Port employers prepare for docks

ALTHOUGH port employers negotiating the Der scheme have not laid emphasis on work-study i eventual introduction of Measured-Day Work the ports, this is undoubtedly their main aim.

A number of recent issues of the National Ports Council's research and technical bulletin have detailed possible time-and-motion methods on the docks.

Issue No. 5 examines work - measurement and gives examples of a timestudy made on loading cartons onto a pallet.

Special emphasis is placed on the use of predetermine notion-time systems (PMTS) in which times for jobs are up out of a list workers' movements.

'Progress in work-study within the port industry would be greatly helped by the creation of a pool for exchange of standard work-measurement data.' emphasized that this includes all personal needs (lavatory, nose-blowing, etc] and is taken when convenient. It is not intended that staff should stop hourly to take their relaxation allowance. Breaks for refreshment form part of the allowance' Measured-Day Work is usually introduced at a later stage in the phased introduction of a productivity agreement and usually when other new methods have already been firmly established.

This is particularly so when very powerful groups of workers are concerned; dockers, car workers, engineers, etc., where violent reaction to speed-up is possible.

Modernization of ports means the inevitable drive by the employers for speed-up of the workers involved.

Dockers can be sure that the long-term aim behind the Devlin scheme is the introWork into every aspect of ductien of Measured-Day dock working. Car giants expand TWO OF the world's leading car firms-Ford and Fiat-took steps this week to tighten their grip on their share of the European market.

Italian newspapers revealed on Tuesday that Fiat had bought out its smaller rival, Lancia. Both companies are centred on Turin, scene of some of Italy's biggest strikes in recent months.

Stalinism lem of surface workers' hours which is causing much concern.' The 'Star' adds: 'He hoped there would be a return to work on Monday after lodge meetings at the weekend.' In its attempts to gloss over the truth about the strike, the paper is careful to avoid mentioning Mr Francis' party membership. No doubt for the same reasons it avoids pointing out that the chairman of the South Wales strike committee, Cliff True, whose opinions about the strike are quoted elsewhere in this issue, is also a member of the Communist Party. The opportunist politics of the Communist Party, covering up for the right-wing leaders, have split the party down the middle on the most important issue at present facing the working class.

This has all along been Stalinism's role in the miners' union.

William Paynter, NUM secretary for many years until he joined the Commission on Industrial Relations, was a leading CP member right up to the day he joined the CIR.

The 'left' Daly has now reULSTER in Europe Meanwhile Henry Ford II, Ford chairman, flew to Paris on . Monday • for a meeting with President Pompidou.

The president has already expressed his desire to see a Ford plant in France.

Sharp reversal

This visit obviously means cover's WO for Daly placed Paynter as NUM secretary but the CP continues to provide the mixture as before.

eft' talk is combined with right actions, just as Paynter combined CP membership with support for Robens over pit closures and productivity.

And this activity is by no neans confined to the mining industry.

Daly is politically out of the same stable as Scanlon of the AEF whose acceptance of the engineering package deal and the Ford agreement was covered by Stalinist campaign to build him as a left.

The Communist Party's role in industry is more and more openly anti-working-class.

Is there any principled difference between covering up for Daly and covering up for Sir Sydney Ford ? Communist Party members in the mines will know the answer to that question. Thousands of miners are now aware of the need for a new leadership in their union. They want a leadership which Will back up • to the hilt their fight against the NCB and the government.

The Communist Party's relationship with Daly shows that Stalinism will fight to a finish against any attempt to build such a leadership.

can only be built in a principled nght against Stalinism, by joining the All Trades Unions Alliance and fighting for revolutionary I.P.C. profits drop INTERNATIONAL The Publish.

ng corporation, the "Daily Mirror' group, disclosed that trading profits for first six months of its current year to the end of September dropped by over £600,000 to £4,941,000. Hay's Wharf closure threatens dockers' jobs HAY'S WHARF on the south bank of the Thames between London and Tower Bridges is to close on November 28—making more than 650 dockers and office workers redundant.

The company claims that the closure is 'partly due to labour problems and partly to the dock labour scheme'.

There had also been 'very substantial losses' over the past few months, a spokesman said.

Last year, Hay's Wharf made a profit of £1,080,521. that Ford's plans penetration of the French market are due for the goIf it does, it will mark a sharp reversal of previous policy under de Gaulle, who was very hostile to the pressure of big US monopolies on the French economy.

Back in the USA, Ford's rival, Chrysler, has _ just reparted yet another profits drop.

Its tiny profit of 3.8 million dollars for the third quarter of this year is the worst showing the company has made since 1962.

Chrysler put the sudden fall down to 'generally higher costs'.

With Ford, Fiat and the other major world firms preparing themselves for war against their rivals and their own workers, firms such as Chrysler and its British subsidiary, Rootes, will turn the screws even more tightly on the working class if they are to stand any chance of survival.

Then, on May 30, 1969 Hays closed its Mark Brown's wharf and threatened to close all its wharves if the Dock Labour Board would not authorize it to halve its labour force.

letter' At the time, 1, 1969)

"The Newspointed out the possibility of the company switching its assets into some other line of business.

The closure threat poses once again the issue lundancies as work is con 'entrated down-river in th more profitable docks.

economy,' said Mr True.

'But our wages are at rock bottom, and we've reached the stage where we say to hell with the national economy.

'We've been squeezed until we can't be squeezed any more. Now we must unite against the boss class,' he said.

'In 1945 we said the mines would produce for the needs of the people, not for profit,' said Mr Williams.

'When we nationalized the loned.

'Most, union leaders are loyal Labour men. But you've got to be socialist to fight this government,' said Mr True.

I would like to see this industry socialized, and all payments to the coal owners scrapped, i he said.

*Private enterprise is looting this industry,' Mr True told me.

I am not interested in participation—that's collaboration with the class enemy. I want the coal field under workers' control.

'The miners are prepared to fight on with or without their leaders' support.

If this is concluded successfully, then next year we shall see major battles in the coalfield on the question of wages, said Mr True.

'The rank and file have been waiting for a call like this for a long time,' said Mr Ron Saint, the second joint secretary of the strike committee, and lodge secretary at Coedely colliery.

'They will never again be docile in their attitude to strike action,' he said. the Vietnam war.

Police arrested over 1,400 demonstrators throughout the country, most of them in Tokyo, where about 100,000 attended a rally called in opposition to the Japanese government's support for US policies.

Shortly before, Syria announced that it was sealing its border with Lebanon following reports that the Lebanese Army had killed 14 Arab commandos and wounded another 25 after raids on a guerrilla base stationed in the Lebanon.

By a forelgn correspondent The Palestinian Liberation Organization claimed that at one stage in the fighting, the guerrillas came under simultaneous fire from both Lebanese and Israeli forces.

A note issued after an emergency meeting PLO executive stated that the attacks were the first stages in an 'imperialist American