As home car sales slump UNEMPLOYMENT AND SHORT TIME

SHOWDOWN over the A over threat of unemployment and short-time working is now on the agenda in the motor car industry.

Due to credit restrictions, car sales have slumped on the home market and the employers are seeking opportunities to weaken workshop organization preparatory to introducing speed-up and, in the case of British-Leyland, MeasuredDay Work.

They believe that the time has come to split the working class like they did in the 1930s through sackings and shorttime.

The management of British - Leyland, Oxford, boasted in October 1968 that their new model, the Maxi, would be in production to the tune of 2,750 a week by August-September 1969.

A thousand of the men who were sacked in 1966 were reengaged, but production never rose beyond 1,800 a week by July 1969.

Now this has been cut back to 1,300 a week and the management want to put the sections concerned on a fourshifts week and three night this is a threat to th stewards' committee.

Four-point plan They are fighting on the following four point programme.

@ No compulsory Fancy No short-time working Maintain • the five-day No reduction in hourly rate of piece-workers, bonus-workers and ordinary time-workers.

The shop stewards' committee is proposing that any VAUXHALL MEN MUST BEWARE By our industrial reporter been working to rule since the management refused to negotiate a pay increase for work which was considered unsafe.

The wider dispute at Vauxhall's, which has brought all the company's production to a standstill and led to the laying-ofi of more than 12,000 workers in Cheshire and Bedfordshire, is against the company's plans to introduce penalty clauses into the new wages agreement.

REFERRED

TO YORK The Brighton meeting, in which NUVB and ETU representatives also took part, decided to refer this question to a meeting in York on Vauxhall workers must be on their guard.

If the union leaders accept ALL TRADES IIONS ALLIANC MEETING "The Workers' Press' SOUTHALL Tuesday, October Town Hall

Australian

election near WITH the General Election only three weeks away, Australian Labour Party launched its campaign at a Tally in Sydney on Wednesday evening. .As in West Germany, a long period of Tory rule has produced a swing towards the left.

Labour needs a net gain of 21 seats to win an overall majority in the 124-member House of Representatives.

Though the Labour Party traditionally draws the bulk f its support from the trade inions, the present leadership has set out to impress the middle-class and certain sections of the employers.

Under its previous leaders, Dr Evatt and Mr Calwell, the Party won a reputation for militancy. Even if this was largely undeserved, their successor Mr Gough Whitlam has made a very sharp right turn.

Dabour policy d been to ppose intervention in Vietnam.

The Labour Party's position may have upset the so-called "floating voter', but Evatt's outspoken opposition to the war did rally youthful forces around the Party.

Broke tradition

At the Sydney rally, Whit lam broke from that tradition All his statements indicated that Labour's new policy on Vietnam will draw much closer to those of Gorton's ruling Liberal-Country Party. Whitlam stated that the task of a future Labour government would be to helo the US 'extricate herself honourably from the disastrous and deluded war' It seems that Whitlam wants the war to continue, but feels unable to help in any material which he thinks are advanced.

In his Sydney speech he called for the creation of metal Auster, Malaysia. between Australia, Singapore and Indonesia, all of which should standardize their military equipment.

Embraces butchers Whitlam withdraws from Saigon only to embrace the butchers of Djakarta-the In. donesian regime has over the last four years killed at least half million communist workers and peasants.

Labour's home and economic policy promises to h qually reactionary and anti working class.

Whitlam's speech committed his Party to development pro jects in conjunction with overseas and home-based companies.

It would amend taxation laws and give encouragement to insurance companies seeking to invest in basic industries and development projects.

And finally, again very much in the style of Harold Wilson, Whitlam proposed the establishment an industrial development corporation.

Little or nothing was said that could enthuse any working-class Labour supporters.

Yet only last May the whole Australian working class fought back bitterly against the Tories' attempts to use penal sanctions against the trade unions.

Australian trade unionists, small farmers and youth must insist that if returned to power atter October 25, the Labour Party must at once repeal all anti-union legislation passed by previous Tory (and Labour) governments.

They must also fight right make. now, before the election, to make Labour ditch its pro-imperialist and pro-monopoly policies. More I.R.C. aid for big l THE Industrial Reorganizat state body set up by Wilso rationalization in industrydeal in the electronics indus Under the terms of an arrangement announced on Wednesday, Plessey will acquire the numerical control activities of Racal Electronics for £1.4 million plus the value of the assets involved.

This will give Plessey nearly 60 per cent of a market worth £5 million and growing at 25 or 30 per cent a year.

Numerical control equipment replaces the human operation of a machine tool with a computer which is given its instructions on punched or magnetic tapes.

Severe

British machine tool users have been slow to adopt these new techniques and competition from the United States, where such methods have been widely accepted for some time, is severe.

As in previous IRC interventions, the bank accounts of the firms concerned are likely to benefit considerably.

Mr. E. T. Harrison, Racal's chairman and managing director, said :

'The IRC has indicated that it will give serious consideration towards assisting Racal in the expansion öf its main product lines' Possibility There is also a strong possibility that the newly-formed group will also receive a grant from the Ministry of Technology for the development of n's government to speed up -has piloted an important stry.

Workers' Press reporter

its numerical control activities.

Once more the IRC and the Labour government show their real role.

While Jenkins talks of continued restraint and sacrifice at the Brighton Labour Party conference, large sums of money are to be given to capitalist concerns to assist them in their drive for profits and markets.

The mergers and concentrations that will result from this and similar IRC interventions must lead to growing unemployment and redundancies. I would like to subscribe to Workers' Press The rates are as follows : Full subscription (posted daily) 3 months £2 10s. Od. 1 year £10 0s. Od Two editions (for any two days you select) 3 months £1 0s. Od. 1 year 24 Us. Ud.

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surplus labour should be placed in a pool where they would be paid the flat rate of 10s. ltd. an hour.

This is being opposed by the management who have produced counter-proposals in which piece-workers would lose between £4 and £6 a British-Leyland have. recently announced an expenditure of £70 million on the Cowley Oxford plant. This, it