GEC women seek support for

CLERICAL WORKERS on strike in the north west for the principle of equal pay are calling on the engineers' union to give them support.

Shop stewards representing 140 mainly women workers at two Manchester electrical engineering factories are in touch with AmalAnd as and their erie will be pers before the men tomorrow.

The strikers want engineers to black all goods going into the two plants at Eccles and Heywood owned by Salford Electrical instruments part of the GEC 'If we can get this blacking it would be a serious blow to production. We think this will force management's hand to negotiate,' shop steward Gerald Roberts told me outside the Eccles factory yesterday.

The strike, described by the Association of Professional, Executive and Computer Staffs (APEX) as 'militancy within the law' , is over equal pay. The union wants the Tories' Phase Two pay increase plus a differential for women clerical workers which would bring their wages up by £3.70.

think GEC sees this as a case, said Mr Roberts. 'They not willing to progress toCoventry toolroom move to revive organization ENGINEERS' union leaders in Coventry face a demand that they revive the citywide organization of toolroom and toolroom-rated workers which en -ded following last year's bitter toolroom strike.

The demand, which the union's district committee will consider at its meeting in seven days' time, comes from strikers from the GEC toolroom in Coventry, who are now moving towards their 12th week on strike.

The strikers, who have decided not to meet until Thursday of next week, are demanding that a £2.88 pay award be staggered Speed-up battle spreads to Ford's Halewood factory THE CARWORKERS' struggle against speed-up spread to Merseyside yesterday, when the 1,000 day-shift workers walked out at Ford's Halewood, Liverpool, transmission plant.

The walk-out occurred after the company suspended 118 workers for two days over stoppages on the light car gearbox assembly line on Thursday and Friday of last Both stoppages took place in protest against warnings issued to two men whose job is to lift completed gearboxes from the line.

Warnings were issued, the company says, because there was 'a big discrepancy' between the output of men on the day and night shifts, which it was attempting to 'balance up'.

The strikers say that the real issue is Ford's attempts to WERE OUT FOR PLAY wards equal pay. This is supposed to come in by law by 1975, but knowing this combine that is the date they will introduce it' He said the men would be satised with their Pay Board increases but were sticking out in solidarity with the women The strikers have mounted a determined picket at both factories and are stopping all transport in and out at Eccles. The main trouble is one truck driver, a non-unionist, who refuses to respect the picket line.

Management has tried to break the solidarity. Strikers say they have increased one man's wages by 100 per cent for ignoring the dispute. over 12 months to give a higher platform for future negotiations.

Support for the strikers has come from both Chrysler and Rolls-Royce workers in the city.

But last Wednesday the quarterly meeting of engineers' union shop stewards was closed down by the chairman, who refused to take resolutions from the floor.

These resolutions demanded a meeting of all Coventry toolroom stewards, and stewards of workers who were previously allied to the Coventry toolroom rate, before it was terminated by the employers. obtain big increases in production with only relatively small increases in manning.

What the company wanted to do, they say, was push up the number of gearboxes produced on the light car line from 78 Its first target was the night shift. More men were . dratted onto the line, but this increase did not cover more than half the extra work. The increase was only obtained by the liftersoff abandoning the approved method of doing their job.

The established procedure for lifting gearboxes off the line, which has been in operation for three or four years, is to use a hoist, but as the day-shift men point out this is physically impossible at a rate of 104 an hour.

The unions failed to challenge the increase on the night shift and the men resorted to lifting the boxes off manually. Ford's then turned its attention to Witch-hunt in white-collar unions goes on UNIVERSITY teachers' and civil servants' leaders are among the latest to join the chorus of witch-hunting in the white-collar unions.

Squeezed between the Tories! intransigent legal clamps on • wages on the one hand and the growing militancy and politicization of their members on the other, these gentlemen have begun to lash out. aimed not lt she Towes, but ae Their are the left. Union chiefs who have remained virtually silent or inactive on the Heath government's daily acts of robbery against the working class, snatching pounds from the pay packet while sanctioning continual price rises, have suddenly found their Voice against 'extremists' and 'wreckers'.

First in the field were leaders of the clerical union APEX, who at their recent conference actually proscribed the International Socialism group.

Then William McCall, head of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants, used his conferwhipping the day shift into line.

On both Thursday and Friday, the issuing of formal warnings to the lifters-off was met by stoppages of the whole light car line about an hour before the finish of their shift.

Now the day shift in the whole plant has stopped work until the suspensions end. • A threatened stoppage of production at the Vauxhall factory at Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, over a safety issue was averted.

The four-hour night-shift on Friday was cancelled because 170 press shop workers went on strike in sympathy with stacker-truck drivers involved in the dispute. But during the weekend shop stewards and management thrashed out a settlement.

Further talks were taking place at the same factory in an effort to settle a dispute concerning a change of procedure in gearbox testing. APEX PICKET BY OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT ence platform to attack the growing influence of left-wing 'extremists' in the civil service.

At the Union of Post Office Workers' conference, general secretary Tom Jackson launched a witch-hunt on the Communist Party, the International Socialists and the Socialist Labour League.

The term 'wreckers' was used by the latest to join the chorus, Laurie Sapper of the Association of University Teachers.

The target of his remarks was of his own organization, but stu- directly at least, members dents who have attempted to stop lectures by individuals with whom they disagree.

Enraged by recent incidents at Sussex University and the London School of Economics, the AUT leadership has sent out a circular to all 24,000 members reminding them about its policy on professional conduct.

Sapper told the Press Association: Students and staff, in their own interest, should really put a stop to the activities of a minority of wreckers.' A more insidious attack has been launched inside the Civil and Public Services Association, GET YOUR BOOKS, PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS FROM THE 28-CHARLOȚTE STREET LONDON. WIl OpEn Miorday to-Satradiery 11. the latest edition of whose journal, 'Red Tape' , carries an article by one John Kirby entitled "The Way Out Left'.

Kirby's approach is double-edged. First he attempts to dismiss the left wing-claiming that the CP, IS, SIL, International Marxist Group and Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Lenin'probably have membership of more than 50,000 between them.

But then he provides ammunition for the witch-hunting campaigns of every Fleet Street hack by claiming that the tendencies he mentions 'seek to exercise a spurious influence by imposing their ideas on trade unions'.

He says: 'Their members are assiduous in attending union meetings, making speeches, organizing demonstrations on every possible occasion and keeping up a barrage of criticism of the union leadership' With this caricature Kirby makes a veiled challenge to the right of CPSA members to fight for political ideas in the union, thus leaning towards the ranks of those who want to ban and illegalize such activities under a Torry corporate state.

None of these attacks on independence of the trade unions can go unanswered. They must all be resisted firmly.

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