Workers and
Politics:
The Threat Hanging Over the Longbridge
Workers
The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported
last week that the German carmaker BMW was planning to shut down the Rover
factory at Longbridge, Birmingham. Although a BMW spokesman flatly denied this
speculation, this once more gives the Rover workers and workers in related
industries cause for concern coming on top of the other uncertainties: the
European Commission investigation into whether the government’s proposed
state aid would be in contravention of the EU’s rules on competition; the
bid by Porsche to add their weight to the move to block the government’s
package; BMW’s plans to cut down on components from British suppliers; the
possibility of it switching investment to Hungary instead of Longbridge; and
Rover’s projected heaviest ever losses for 1999.
How much weight can be given to BMW’s denial of the
closure of Longbridge is a moot point, since the workers have lost count of the
number of times they have been assured that their jobs are safe at Longbridge,
only to have one gun after another pointed at their heads that they should give
up their interests, accept stepped up rates of exploitation, or put pressure on
the government to hand over hundreds of millions of pounds from the state
treasury to the BMW monopoly if their future was to be safeguarded.
None of this has made their future one whit more secure, as
the decisions which are under consideration by BMW do not depend on the
slightest on the welfare of the workers or the needs of the economy at large,
but on the cut-throat competition between BMW and other car monopolies for
control of markets in order to make the maximum capitalist profit and
accumulate capital to the maximum.
The reasons Der Spiegel gives for BMW contemplating
closing Longbridge would be very cogent for the financial oligarchs who control
the German monopoly. The magazine reported that BMW’s management board had
developed two scenarios for withdrawing from Rover, and would decide on what to
do at its next meeting in March. The first scenario involves ending all
production of Rover passenger cars which would mean closing Longbridge with the
9,000 workers being thrown onto the streets. This would see an end to the
production of the Rover 25 and Rover 45. Only the Land Rover, the new Rover 75
and the Mini would continue to be produced. The alternative scenario is to sell
Rover Cars and Rover’s Longbridge and Oxford plants. But Der
Spiegel said that possible buyers like General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co.,
or Volkswagen AG would set certain criteria before agreeing to take over Rover.
Any buyer would demand that BMW pay a "loss compensation" over the
next few years and would want BMW to maintain involvement in Rover, either
through a close cooperation deal or by holding a stake in the British carmaker.
Industry sources have said that BMW has been talking to Volkswagen, trying to
find a way that Volkswagen could use or lease the Longbridge factory to
assemble its Golf cars.
All of this puts further pressure on the workers at
Longbridge. At the same time, it underlines that the suggestion that
"social partnership" between the workers and the BMW capitalists is
of benefit to them both is a most dubious proposition. In plain language, there
is everything in it for the employers but nothing in it for the workers. It
further underlines that the Europe of the monopolies is just that, a free
market for the monopolies to switch around capital at the drop of a hat in
order to retain or acquire the competitive edge on their competitors. Neither
is it the case that the problem stops with Europe. Endless examples can be
cited of global monopolies closing plants in Europe in order to open them up in
South America or other parts of the globe, especially as they further refine
their arrangements world-wide, and push through international bodies such as
the World Trade Organisation that their demands to pursue this agenda be
unrestrained and, like giant dinosaurs, they be allowed to fight things out and
follow the law of the jungle in order to become "number one".
Enthusiasts and apologists for globalisation promote a
present-day version of the discredited "trickle-down effect" from the
days of Thatcherism and Reaganomics. They claim that any opposition to
globalisation is misguided because globalisation is the future and is bringing
benefits to all and sundry. "Third Way" ideologues promote the need
for a middle way between the ravages of globalisation and the old system of
state monopoly capitalism, for "globalisation with a human face",
even going so far as to build castles in the air of "global
governance".
The hard facts exemplified by BMW at Longbridge tell an
entirely different story. The governments which are in support of globalisation
are waging the anti-social offensive against the people, paying the rich on a
continuous basis and carrying out a neo-liberal agenda. It does not matter that
if they are "centre-left" they may do so with all kinds of entreaties
that this is progress, that the class struggle is over and that workers must
embrace change and work to make the monopolies competitive for the good of the
nation. The agenda is the same. Not only is this so, but without the attempts
to give globalisation its "human face", without the
"centre-left" nomenclature, without the high-flown phrases and the
claims that there is no alternative, the opposition to the anti-social
offensive would not get diverted and the people de-politicised.
This raises the question of how the opposition to the
anti-social offensive is to be developed, how the pro-social programme can be
taken forward. It is only this movement which will provide the way forward for
society out of the crisis. The road blocks to this movement must be combated,
which cannot be achieved without the workers themselves becoming political and
ending the situation they find themselves in at the margins of society without
a say in how it is to be run and which direction it should be headed in. The
starting point is that the workers must set their own agenda, and not leave it
to the political parties to set the agenda. They must take up, elaborate and
fight for the programme to Stop Paying the Rich – Increase Investments
in Social Programmes which will set them on the forward march to bring
about a new society, as they put forward their solutions to the crisis in the
car industry, the economy and society. They should get organised on the basis
that they themselves are the ones who must set the agenda, and raise their
level of discussion on this agenda.
No to Globalisation!
The Workers Can and Must Set the Agenda!
