June 1979 RAIN Page 11 ~tlnntl Decisions concerning the type of product manufactured by a company, its marketing techniques and the price range have traditionally been made by management. An exception is the worker owned and controlled corporation where employees are both labor and management. However, most company employees' influence on corporate policy has been limited to collective bargaining over terms and conditions of employment-wages, hours and benefits. Some progress has been made il1 the area of occupational safety. The idea of employees evaluating a product based upon its social usefulness would be considered heresy in most corporate executive circles. Well, the shop stewards of the British multinational corporation Lucas Aerospace are challenging those assumptions. Faced with the possibility of mass layoffs in 1976, they responded positively by drawing up an alternative corporate plan. The Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee recommended that the company diversify through the development of socially relevant products. The criteria being energy conservation, ecologically soundness and labor intensiveness. The Lucas Company management refused to consider the proposals. The film, We've Done It This Way,. Haven't WI', interviews members of the shop steward committee and documents the resistance of the .lucas managers. Since then, a new plan, Turning Industrial Decline into Expansion, has been drafted by the shop stewards under the auspices of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions (CSEU). The CSEU, unlike the original shop stewards committee, is officially recognized by the company. The report which is described in Undercurrents (April-May '79, $9/yr. from Undercurrents Ltd., 27 Clerkenwell Close, London, E1 ROAT, Great Britain) examines three areas-the Lucas Aerospace Corporate strategy, the social cost of unemployment and alternative products. Two of the report's points are particularly applicable to plant layoffs in the United States. First, the economic cost to society of people not working (unemployment pay, loss taxes, retraining, etc.) is about the same as keeping someone employed. Second, public subsidies to corporations in the form of regional development aid, investment grants and deferred taxes should not be considered handouts, but should be subject to some sort of democratic accountabili ty . In recognition of their initiative, the Lucas Combine Shop Stewards have been nominated for the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize. Currently, a joint unioncompany committee is carrying on discussions auout the proposals put forth in the plan. The issues raiscd-the right - Responsible Work Alternative Corporate Plans The following steps are for developing your own alternative corporate plan, from Voice of the Unions Newspaper (38 Corbyn Street, London, N43BZ, Great Britain, $5Iyr.) - PC From the experiences gained so far, there seem to be a number of steps which are gone through in developing workers' plans: • Researching into the corporation's markets: Government customcr/sales subject to political pressures) /Overcapacity?/Outmoded products?/Unsafe or unheal thy products? • Researching into the organization of production : Increasing overseas production?/Concentration of "best" products in unorganized greenfield si tes?/"Self-fu lfilling" down turns in productivity? • Researching into the corporate financial strategy: Transfer pricing?/ Management-induced "losses" in UK plants?/Substitution of labor with capital equipment?/Concentration of productive resources in a few lucrative areas starving rest of organization? • Researching into the labor process: Labor displacement by plant or "rato ~ useful work and corporate and worker responsibility for the products made -are crucial and deserve mort: attention in this country. To follow up on these ideas, wri tc for : We've Always Done It This Wa11 Haven't We? , by ATV Televisio~, Great Britain, 1978, 16mm, color, 52 min., rental $70, donation from: California Newsreel 630 Natoma St. San Francisco, CA 94103 Turning Industrial Decline into Expallson, available for 4.50 pounds trade unions, 10 pounds others, from: CAITS, NELP Longbridge Road Dagenham, Essex -PC Great Britain tionalized" working methods?/Automation and systematic de-skilling?/ Work fragmentation?/Expropriation of job skills by computcr systems)!Increasing workpace and stress? • Researching into social needs: Local community nceds- no bus spares) /Substituting a better·designed product (e.g. bakery workers' campaign for real bread)?/New designs for Third World, non-obsolescent"durables". etc.? Obviously not all of these "stages" are necessary in all cases, or at least not in the early stages.
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