Phase Three trap being prepared for the unions

While Heath and his top ministers got together with CBI chiefs to work out the best way to shackle the trade unions in the forthcoming talks with the TUC over Phase Three, Robert Carr was dropping further hints about amendments to the Industrial Relations Act.

The Tories' plan is to tie unions through the pay laws even worse penal controls than the National Industrial Relations Court possesses.

But they want to get the TUC's voluntary co-operation in this corporatist set-up. The tremendous resistance to the NIRC shown by trade unionists particularly over the jailing of the five dockers forced the Tories into these new tactics.

By means of the totally bogus 'concessions' over the Act, they New speed-up WOMEN WORKERS at Garrard's VOMEN WORKERS at Garrard's Cheney Manor, Swindon, record- Cheney Manor, Swindon, record- nue their sit-in strike against speed. in tactoi player factory yesterday voted to con- layer factory yesterday voted to continue their sit-in strike against speedup, which today completes its fourth p, which today completes its fourth repl The vote was a decisive blow against the company's attempts to isolate and split the strikers, and finally to trick them back to work.

But also, like the determined resistance of sections of BritishLeyland workers to their employer's drive to force up the rate of exploitation, the women's decision reflects a new round of struggle by the working-class movement.

THE OWNERS of Garrard's, the giant Plessey electronics group are, like_British-Leyland members of the Engineering Employers' Federation.

And earlier this week a leading official of the EEF, Edward Marsh, revealed the root of this round of struggle when he called for a 'relentless' campaign to push up productivity.

Marsh, who as director of advisory services for the EEF spends much of his time talking to employers at factory level, was clearly speaking of a campaign which already under way, but which the EEF wants extended and stepped up.

At Garrard's the story started last December, when, after a bitter struggle, management succeeded in forcing a productivity deal into the Cheney Manor factory, known locally as 103 building, on the grounds that under the Tory pay laws an increase could be paid in no other way.

Initially, in order to get the deal running, work targets of 55 record-player units an hour were fixed.

But now, after applying workstudy techniques designed wring the last halfpenny of profit from the workers, management want to push the targets on some lines up to 74 units an hour. If accepted, and the women failed to reached this level they would lose money.

After every avenue of procedure laid down by last December's deal had been exhausted or broken down, the strike and occupation began on All Trades Unions Alliance Conference: To discuss defence of de BELLE VUE Kings Hall: Belle Vue Zoo Park: Manchester-Sunday July 1: 3 p hope to get the TUC leaders' support for Phase Three of the state control of wages.

This was the deal put to Victor Feather, Jack Jones, Hugh Scanon and company in the secret talks held at Chequers and Downing Street earlier this year.

This was the deal Scanlon was talking about in his notorious speech to the Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch when he voiced acceptance in principle of the Common Market, the pay laws, and the Industrial Relations Act.

'Two amendments to the Industrial Relations Act could offer a way forward for cooperation with the Tory government,' he said.

The amendments would do nothing to alter the essence of the Act which is the state control of unions. They would n tactories May 4. The women's leaders insisted that the expected rates of working were 'physically impossible.

In informal talks since the strike began, the company has claimed that last December's deal gives it the right to set times, methods and patterns of work. This claim is utterly rejected by the strikers.

Last Friday Garrard's put Allegro workers join in too ALLEGRO workers at Swindon's British-Leyland car-body factory meet this morning to discuss progress in their two-week-old struggle against speed-up.

Allegro production has been suspended at Leyland's Longbridge, Birmingham, assembly factory because of the strike.

The 750 strikers work on fenders, floors and other pressings for the Allegro and are fighting a management bid to force up their rate of working to what work-study men call 100 BSI, 'maximum effort'.

Today's meeting is not expected to discuss a return work.

So far the company has refused to negotiate while the men are on strike. For their part, the men say they will not A BITTER row is brewing between the 'left' leaders of the engineers' union and the Association of Technical and Managerial Staffs over their respective policies towards the Industrial Relations Act.

The protagonists in the row are Hugh Scanlon, president of the engineers, and Clive Jenkins, general secretary of ASTMS.

Scanlon is believed to have been touched on the raw by Jenkins' recent claim that he did 'the dirty work' for a section of engineers' union members in a Alliance Conference: To discuss defence of democratic rights merely give back the unions their tax concessions and prevent private employers taking unions to the NIRC without the government's prior approval.

And the even greater stripping of the authority of the trade unions, contained in the pay laws' abolition of free negotiations for wages, would be accepted by these TUC leaders.

The CBI has made it clear to Heath that there must be no return to free collective bargaining under Phase Three. The Tories themselves have repeatedly said that even if a voluntary agreement can be imposed on the TUC, the penal sanctions will remain on the statute book. workers at its other two factories in the town on a four-day This was a clear attempt to bring pressure to bear on the strikers by cutting the pay of their fellow workers in the other factories.

But it failed to work. And on Wednesday the company resorted to the desperate measure of sending out letters to each striker suggesting that normal work would be resumed return while industrial engineers —work-study men-remain on shop floor.

SOME 12,000 carworkers reported back at Longbridge yesterday after their Bank Holiday break-and were sent home again.

Foremen had stayed away, protesting at having to work while the production men were enjoying an extra day off as part of a package deal.

With production of the Allegro stopped by the Swindon dispute, the factory was not producing a single car.

ENGINEERS' union members on a new production line have started a selective strike at the British-Leyland north works 103 department, Leyland, near Preston. Scanlon-Clive Jenkins row flares up hearing at the National Industrial Relations Court.

Apparently, what has particularly enraged Scanlon is the suggestion that he and his executive have been defying the NIRC in public while co-operating with it by the back door, through others.

Scanlon's 'left' image has taken a considerable battering of late, particularly because he participated in secret talks with the The aim of Phase Th ee is to cut the wage norm ever I further below the rise in the cost of living than the present El plus 4 per cent, which is already causing a drop in the standard of living for the whole working class.

As inflation gets still worse, the pressure on workers' families will become unbearable.

This is the development that the capitalist class is feverishly preparing to meet. And it is the TUC's collaboration with Heath that opens the way to this dangerous situation.

The trade union leaders' retreat over Phase Two is becoming a rout. What is at stake is the whole independence of the trade union movement from the capitalist state.

the following day. The local Press made similar suggestions.

This trick was angrily condemned by the strikers at a mass meeting yesterday morning, which voted to continue the strike at least until a reportback from talks in which the company has now asked union officials to take part.

No date had been fixed for these talks yesterday morning.

But union officials expected them to take place soon.

The 30 men, from the Daimler bus and truck line, are striking against strings attached to a recent pay award. While on strike they will be supported by the rest of the five Leyland factories in the area.

At Leyland's Rover assembly plant in Solihull, Warwickshire, most of the 900 clerical staff were striking over an extra day's holiday given to manual workers.

They were picketing the factory and turning away lorries delivering badly-needed wheel supplies. Wheel shortage has already stopped production of the Rover 3.5 litre car for the rest of the week, but has not yet affected other models.

Tories, publicly advocated a deal with them over pay and the anti-union Act and let the hospital workers go down to defeat without lifting a finger in the TUC to help them.

The headquarters of the Amalgamated Union of EngineerWorkers have been undated with branch resolutions condemning his suggestion of a deal with the Tories.

Thus Jenkins' reported reSnecialshowiro_ TYC must break bather age an THE ROADE and from history July 1: 3 p.m.-y p.m. attacks on their living standards and democratic rights from a ruling class which is facing an unprecedented crisis in its economic system.

Continuing talks with the Tories completely disarms the working class in the face of these dangers. There is nothing to be gained from them. They are a trap.

There is no justification for any trade union leader to go to Downing Street or elsewhere for any further negotiations with this Tory government. Its authority is eroded, and its economic basis shattered.

Trade unionists everywhere must demand: • Break off all talks Tories. • Mobilize a campaign to bring this government down.

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marks, at his union's rec ent conference, were something of a last straw.

If the row does burst into the open, Jenkins is unlikely to reply directly.

Neither Scanlon nor Jenkins will be anxious to ventilate the real, underlying issue in the row: that all the union leaders' policies of non-co-operation with the Industrial Relations Act have collapsed, and everyone knows it.

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