Jobs threat behind Coventry speed-up latest management attempt to abolish

increase.

No to l'earon;

Regis Press Prin 180b extra holidays'.

The latter amounted to 4d per hour and two service days after seven years.

Last January, after years of recited by or it i Dal officials' plea that the 'chance negotiating an increase without work-study is hopeless' and agreed to a trial work-study scheme on which the management would base an offer a basic-pay But it is understood that today's meeting will hear proposals from the management which by ar overstep th ounds of this decision.

propose roselecting 'representatives' shop• floor for a ten-wee. raining course in MTM-2watches-data pre-determined times This followed weeks' company training.

Dole queue

During his period, talk: vill be given by the work study team so that craftsmen can 'appreciate' this step towards the dole queue.

Te due cant her minand.

by those répresentatives who have proved their worth to The whole process is to be master-minded by. Associated Industrial Consultants, who 30 HURT IN AMSTERDAM About 30 people-three of them hit by, police bulletswere injured in a seven-hour battle between police and hippies, Dutch authorities ported yesterday.

tered as a newspaper at the Office. Published by Workers • 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4. ted by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), Clapham High Street, London, BY A WORKERS PRESS CORRESPONDENT have been responsible for a number of such systems in the municipal transport industry.

Management attacks on the craftsmen's bonus—one of the highest in the industry-stem from the undertaking's deficit of over £500,000.

Total interest charges last year were £148,000 and will rise this year owing to the purchase of more new buses equipped for one-man operation (OMO). CCT boasts the largest number of OMO miles in municipal transport. ards from GKN-Sankey's strike-bound plant filed into the Morris Hall in the centre of the Shropshire market town of Wellington yesterday to hear union officials report on the outcome of their latest talks with manageOn Friday, at the end the strike's third week, stewards will put their recommendations to a mass meeting of 5,000 at the Sanke! Sports Club football ground But if Joseph Diaz, district secretary of the Amalgamated Engineers' and Foundryworkers' is right, the talks held with management on Monday got nowhere. After Monday's meeting he told reporters: 'The whole situation is complete deadlock' Sankey's make a wide variety of car components and light engineering products: brakes, wheels, Leyland cabs Commer van parts, heavy tractor and lorry-wheel sections, almost complete MasseyFerguson bodies, cabs for AEC vehicles, trailers for the Army, lorry chassis, office furniture, radiators and even beer-barrels.

Motor manufacturers are blaming lay-offs throughout the car industry on the strike.

SPARKED

The lay-offs have sparked strikes over lay-off pay in Coventry, where 5,000 Standard workers struck in solidarity with 2,000 who were laid off. Chrysler has laid off all the workers at Ryton, while Massey-Ferguson has sent home 1,600 tractor workers. British-Leyland has sent home men at Cowley and Birmingham and tractor workers in Yorkshire and Lancashire have also been laid off.

Sankey's struck on August 10, the day after the return from holiday.

walked mid-day for a £6 10s all-round followed in wages. They were members of the General and next Municipal Workers' Union and the Transport and General bringing the entire factory to a halt.

Whiconcluding an agreement would given graded rises of 2s Id to electricians, lld production workers and labourers.

MANOEUVRE

differentials at th factory-and was plainly part an attempt to play skilled sections against the lower-paid semi-skilled and unskilled sections, the majority pay BY A WORKERS PRE TWO WEEKS ago workers at British-Leyland's AustinMorris division plant at Cowley, Oxford, won a resounding victory by getting big wage rises without assisting the management one iota in its plans to abolish niecework and introduce Measured-Day Work.

IT YEAS If anyone working in motors is in any doubt on the plans of the employers, Monday's 'Financial Times' editorial should have cleared up those doubts. We quote: 'Any rational wage structure in the modern motor industry must, by evidence of much experience, exclude the piece-work system of payment.

'British-Leyland has made strenuous efforts to achieve the abandonment of the worst complications of piece-work payments, but so far the shop stewards have resisted the company?

Possible danger

IT .... - 8- Nothing could be clearer than that, but what followed indicates the possible danger of a rotten compromise which the trade union leaders -and those in the factories who defend them - could make with the employers.

Workers at StandardTriumph have rightly acted against the company's pracGKN-Sankey strike workers. stays solid of whom are immigrant The outstanding feature of the Sankey's strike is that this splitting manoeuvre met with solid and united hostility from the workers.

The strike committee has not even found it necessary to post pickets outside the deserted factory, which has now ground completely to a halt, though staff are still coming in to work at the next-door head office.

Since Sankey's was taken over by the GKN combine two years ago, workers say that the regime in the plant has tightened considerably.

'They are much stricter since GKN came in, one worker said.

It is clear that the company's long-term aim is abolish the existing piecework system and bring standard-time working. Sankey management claims to have 'taken the initiative' in introducing productivity, and wants elimination of 'overmanning, absenteeism and excessive overtime' together with more positive approach in the fields of economic labour deployment coupled with procedures which ensure that these are met.

The quotations are from a joint management-union bulletin setting out the supposed advantages of the company productivity deal.

IN DISPUTE The proposed agreement was tied to a job-evaluation exercise carried with the agreement of the unions, which signed an enabling agreement after a week's strike last year. The results of the job-evaluation are still in dispute.

The 1969 strike at Sankey's was the first real experience of strike struggle there.

After a week, the workers were persuaded to return pending negotiations. Eventually, in return for a rise of £2 all round, the unions agreed to accept job-evaluation and declared a standstill on further wage claims for 15 months.

'We learnt our lesson last year, brass operator Malik Mohd Akram . told Workers Press. 'We don't want to go back to work this time until we get what we want. If Pav-cut 500 workers from the Triumph motorcycle plant at Meriden, near Coventry, met yesterday at the city's Transport and General Workers' Union headquarters to discuss théir week-old strike over pay cuts.

A fortnight ago the polishing section struck for two days and defeated a management attempt to reduce wage rates for polishing silencérs.

Some workers were laid off by the dispute, but those who remained in the factory later found that their rates had been cut for the two days without any consultation although they worked normally.

Sankey's don't accept our demand there could be a long strike. gets £40 here.

'Last year the union • told us to "go back and we'll see what we can do"; people in Sankey's don't want that this time' a very good week.' Many of the workers point to the fact that Wellington is in a farming area, which in the past has tended to keep wages low.

'A MISTAKE' Younis Bhut said: 'If Sankey's were in Birmingham or of productivity clauses. Coventry, they'd have to give the rise. But if they think they're going to get away with it here they're making a mination. mistake.' Sankey workers have had to work long periods of overtime in order to make up a decent wage.

'We are low-paid as far as the car industry is concerned, one worker told Workers strike. BY A FOREIGN REPORTER