A UNIQUE and inspiring meeting took place in Copenhagen, Denmark on the weekend of 5 to At the stewards of Ford Copenhagen, supported by the local shop stewards movement, rank and file Ford workers from the major European plants got together. Their aim: to begin to work out an international workers' strategy to fight The meeting came about at the initiative of the shop stewards from the ford warehouse in Copenhagen. They had followed interest the nine which buried Callaghan's 5 per cent policy. At the beginning of 1979 they decided to smashing the Danish social contract!
After that, preparation for an international rank and file conference got underway. British strike had left the Ford UK Workers' Group [the Combine] with contacts in several European like workers at Ford Amsterdam £1000 for the strike fund and made a special donation to the Combine. invitation came from Denmark we all jumped at it.
•The problems in multinational like Ford are fairly obvious. On the shop increase production, not to strike or risk losing bosses invitation of the shop with great week British strike in 1978 have 'do it succeeded The the among the 2000 who collected So when dealing floor we are constantly urged to work abroad. When strikes do take place Ford try to compensate by This would not be such a problem if the trade union leaders were serious internationa soldarily. not. Consequently, often simply through lack of information, we effectively scab on each others' struggle. This was a major reason for the defeat of the strike for the 35 hour week at the Genk plant in Belgium last year.
More immediately we found out that the workers at the Valencia plant of Ford Spain are still engaged in a ferocious 10-month struggle against speed up and mass sackings. 86 workers been sacked, including delegates. Suspensions of from five to 53 days have been imposed on 500 workers, including 20 stewards. Indeed, two of the Spanish delegates in Copenhagen were sacked and one suspended.
When the Ford workers' leaders appealed to European Metalworkers' [EMF] for support they were told that such a request could only come through the Socialis 'arty-run union [the UGT]. The president of the EMF is a worker director on Ford's board in Cologne! We now intend to take the issue onto the shop floor in Ford's European plants.
The international solidarity build was reflected in other action that the Copenhagen meeting committed us to: building towards internationa action on the s hour transferring prepared to build But they are week and elected Federation If one thing meeting workforce is we want to YULECIS FORD Dagenham workers attempting to force shop representatives to organise this; opposition to import controls and instead workers' action to stop the switching of production schedules between Ford plants. Our eventual aim is to achieve a common level of real wages, hours and conditions in Ford Europe with a common claim and settlement date — a very long term reflected the spirit of the discussion exploitation of so-called 'immigrant' labour. At Dagenham about two thirds of the 28,000 Asian black.
Germany, half the 30,000 workers are 'guest Turkey and other European countries. They have to renew their contracts annualy and it thev are sacked o an official floor deportation.
falling market, while the German workers' own organisations.
Ford's Cologne, south multinationals.
the world unite... become unemployed are subject to immediate Many of the guest workers at Cologne are currently on a three or four day week due to a workers are defined as 'special' and get a full week's work. We recognised that to fight this all countries immigration laws have to be tackled head on, along with & struggle against racism inside the Our meeting aroused considerable interest in the Danish labour movement, especially the Copenhagen shop stewards movement. Official observers attended from Metalworkers' Union branches and from the Carlsberg and Tuborg breweries and the Butchers Union. The job is to spread the Ford initiative to workers in other What was it Charlie Marx said? 'Workers ol