'You're not even a machine, you're a wound-up, nervous wreck.'

THURSDAY'S attempts to engineer acceptance of Vauxhall's new pay and productivity proposals by workers at the company's Ellesmere Port plant settle nothing.

If the company and the union leaders hope to contain the growing hostility of workers at both the company's major car plants not only towards the deal, but towards Vauxhall's whole 13year-old Measured-Day Work system, it is a vain hope.

As Alan Baker, Ellesmere Port's AEF convenor, told me recently :

The whole situation's the melting-pot.

'Men were laid off for working to the company's own standard times. In other words, for just doing, what they were supposed to do under the old agreement.

"So this question has to be sorted out before we even think about operating any new agreement.' During the last fortnight, only the efforts of union officials, backed up by their national executives, have prevented workers at both Luton and Ellesmere Port decisively rejecting the company's new proposals. One Luton die-shop worker spoke for many when he told me at the end of last 'We've got to get rid of this dead hand of our present leadership' series of articles o our industrial corre DAVID MAUDE we're working piece-work pace anyway.

'If you worked like they want you to, it'd be slavery!

'The company's always completely detrmined to get the time it wants a job to be done in. If you dispute it, they'll get it anyway by simply moving you and putting another man on the job.

'Unfortunately, our union organization here's at sixes and sevens. You know the membership definitely wants to fight, but the leadership behaves as if it's controlled by the management-it just dissipates everything.

At Ellesmere Port, another NUVB steward explained some of the background to the agreement drafted at York just over a fortnight ago. Said Frank Gardner:

'The standard time system has got to a stage now when you're a machine, you're a wound-up nervous wreck. We couldn't go any faster.

I suppose we always say that, then we're surprised when they work something out to prove us wrong!

'The system just doesn't allow for a man ageing—it's stretch, hold, grasp job.

'If you think about what you're doing, you're working too slow.

'We were sold out to this system as soon as the Ellesmere Port plant opened. It was already in.

'Rootes had to pay 17s. 5d. for it in Coventry, we've got it for a top rate of 10s. Id. If we're going to reach parity on the basis suggested in the new deal-further productivity-we'll have to sell our souls.

'And we mightn't get even then!

'Sometime we get an extra man put on the line if there's change in the model, but this only means we have to make up working harder the next day or the day after. The management's final word is always "Each man has to pay for himself".

'You've got time-andmotion at all levels. Even the area manager has to make up his debits and credits, but he's working in men!

'If they get the review of standard times they're asking for, conditions will be just about intolerable!

Acceptance of the York draft would give the company, in return or increase a mere 8d.-10d. an hour: • Streamlining and consolidation of the present wage structure.

Vauxhalls • Establishment of workstudy and job-evaluation as the basis for all future negotiations. • Tightening of the disciplinary procedure in respect of lateness and absence from work. • Review of standard times to take into account changes in machine performance, methods, layouts and techniniques. • Local arrangements to ensure the fullest possible acceptance of the obligation to act through constitutional procedure.

To understand why Vauxhall's need such an agreement and why the company has been prepared to lose £850,000 a day over the last four weeks in order to wear down the resistance to it among its workers, it is necessary to take a brief look at how the general crisis of the motor industry is affecting it.

The state of trade IN JULY this year, Vauxhall-now Britain's third largest car manufacturerraised its share of the home car market by one whole point to give it 12.92 per cent.

But the company has been coming under increasing pressure from Ford's and BritishLeyland and the present conditions of slackening home demand and sharpening competition internationally make it unlikely that it will be able to maintain this increase or increase it.

While it made a trading profit of £30,588,000 last year, this is only half that of its two major competitors.

At Ford's where MeasuredDay Work has reached a much more intense stage than even Vauxhall's has been able to manage so far, the profits breakdown for each worker was £1,233 as compared with Vauxhall's £837. Each vehicle made £105 10s for Ford compared with Vauxhall's £94 6s.

On the other hand, of course, British-Leyland's inability to break the resistance of its workers to MeasuredDay Work gave it a breakdown of only £461 a worker and £82 14s. per car.

The standard-time system thus gave Vauxhall's almost twice as much profit a worker as Leyland's piece-work dominated wage structure.

Unlike Leyland, however, Vauxhall is almost out of the running in Europe and its cars have never sold in the United States —the province of its 99 per cent owner General In order to break back it will have to cut back rising September, forced it to raise the prices of three of its car models by between £17 and £76. The main attack here must obviously be on wages.

This is the purpose of the proposed new deal.

In areas pany actly invited to a motor workers' conference Digbeth Civic Hall, Digbeth Birmingham Saturday, November 8 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Write for credentials to :

Strawberry Path, Blackbire Conference fee: 5s. a person