up with the striking miners of the surrounding Limburg mines.

When Ford chose to site the plant at Genk - almost mid-way along the 120-miles of motorway that link the Cologne and Antwerp plants - this signalled that the centre of gravity of Ford's European operations was being shifted from Britain to the Belgian/German axis, and that overall European control was passing from Ford-UK to Ford of Germany. Ford's interests were clearly that they had a more favourable labour situation in Germany, and a level of labour discipline that they hoped to be able to impose on the British plants. The fact that Ford had created an international cooperation between the Belgian, German and British plants could have laid the basis for shop stewards to make real contacts with their overseas counterparts, and develop common forms of struggle around this unified production process. However, this was scotched: the Unions' response to this capitalist initiative was to take away from the stewards more and more of their channels of communication at the national level, [FILE 30] and to keep tight Union control of any direct communication with representatives from Ford plants abroad.

Wages, not Productivity

Although individual struggles remained isolated, they had a common factor - the drive for increased wages. We can say that the refusal of work at Ford (and the associated labour mobility) was an important factor in the wage drive at Fords in the 1960s - but we should also note that this was a generalised phenomenon at the worldwide level, particularly in the motor industry. From this we can see the most obvious common factor of the wage drive: the cost of labour mobility, which presents itself as a direct demand for higher real wages, and refuses to accept that wage rises should be linked to increased productivity (in the shape of the various sorts of productivity and incentive schemes). This has always been the pattern of things at Ford: the workers' demand for increased social wealth grows hand in hand with the increasing refusal to work at Ford, of the mobility that this brings about, and the social costs that result from this refusal. This is a characteristic that unites the different struggles that emerged in the 1960s; and it also raises the possibility of developing this characteristic at an international level - something which will prove an important testing point for the new working class forces that are emerging now. Furthermore, the fact that capital is now using stagnation as a political weapon, as well as underdevelopment (as previously in the case of the West Indies, even more than Southern Europe) means that the problem of the overall relationship between driving sectors of the economy and the non-wage areas becomes a problem not only for the masses of workers coming out of the underdeveloped areas - but for the whole of the working class.

Ford-UK is an important focus-point of class forces - and it was here that Ford management undertook a trial of strength that led to the workers' defeat of 1962. Ford's initiative was the first spark of a new wave of employers' resistance to increases in money wages - a resistance which took shape in the Budgets of 1961 and 1962, during the brief period when Selwyn Lloyd was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and which became Government policy from July 1961 to March 1962 ("pay pause").

This experiment was a taste of the "wage freeze" which was being proposed by the Tory Right-wing (although this Right-wing suffered a demise as a result of the Government's inability to confront the wave of strikes in Spring 1962 - and did not resume control of the economy until the 1970 Election).

The fact that this wage freeze experiment was held in reserve while Labour was coming to power (the 1964 Election) did not imply that a new phase of social democracy was on the way. Rather it was a period of uncertainty for British capital, in the face of increased wage pressures. It was a period in which the employers were preparing an offensive against working class struggles, through the attempt to involve trade unionists and shop stewards in a much tighter cooperation in company planning and national economic planning. 1962 had seen the formation of the National Economic Development Council and the National Incomes Commission. But it was to be Robert Carr's Industrial Relations Act which would take this attempted co-optation furthest: in this Act the 'collective capitalist' tried to detach workers' factory representatives from their shop floor base and tried to direct them upwards into the Union [FILE 31] bureaucracies [Note 77]. This kind of policy opened up new possibilities of controlling incomes - especially when coupled with increasing wage differentials, and with the coordinated flight of capital abroad (overseas investments) that were taking place in that period. The working class forces that emerged in the 1960s have not yet proved themselves capable of taking their own class initiatives, quite separate from their formal factory representatives - initiatives which would make it possible to break through these new instruments of income control. However, there has been a growing tendency for strikes to break with the Unions' control of wage agreements; for workers to carry the factory struggle out into the society; and for some Unions to be side-stepped by their memberships. [Notes 78, 79, 80]

Job Evaluation & Labour Hierarchy

From the mid-1960s onwards, political recomposition of the working class at Ford was blocked by the failure to create links between lineworkers and those white collar workers engaged on tertiary and auxiliary work, [Note 81] a sector which Ford was strengthening during that period, placing them under the management of Ford-Europe (the body now responsible for coordinating all Ford's European operations). This new centralisation, and the accompanying managerial reorganisation, corresponded with the example of the American chemical and petrochemical multinationals, in their coordination of European operations (eg Esso and Monsanto, firms with a far higher organic composition).

Alongside this centralisation of Ford's European activities came a new phase in the relation of wages to productivity within Ford-UK.

In 1967, Esso, with the Fawley Agreement [Note 82] was the first company in Britain to lay down an agreement which made wage increases conditional on increased flexibility of the labour force (which was already higher at Esso than the British average). Ford followed Esso, in September 1967, with the Job Evaluation Agreement, which attempted (rather shakily) to translate the Esso experiment into a sector of lower organic composition. This Agreement was part of a long-term plan for a coordinated stratification and separation of assembly-line work and auxiliary/tertiary functions [Note 811, and was a move in the direction of Europe-wide planning of Ford's overall wage costs. It was negotiated job by job with the Unions and shop stewards, in the face of general passivity on the part of the workers. But as from the middle of 1968 it began to come under attack, with strikes by lineworkers, and in particular the strike of sewing machinists at Dagenham and Halewood, which put forward a general platform of egalitarian demands against the hierarchy of labour at Fords, as well as taking up certain issues related to that moment of the struggle. Note that the "second wage packet" earned by married women workers had been seen as an "extra" in the period of relative stability of real wages - but it became increasingly a "necessity" as inflation began to grow through the 1960s. [Note 83]

By now more and more people were becoming aware that they had to stick in their jobs, even to defend, their present level of family income - and in a sense this awareness contributed to the strength of the Ford workers' campaign for Parity with the Midlands car workers. We can say that at the start of the 1970s there were the beginnings of an egalitarian working class attack on the factory wage hierarchy. We can also say that this laid the basis for British Ford workers to develop a wider process of class recomposition at the international level, going beyond the individual factory and beyond the sectional interests of individual sectors of development or underdevelopment. [FILE 32]

NOTES

1] For the relationship between supplier firms and the larger motor manufacturers in Britain, see the article in Economist Intelligence Unit "Motor Business", No. 55, 1968.

2] See A.Silberston's article 'The Motor Industry', in D.L.Burn 'The Structure of British Industry - a Symposium', published by Cambridge University Press 1958, Vol II, pages 1-44.

6] It's exceptional for motor firms to self-supply 50% of gear units. Ford's other 50% come from 11 supplier firms. For more information, see Economic Intelligence Unit - "Motor Business", No. 55, 1968.

7] Primary lines and auxiliary lines - ie the main assembly lines and the feeder lines.

According to the RESEARCH DEPARTMENT OF METAL-WORKING PRODUCTION, McGRAW HILL, Census of Machine Tools in Britain, Metal-working production, July 27th 1966, published by McGraw Hill, London, 1966. the percentage of foreign manufactured machine tools within the UK total was as follows:

[Insert Table]

As the census-compilers point out, these percentages are in terms of numbers, and not of value. It's usually the machines that are most expensive and hard to find in the UK that are imported, and this means thata percentage based on value rather than on numbers would show a larger number of foreign machines. These considerations are more true for the vehicles industry than for industry as a whole, as the percentages show. They are also more true for Vauxhall and Ford than for the vehicles industry as a whole, because it's relatively easy for them to transfer technological innovations from General Motors and Ford-US. There is also a considerable production in Britain of machinery under licence from these 2 American companies.

8] See Economic Intelligence Unit - "Motor Business" No.43, 1965, pages 14 and 23 for details of the Ford Group operating outside America.

9] See Labour Research No.45, December 1966, which shows that the relationship between capital investment at Ford-UK and BLMC has remained almost unchanged since 1957. See also Economic Intelligence Unit - "Motor Business" No. 18, 1958, Table XIII.

10] This period runs from that start of the motor industry in the UK, through to the end of the 1960s, when the switch-over from piece-rates was introduced at BLMC - the company that emerged from the merger of British Motor Holdings with Leyland.

11] See Labour Research No-45. In 1965 BMC were producing 8.86 cars per worker, Ford 10.87, and Vauxhall 10.1.

12] Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations (Donovan) [FILE 33] Minutes of Evidence - Motor Industry Employers, HMSO London 1966, para 56.

13] Royal Commission (as in Note 12), paras 56-58.

14] "Net Value added per employee" is a useful way of measuring relative exploitation. Moss Evans in the TGWU's 'Ford Wage Claim' for 1971, page 17, reports Ford's statement to the NJNC in November 1969, that £2,764 net value added per employee represented a "favourable comparison in the UK". But, using Ford's 1968 accounts in 'Ford Facts', Evans claims that the real figure is nearer £3,500 per employee ... which "compares even more favourably with other British producers."

15] Again, see the TGWU wage claim for 1971, which gives the best figures for the national and international differences in Ford's wages. Pages 39-46 give .figures for comparative wage costs in the UK and in the Common Market, while pages 33-35 give comparative wage rates within the UK motor industry.

16] Department of Employment and Productivity, 'In Place of Strife', London, HMSO, 1969.

17] An 'unconstitutional strike' is one that ignores the negotiating procedure laid down in the Company agreement. See Socialist Worker, January 29th 1969, page 4.

18] See F.Silberman's article, 'The 1969 Ford Strike', in the 1970 Trade Union Register, pages 213-228, and especially page 227, note 17.

19] Department of Employment and Productivity, Industrial Relations Bill Consultative Document, HMSO, London, 1970.

20] See, for example, the article in the Sunday Times, March 19th 1969, page 12 - "Why Ford is Worth a Fight": "With new wage increases, the pressure of wage demands not linked to productivity - consuming what we have not yet created - would grow immediately. This is why the Ford strike is of such prime importance for British policies."

21] One of the tightest groups at Dagenham, the process workers in the Foundry, were a typical example of this when they waged a struggle through 1968-69 - ie at the time Ford was introducing the new hierarchies developed by the 'job evaluation' study.

There were a few stewards who wanted to bring notions of 'workers' control' into the struggle over job evaluation, but this didn't go very far. Among the most ideological stewards on the British Left, the idea of workers' control reigns supreme, and they apply it not only to the control of production, but also the defence of skills. Their idea was that workers and stewards should be the ones to decide skill ratings, without challenging the whole notion of "skills" at Ford. For an example of this attitude, see Socialist Worker, 29th March 1969, page 2: "The control of job evaluation and comparisons of differences in pay must be in the hands of the shop floor. The workers will accept the decisions of other workers - the representatives that they have elected."

22] In June 1968 Ford laid off large numbers of workers at the time of the women sewing machinists' strike, and again in September-October, following a strike in one of their suppliers.

23] On the British Left people are often as frightened to admit that from the capitalist point of view immigration has been an anti-worker exercise as they find difficulty in admitting that it was also an antiproletarian operation in the ex-colonies, and that the struggles of immigrant workers lead the movement that is going to break this operation, [FILE 34] by attacking the links that bind "development" and "underdevelopment". If, as the Economist writes, strike-breaking must once again become respectable, then the breaking of class cohesion will be brought about by the attempt to defeat sections of workers who, perhaps, are less "settled" in Britain, but who are certainly more determined in their attack on a factory system which they see as the basis of discrimination.

24] This was the case in the sewing machinists' strike at Dagenham in June 1968. In the decisive meeting between the workers' representatives and the Minister of Labour, the women were refused a higher grading, but were offered wage increases that would leave them 8% behind the average man's wage packet. The action of the women to get themselves upgraded was translated by the State into a demand for 'Equal Pay for Equal Work'.

25] Royal Commission, paras. 61-62. A confidential report, put out by the Ministry of Labour, with the aid of industrialists and trade unionists, was published in Socialist Worker on December 21st 1968: "With the continual introduction of expensive new machinery and equipment, shift working will no doubt continue to increase so as to maximise the economic return from the capital investment involved, and indeed before committing capital to the purchase of such machinery, employers want to be assured that shift working will be possible so as to ensure an adequate return."

The Report discussed Section 68 of the Factory Act, which says that women and workers under 18 should take their rest periods at the same time. This, the Report complains, "denies the employers the flexibility so essential in present-day conditions". The employers would rather see rest times dictated by the needs of production - staggered breaks etc.

This tendency is confirmed in J.Blackman's article in the 1970 Trade Union Register (pages 109-115), especially pages 109-110:

"Progress towards equal pay without legislation has been made in some sectors of industry during 1969 ... At the end of 1969 a step forward towards treating men and women alike for pay was made by Fords, on condition that the restrictions on women working night shifts were lifted. At the beginning of this year (1970), Vauxhall established the principle of "Equal Pay for Equal Work" also, by an agreement whereby women received the full men's rate for the same work, including night shifts... this was regarded in the Press as a useful step which may be significant for other car plants and engineering in general."

26] Black Ram, published in London. March 1969, No.1, pages 6-9.

NOTES FOR SECTION 2

[The writing of the second part of this pamphlet was made possible by the help of Robert Lovell - AEU official at Dagenham from 1943-55 - who provided documents and information that would otherwise have been unobtainable. The notes that follow have been slightly expanded from the original Italian text.]

27] The Ford plant at Trafford Park was a converted coach-building establishment. Ford started production there in 1911, with the formal setting-up of the Ford Motor Company (England). In 1912 they acquired their first body-making plant.

28] This political movement included the Russian Revolution, the development of the revolutionary Workers' Councils in German and Italy (to be crushed by Social Democracy and Fascism respectively, the Seattle General Strike and the Steel and Railroad strikes in the USA, and the Triple Alliance in Britain.

29] General Motors took over Vauxhall in 1925 and Opel in 1929. The European market was divided up in the 1930s between the two big US manufacturers. In fact, General Motors had the edge over Ford. The turnover of Ford-Werke AG was a quarter that of Opel, while Vauxhall's turnover was half that of Ford-UK.

30] Ford's penetration into Commonwealth markets was not in fact organised by Ford-UK, but by Ford-USA, through Ford of Canada, where they controlled 78% of the company from America.

31] JG O'Leary's "The Book of Dagenham", 3rd edition, published by the Borough of Dagenham, 1963, pages 41-42:

"When housebuilding started late in 1921, the situation was getting acute (because of lack of funds) ... eventually unemployment helped the situation. Unemployment then being very serious (all over the country), an Unemployment Grants Committee was set up with means at its disposal. That provided 65% of the cost (of the infrastructures)." [See the text facing page 16 for the restructuring of British industry in the 1930s out of the traditional working class stongholds.]

32] In this period 78% of the houses were built, while the figure for 1921-24 were 18%, and 8% in 1929-30. According to the Census figures the population rose from 9,127 in 1921 to 89,362 in 1931.

For the first years of Dagenham as a New Town, see O'Leary's book [Note 31], and also T.Young's book "Becontree and Dagenham; Report made for the Pilgrim Trust", London 1934.

33] According to the figures from the Dagenham Employment Exchange, apart from Ford, Briggs and Kelsey Hayes, there were 5 other industrial employers, employing about 1,134 workers in 1935.

34] According to an internal AEU document at the time, the number of AEU members at Dagenham in 1930 - the year before Ford opened - was 24. Up until 1935 the AEU had only one branch at Dagenham.

35] For the Briggs strike, read S.Romer "The Detroit Strike", in 'The Nation', No-.136, 15th February 1933, pages 167-68. Romer emphasises:

"The remarkable unity, not only between the strikers and workers at other plants, but also between the employed and unemployed... the picket lines included not only strikers, but also many unemployed."

36] For the beginnings of the Sit-Down strike movement in the USA, see the illustration facing page 18. See also the "Solidarity" pamphlet, "The Great G.M. Flint Sit Down Strike", and the excellent book by Jeremy Brecher, "Strike", pub. Straight Arrow Books, USA, 1972

37] In the midst of the Depression, Roosevelt, newly elected President of the USA, began a programme of "Relief, Recovery and Reform". The National Recovery Act was designed to raise workers' wages, to set up work relief projects, and to guarantee unionisation. It opened the way to a wave of strikes in 1934, and to the signing of the 1935 Social Security Act. Roosevelt made his point: "I laid down the simple proposition that nobody is going to starve in this country. It seems to me equally plain that no business which depends for its existence on paying less than a living wage to its workers has any right to continue in this country..."

38] For the history of the organisation of the unemployed, and the role of the Communists in that organisation, read Wal Hannington's book [FILE 36] "Unemployed Struggles" 1919-1936, published by Lawrence and Wishart, London 1936, and reprinted by EP publishing house, 1973. [See also the text facing page 17].

39] For the importance of this strike at Dagenham, see the duplicated paper put out by the organisers of the struggle - the "Ford Worker", No. 12, March 1934, at Dagenham: "The strike was a lesson to Detroit, Sweden, Cologne, Briggs, Firestone, Hopes and all workers". Also the unpublished "Years of Struggle against Injustice" pamphlet, prepared by the Ford Dagenham TU panel:

"The strike at Briggs Bodies had revealed conditions under which no human being should be expected to work. It was a revolt of the unorganised against tyranny and oppression. Accidents were numerous and occurred almost hourly in an atmosphere of sweated conditions. There appeared to be little unity and liaison with the trade union movement in the Dagenham area at this stage..."

40] At this point, reference to Keynes is unavoidable. In December 1930 Keynes had warned against attempts by individual employers to introduce wage cuts - see "The Great Slump of 1930", Collected Works, Vol.IX, p.128:

"In this quandary individual producers base illusory hopes on courses of action which would benefit an individual producer or class of producers as long as they were alone in pursuing them, but which benefit no one if everyone pursues them."

Keynes was implicitly posing the necessity of an international policy towards the crisis, built on a basic coordination of policy between the 'democratic' capitalist countries - in particular Britain and America acting against maverick solutions to the crisis. Such a coordination would mean a common wages policy - or rather a homogeneous policy was a necessary precondition for making the decision on whether to have wages low or high.

41] See "Ford Worker" [Note 39, above], page 5.

42] See "Ford Worker" [Note 39 above]: "The firm are experiencing difficulty in getting the 'right men', as men in jobs won't pack them up to come to our place, while hundreds are leaving this concentration camp at the first opportunity".

43] According to the Daily Herald, 30th March 1933, several hundred workers were clocking up 12 hours a day on the 2-shift system.

44] In a handwritten Report by a Briggs worker, sent to the AEU in about 1934, it says: "If any overtime is worked, any man on the job who is paid a little higher rate than the others, is sent home, so as to save money..."

45] See the Report [Note 44, above].

46] See "A survey and Report on the Ford, Briggs Bodies and Kelsey Hayes Grouings: 23.11.1936" - a handwritten report on the conditions of work and the possibilities for organising, sent to the Dagenham district committee of the AEU.

47] See the Report [Note 46, above], page 3. There is also an appeal for local trade union unity, from the Communist members at Fords: "Quite obviously the existence of these establishments at the present moment are a menace to trade union conditions in unionised factories."

48] See the Report [Note 46, above], page 4: "The situation for the Unions [FILE 37] at this moment is hopeful because of the difficulties the Company is having in obtaining suitable classes of skilled workers".

49] The general conditions of work, and in particular the fluctuations in production, were the main reasons for the refusal of work at Ford.

By 1951, the number of people travelling in to Dagenham was immense, many of them coming from London. This broke one of the lynch-pins of Ford's 'New Deal' at Dagenham - the closeness of workers' homes to the factory, all under the control of local councils. This closeness had been very convenient, since it avoided the pressures of travelling expenses on the wage packet. For the 1951 Census figures, see the Book of Dagenham [Note 31, above].

50] "Report by a Court of Inquiry in the matter of a Trade Dispute apprehended at Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd, Dagenham, HMSO 1941 (Cmnd 6248) page 6:

"The management of this company in fact take notice of, and have dealings with, certain of their own engineering employees whom they know to be members of the AEU, and shop stewards chosen by members of that Union. They have, however, no dealings with the officials of that Union unless they are also employed by them."

51] "Report of a Court of Inquiry into the causes and circumstances of a dispute at Briggs Motor Bodies Ltd, Dagenham (under Lord Cameron)", (Cmnd 131) HMSO 1957, page A5.

52] For the unionisation of Ford-America, see the text facing page 21. 53] The Cameron Report [Note 51, above], page A5:

"The 1941 arrangements applied originally only to the Engineering Division, but, after a period of agitation and strikes, an agreement was reached in 1944, in virtually the same terms as the 1941 Agreement, covering the whole of the Briggs plant. Thereafter the trouble appears to have become manageable for a time."

54] This coordination was formalised when the Motor Industry Industrial Relations Panel was set up in 1961 (MIIRP), after Ford-America had taken over full control of Ford-UK.

55] See the Cameron Report [Note 51, above], page A5.

56] "Report of a Court of Inquiry into the causes and circumstances of a dispute between the Ford Motor Company Ltd., Dagenham, and Members of the Trade Unions (under DT Jack)" (Cmnd 1999), HMSO 1963, para.19.

57] For the employers' attack on the bastions of the piecework system in the Midlands motor industry, see the article. on the Coventry Toolroom Agreement in Factfolder No.1, 1971, available from Red Notes.

58] See the Jack Inquiry [Note 56, above] and the Cameron Report [Note 51, above], para 19 and para 78 respectively.

60] In terms of vehicles, the numbers of Ford's annual production that were exported were the following (in %):

1938...12.3% 1955...47.5% 1946...39.0% 1960...43.7% 1950...75.1% 1965...45.5%

61] In 1950 Ford-America took over from Ford-UK the control that they had held since the 1930s over the coordination of Ford's European operations. The coordination of investments in the Commonwealth was still left with Ford of Canada, which was still controlled by Ford-USA.

62] On the question of Ford's counter-attack, I have relied heavily on the pamphlet "What Happened at Fords", by E.Stanton and K.Weller, published in 1967 by "Solidarity".

63] This phase of Ford's policies in the United Kingdom was part of a new period of Ford's intercontinental investment, with a shift from simple assembly of imported parts, to the local production of complete vehicles. This happened in Brazil in 1959, in Argentina in 1961, and then in Mexico and South Africa.

64] Henry Ford's statement, reported in the Times, 21st November 1960, page 10.

65] "What Happened at Fords" [Note 62, above], page 13. 66] The Jack Inquiry [Note 56, above], para.29.

67] The Jack Inquiry [Note 56, above], Appendix II (ii) 681 "What Happened at Fords" [Note 62, above], page 14. 69] "What Happened at Fords" [Note 62, above], page 14.

70] According to the authors of "What Happened at Fords" [Note 62, above], page 15, the Communist Party had 110 members at Ford Dagenham, 50 of whom were stewards or convenors. They had 2,000 members in South-East Essex, of whom about 1,500 were workers.

71] For the turnover and the level of fixed capital investment, see Ford's annual published reports.

72] In some sections of the PTA, the lines were speeded up by as much as 30%, with some increases even of 37% in the months following the strike. See the article "After the Ford Defeat" in Solidarity Vol-4, No.2, pages 9-11, and "Murder at Ford", in Solidarity Vol-4, No-4, pages 15-16.

73] See the article "Too Old at Fifty" in Solidarity Vol-4, No.3, August 1966, pages 20-22.

74] See Black Ram Vol.1, No.4, 15th March 1969, page 6.

75] For conditions at Ford-Genk, Belgium, see the text facing pages 28 and 29.

75] Solidarity Vol.2, No.9 and No.10.

76] It seems that this is the common element of both the Labour and Tory legislative measures - an element that is anti-worker but not anti-Union. This can be traced from the Donovan Commission, through Barbara Castle's Bill, to the Industrial Relations Act.

77] The passivity of most workers in Ford's main factories when 1,500 workers at Ford-Swansea struck in February 1970 over Parity with the Midlands, was seen by the Left as a sign that Union activists and shop stewards had failed to raise the class consciousness of the rank and file. The bourgeois press saw the message of the gulf between the high wages that were being demanded and the low level of organisation that was offered by the shop stewards to the rank and file - and the resulting refusal by the mass of workers to enter into a struggle at that particular moment, unfavourable as it was. The Guardian (16th Feb.1970) wrote:

"Incidentally, this is a test case for last year's Downing Street agreement, under which the TUC promised to deal with unofficial strikers, especially those minority groups who jeopardise the interests of both their fellow workers and the nation by selfish stoppages." [FILE 39]

78] The suggestion of making links between the struggle in the factory and the working class community in Dagenham was raised by groups of workers, following the poorly-supported strikes at Dagenham in February 1970. But these links are hard to make - especially with the capitalists' ability to turn "consumer opinion" against workers in time of strike action. Some of the Left groups, though, saw this as an unwillingess by workers to spread the struggle from the factory to the community.

79] Some Unions were more unwilling to mediate between "unconstitutional strikes" and Ford's factory plan (eg GMWU, the Boilermakers, and the Plumbing Trade Union). But their freedom of action was increasingly restricted as the TGWU and AUEW were increasingly stepping in during the unofficial strikes of the late 1960s.

80] The definition that I have used here of "auxiliary work" in the engineering and metal-working industries (meaning work that feeds and connects the main production lines) and "tertiary work" (meaning the application of scientific research) comes from R.Alquati in "Capital and the Working Class at FIAT: a Mid-Point in the International Cycle", reprinted in "Sulla Fiat, e altri scritti", Feltrinelli, Milan, 1975.

81] See A.Flanders' book "The Fawley Productivity Agreements", published by Faber & Faber, London, 1964. And Report No.36 of the National Board for Prices and Incomes: "Productivity Agreements", HMSO, London, 1967 (Cmnd 2211).

82] According to a Union circular in February 1969, the buying power of the average Ford worker's wage for a 44-hour week was 12.4% lower than in 1938. Taxes, which did not apply in 1938, accounted for almost all (12.1%) of this gap. (:)

End of the Notes

Published by Red Notes, Pamphlet No. 1, 1979.