“WE must shift the balance between capital and labour to safeguard our industry, employment and our communities. We need legal and institutional change as well as a strengthening of trade union organisation on the ground.”

This was the conclusion of Paul Sweeney MP at a meeting held earlier this week in Springburn to draw lessons from the current battle to save “the Caley,” Scotland’s last remaining rail workshop in his constituency of Glasgow North East.

Paul Sweeney was quoting the title of Scottish Morning Star conference to be held this Sunday — with Richard Leonard, Scottish Labour leader, as the opening speaker — which will focus on how to win collective bargaining rights for all workers and learn the lessons of other recent struggles such as the Equal Pay strike in Glasgow.

Over 40 workers from “the Caley” attended the meeting organised in the Star’s “Our Class Our Culture” series and addressed by convener Les Ashton, Paul Sweeney, Pat McIlvogue of Unite and Mick Hogg of the RMT.

The meeting rehearsed the history of the workshops, once the centre of a rail construction complex employing 30,000 skilled engineers and exporting trains across the globe, and then heard the sorry tale of the slow run-down of a world-class facility following Tory rail privatisation.

Sold from one firm of corporate asset-strippers to another, the workers were finally told last Christmas that what remained of the workshops would be closed this July.

But it was not closed without a fight — and a fight that will continue. Mick Hogg of the RMT detailed the fight, the solidarity of workers across Scotland and the crazy economics of the decision taken with the complicity of the Scottish government.

“Today there is nowhere in Scotland to repair Scottish rail stock. Broken-down trains are having to be transported by road for repair in England while Abelio-Scottish Rail is failing to meet virtually every target as a result of a lack of adequate rail stock.”

Pat McIlvogue of Unite described how the Scottish government had refused an offer from the previous owners to hand over the entire facility together with £1m to the Scottish government if it could maintain employment.

“The Scottish government and the relevant ministers have rejected every proposal put by the workers. They have hidden behind competition rules and refused to consider any form of public or co-operative ownership.”

He paid tribute to the workers who had unanimously refused to take redundancy money last Christmas in order to continue the fight. “Britain’s current employment laws are truly shocking. You just have to look at the fate of the Thomas Cook workers to realise that.”

All present were unanimous that the fight must continue and workers should be ready for any attempt to use the facilities on the site by fly-by-night operators using non-unionised agency workers.

Paul Sweeney MP said the struggle at the Caley was an object lesson in the need to resist the destructive role of internationalised capitalism and for workers, and their communities, to realise that they had all the skills needed to themselves run vital pubic facilities like rail repair.

Sunday’s Scottish Morning Star conference “Shifting the Balance between Capital and Labour” will take place at the Scottish Trades Union Building, 333 Woodlands Road, Glasgow G3 on Sunday October 6 starting at 12 noon (register at the door).