Workers' Control and the Aircraft Industry

Among the many papers discussed at the very successful conference on workers' control last week-end was one on the aircraft industry. Over twenty of the delegates (most actual workers in the industry) discussed the following paper and amended it. The amended paper will be published in the full report of the conference. The Aircraft Industry: Some Considerations The Labour Government is at present planning to make certain changes in the structure of ownership in one section of the aircraft industry. What this change amounts to is that the Government is prepared to buy up a minority shareholding in the airframes section, i.e., in Hawker Siddeley and the British Aircraft Corporation. This means that the Labour Government is proposing to do even less than was proposed by the Plowden Report which advocated a state majority shareholding in airframes. The T.U.C. policy goes along with Plowden. However, such minor alterations in structure of ownership as proposed in both the Labour Gevernment and Plowden versions, have not been enthusiastically received by aircraft workers. The official policies of the AKU, ASSET and DATA call for the complete nationalisation of the aircraft industry - airframes and aero-engines. This is a logical, minimum socialist demand, as both sections of the industry are heavily subsidised, both are dependent on Government orders for their existence and beth are vast monopolies. Yet none of the main engineering trade unions, the TUC or the Labour Party have advanced any definite ideas for the development of industrial democracy in the aircraft industry. But some of the aircraft workers have begun to take the initiative on this. The Joint Shop Stewards Committee of the Bristol Siddeley Mngines combine (now part of Rolls Royce) have set up a workers control study group composed of shop stewards from each of the main B.S.E. factories at Coventry, Bristol and Watford. This study group is not yet ata stage of being able to present a completed plan for the democratic ownership and control of the industry - the discussion on this will be carried further at the Coventry conference and after. A useful part of a preliminary study has already been covered at previous meetings of the group. At the last study ,roup meeting, a critical examination was made on Ron Smith's ‘steel plan' and it was generally agreed by the group that aircraft workers must see to it that a similar plan is not foisted on to the aircraft workers. The discussion has now reached a point where the study group is working on the practicalities of decision-taking and democratic control in a nationalised industry.