Ryton struggle has its effect Chrysler begin lay-offs at other plants

CHRY SLER'S Stoke factory was virtually paralysed day afı er the blockade of Ryton pickets forced the cr to lay anarinmir head. off 1,500 men. Shop stewards and convenors +ha~ ritauntinu review ine situalon and Mallagelle off up to 600 more production worl With the supply of engines and transmissions from the 4,000-strong Stoke plant halted, the men's leaders were standing by for word of layoffs at Chrysler plants at Linwood, Dunstable and MaidenIt is very important we win this fight,' joint shop stewards' committee vice chairman, Mr Frank Lake, said at the Stoke picket line yesterday.

•With this Measured-Day Work they want you to be a robot. But we are not going to go there as slave labour' Two weeks ago the Americanowned company accused track workers of 'shoddy work' and took 650 men 'off the clock' as a penalty.

Said Mr Lake: 'I can't believe they thought they would get away with it. If they want pay. ment by results, we will negotiate it. But if they want Measured-Day Work, we expect to be paid for the full shift?

Commenting on Chrysler chief Gilbert Hunt's re-election as president of the Society of Motor Manufacturers' and Traders, Mr Lake said:

'All the motor manufacturers are taking a very hard line at the moment. There is trouble brewing at Jaguar, Massey Ferguson, Standard and GEC.

I read that 27 per cent of the UK market goes to toreign competitors and I think that is the reason for the general tightening up of efficiency.' CBI chief spells out attack THE EMPLOYERS' chief spokesman, Mr W. O. Campbell Adamson, yesterday declared big business's intention to smash working-class resistance to speed-up, wagecuts and redundancies.

The CBI director-general said:

'For Phase Three we cannot accept a return to what the TUC calls "voluntary collectivebargaining"', Adamson declared. This is an instruction to Heath that the state control of wages must go on.

Then, in an unmistakable threat that the employers will keep up the aggressive tactics shown at Chrysler and Perkins, he went on:

If the contention is that increased prices are due to industry's shortcomings and that the cure is simply to sit on prices and profits, this would not be a basis upon which the CBI would see any future in talks with the government or the TUC Adamson then spelled it out: 'We cannot agree to proft control as in Phase Two' • He explained that industry must increase the rate of investment, which is still stagnant despite the contrived inflationary 'boom', and that required 'confidence that profits will return to a level which makes the financing of that level of investment possible.

'Increases in world prices cannot simply be made to disappear' and price controls would have to be relaxed, he added.

Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office, Published by Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, 7UG. Printed Seaton: 01-622 7029. IAN YEATS IN COVENTRY Cent were expectea cers by last night. FRANK LAKE, Stewards' vice-charman... We're While the Tory Press crowed with delight over the success of the 'hard line' taken by the American Fine Tubes company, Mr Lake accused Chrysler of treating union officials with 'absolute contempt'.

He said: 'We hoped to bring pressure on the company to get them to negotiate, but so far they have refused to talk to anybody' All the men laid off yesterday will receive only 65 per cent of their normal pay instead of the full 40 hours because Chrysler 'For too long we have invested too litle, consumed too much and demanded too much public expenditure.' Then Adamson stated the capitalists' political requirements:

If agreement cannot be reached [in tri-partite talks] or if government and parliament do not approve the terms of any agreement, it is their duty to step in and lay down the guidelines themselves, if necessary by statutory means.' Sensitive to the political explosiveness these remarks, Adamson added:

'Rather than a move towards a corporate state, this process is surely better described as a move towards greater democratization and involvement.' BELLE VUE Special showing of the Pageant film THE ROAD TO WORKERS POWER' and songs and scenes from history Tickets £1: Available from R. Smith, 60 Wellington Street West, Salford 7, Manchester. yes terTiny met lay But even as Adamson was trying to bolster shaken ruling class with his bellicose speech to a businessmen's lunch at the Grand Hotel, Bristol, workers' pickets in Coventry and Peterborough were stepping up their blockade of the Chrysler and Perkins factories. (See story this page.)

This new upsurge of militancy, which is spreading throughout the car industry, is the clearest refutation of the revisionists and reformists who had declared the working class to be 'defeated' because of the outcome of the Phase Two pay struggles.

Under the prodigious pressure of this rising tide of working-class determination, engineers president Hugh Scanion, who has led the collaboration with the Tories, tried to justify himself in a speech to the construction engineers' conference. Scanlon said the union's rank and file would determine whether he continued to take part in the TUC talks with Heath.

He was answering the previous day's statement of Communist Party miners' leader Mick McGahey that there was no room for negotiations with the Heath government and that the private talks at Downing Street were a betrayal of the interests of workers. But it was the Stalinists on the AUEW national committee who gave Scanlon the go ahead.

The Stalinists will only pay lip-service to McGahey's call to organize to 'end the government's reign as quickly as possible'. • They refuse to expose Scanlon's collaborationist role. They refuse to join the Socialist Labour League's call for the General Strike to force the Tories to resign.