LEYLAND

Internationa competition IT SHOULD be no surprise that BritishLeyland, which this week told shop stewards in Oxford of major cutbacks in production, is to be first off the mark with sackings and shorttime working.

As the winter progresses, British capitalism's attack on carworkers must increasingly take this form. The slackening home demand and sharpening international competition which now faces the entire motor industry are felt with particular sharpness by this £410 million giant, whose 1968 merger made it the country's biggest car producer.

With Tuesday's announcement to the Oxford stewards all the lines of Leyland's particular strategy have become clear.

Besides introducing unemployment and short-time, the combine is to close many of its smaller plants, slash production costs and engage in a ruthless marketing war.

Alongside this determined preparations for British capitalism's entry into the European Economic Community.

To back up his general strategy. Lord Stokes has launched a two-pronged attack against those who work in his factories.

He aims to completely reorganize production by means of a £200 million programme. But this means that the relationship between exploiter and exploited must be completely changed throughout the comTo oversee this task, Stokes appointed reputedly high-powered, but as yet unnamed executive to take charge of a new 'manpower planning unit'. His express instruction is to get rid of the piece-work system of payment and replace it with Measured-Day Work.

at canie A £200 million is to be LARGE chunk of the spent on expanding and reorganizing Leyland's Morris Motors plant at Cowley, Oxford.

first of series f article on the Motor Industry By our industrial correspondent New assembly lines are being built on the south side of the existing Morris works. A new system of overhead conveyors will link Morris's to a much greater extent than present with the Pressed-Steel Fisher body plant, on the op. posite side of the Oxford by. pass.

The total cost of the operation will be some £70 million.

As one steward commented last week, when we passed the new development :

'The company has no intention of opening that plant on piece-work. they calculate they've got 18 months or so to break down our resistance and introduce Measured-Day Work!

When completed, the new complex will have an output capacity of 10,000 cars a week —double the present figure.

But Leyland has no plans to expand its present labour It aims to achieve the in crease entirely by expenditure on new plant.

Phase Pete ones of the develop ment plan scheduled for completion at the end of next year. This comprises the redevelopment of 'A' building, conveyor modification, the building of a new paint shor and the re-arrangement of press shop facilities.

Mechanization and automation of processes will be stepped up.

Already, bodies for the Maxi vehicle are produced by new £2,500,000 computer - aided equipment which cuts down both production costs and Pressed-Steel Fisher is also producing most of its car roof sections under automated control.

New assembly techniques are also cutting down amount of labour required. Maxi bodies are now assembled by the 'gate line' prefabricationand-conveyor-loading method. first developed by General Motors, which enables the whole process to be carried out on the moving track.

If successfully completed, these technical developments will of course bring enormous pressure to bear on the piecework system. Leyland's wage bill would be enormous.

So, by the time the first cars come rolling off the new assembly lines—the model will be a replacement for the dubbed the ADO 28-eStekes Morris Minor, wants to have completed the changeover to a fixed-payment, high-flexibility scheme.

Another part of the combine's strategy here is to farm production out to factories in which workers are paid less than Leyland employees.

For example, arrangements Leyland's drive for the Common Market will Morris workers at a recent mass meeting. £200 million on re-organization - 'The relationship between exploiter and exploited must be changed throughout the combine. £70 million development at Cowley - 'Output capacity doubled with no increase in the labour force. • Manpower Short time and unemployment - The major weapons during the winter months. Common Market drive - New attacks on and conditions.

have already been made for ADO 28 engines to be produced at the rate of 2,500 a week by Turner's, Wolverhampton, where wages are at least £8 a week lower than at Morris's own engine plant.

There are also reports that engines for some BMC lorries are to be supplied from Perkins, Peterborough, where a Measured - Day - Work-type agreement was recently introduced.

But short-time and unemployment during the winter months are clearly going to be the company's major weapons.

above.

steward wages EN days ago, Leyland made its first move to collect the pound of flesh signed away by the trade union leaders during last year's engineering package deal negotiations.

It is demanding the implementation against workers in the Austin toolroom at Longbridge, Birmingham, of the deal's job-evaluation clauses.

The union leaders — from both the Amalgamated Engineers and the Transport and General Workers — have, of course, upheld the company's position and said that the deal's provisions must stand. Only the price was at issue.

Interestingly enough, the Austin toolroom has for a long time been the stamping-ground of the Communist Party's Dick Etheridge. What 1s his reply to this challenge ?

The Communist Party, of course, was one of the main defenders of Scanlon's leadership during the engineering negotiations and led many workers into the trap of believing the 'strings' he agreed were harmless - that 'any steward worth his salt could get round them'.

For a time, of course, appeared to be true. It peared that workers were ting the money without "strings'.

In reality, however, the employers were merely biding their time until they got the conditions under which they could fight for the 'strings' to be implemented.

Fortunately, the answer to the Austin reference does not rest with Mr Etheridge alone.

It is a serious and urgent question for the whole combine.

problems', a vichus AISIET NDER piecework, wages depend largely on the negotiating strength of workers and their stewards vis-a-vis the management and its ratefiexers.

Strong trade union organization at shop-floor level can command a high price for the job.

Measured-Day Work is designed to break down this Its rates of pay are fixed and it is the management who decide how to pile on, split up or reorganize time with effort from the start of his shift to the final bell.

As une Oxford steward put it last week:

"The management could come along and say "we're increasing the production on this job". The steward would have no say except about how many men were needed to do the job - his strength would be destroyed.

Put simply, this is the reason why the car bosses want the changeover and why carworkers must fight it.

No carworker, of course, believes that piece-work 1S perfect. It is not the system that the Oxford workers want to defend, but their right to As one Oxford sub-assembly worker told me recently:

'You can only earn money if you're on full production, but we've only reached our full schedule twice this year. The company tries to use this, of course, to make piece-work as unpopular as possible and place Measured-Day Work in a favourable light.' A steward on the No. 2 Maxi asembly line, Tom Macnicholas, confirmed that his members had had less than four full weeks this year. But Measured-Day Work, he said, was 'a vicious system, which will have to be fought'.

To increase its share of home car sales and compete in the international market, Leyland is tooling round struggle.

If it is to achieve its aim of brinket a ry caron to the must break the resistance of its workers.

Stokes drives for Farme EANWHILE, as Transport and General Workers' Union senior shop steward Bob Fryer told me last week, Leyland is making a big drive for Europe.

Deliveries of body pressings and underframes for two Renault saloons from Oxford's Pressed-Steel plant began, under a £5 million-a-year deal signed by Stokes, in September.

The combine also has agreements to supply components to Sweden's Saab and Spain's Pergasso companies.

Mr George Turnbull, Who manages the company's AustinMorris division, is said to be *a great believer in overseas investment'.

In line with this, Leyland has already built up assembly plants in Belgium and Italy.

At the same time, there are reports that some axle production for the new ADO 28 has been contracted to firms outside Britain.

Like many car manufacturers, Leyland is believed to favour an increasing standardization of car components across the whole international spectrum.

Later this year, moves in that direction will clearly be strengthened when Oxford's BMC service division opens a new department which will include European car parts among the wide range it will supply.

Senior steward Bob Fryer put it this way:

"The company's preparations for the Common Market will inevitably mean new attacks on wages and conditions. They'll have to speed up their efforts to bring us into line.

We're in for a hard winter. That's why we've got to fight back firmly on every issue now?

THROUGH WHAT STAGE ARE WE PASSING?

(Speech at the 50th All-Union Congress of Medical Saturday, October AN AGE OF PERMANENT A Trotsky anthology. Ed. REVOLUTION Isaac Deutscher 9s. DRAFT PROGRAMME PAGE THREE