Ford batters its union 'partners'

There is some useful material in The Future for Dagenham - The Trade Union Case. It underlines how Ford have broken so-called Blue Book agreements made with the unions in 1997 and restated in 1999 to maintain car production at Dagenham: this will appeal not only to any sense of obvious justice but is also aimed at the parts of Dagenham (and other Ford plants) being dissuaded from solidarity with promises of future investment and secure jobs: if Ford will break written guarantees, what use are verbal ones? And, certainly, it seems likely that in the medium term Ford are looking to shut Dagenham altogether.

The other side of this, however, is how, given this, the unions address themselves exclusively to Ford, trying to justify, in Ford terms - in terms of Ford profit, in other words - why production should continue at Dagenham.

Thus we find the unions pointing out that it's better to produce the Fiesta in Dagenham than Cologne becauseÉ we'll work for lower wages.

Indeed, it goes further than that - a lot further. There is, I suppose, some logic in the often repeated here argument that Ford sell a lot of cars in the UK, the company's biggest European market, so it makes sense to build them here. When you go one stage further, however, and point out that Ford produce a lot more cars in Belgium, Germany and Spain than they sell there the logic takes on an altogether more disturbing hue: don't sack us, sack them! There is an important fact missing from the pamphlet in relation to Ford's broken promises: the unions got the guarantees about future job security at Dagenham by making very big concessions, such as speeding up production lines, on pay and conditions. When Ford announced that it was going back on its word and shutting the assembly plant at Dagenham, the TGWU convenor who'd signed up to the deal, Steve Riley, resigned. We might ask why TGWU chief car industry official Tony Woodley - who believed and sold all the same guarantees - hasn't done the same. Yet Woodley is now heading the campaign to save Dagenham.

An often made point here is that, legally, it is easier to sack workers in the UK than pretty much anywhere else in the industrialised world: Ford, keen to 'downsize' its 'unprofitable' European operation as soon as possible, can pull out of Dagenham easier than anywhere else. This is true and scandalous and a matter that the unions must address. However, repeating this fact over and over won't save any jobs - and is likely only to have a demoralising effect. Say 'you are easy to sack' enough times without offering much of a strategy to stop it happening, and people are likely to believe you and prepare to accept 'the inevitable'.

Certainly, we do want laws in this respect at least as good as Germany's, and should be demanding this from the pro-European Mr Blair. The pamphlet says this, if not explicitly, but places no other demands on the Government. Conspicuously absent is the 'n' word, nationalisation - that, if Ford won't guarantee all Dagenham jobs, Labour should by nationalising the plant. This, of course, would be well beyond the ideological and practical constraints the unions have put upon themselves here by tying themselves to Ford's market interests.

The London Chamber of Commerce has estimated that the total effect of closing the assembly plant at Dagenham would be - at Ford's, at suppliers and so on, and in the broader community - 20,000 jobs: it would be devastating.

This is not something that can be expressed, or stopped, in terms of a company balance sheet.