Spring for 3,500 at Rolls-Royce

for the government.

At no time since the TUC General ROLLS - ROYCE yesterday announced plans to make 3,500 employees in their aero-engine division redun- Fleet dant in the spring.

October a drop of £800,000 in The company announced in Street reacted their half-yearly profits and a cut in dividends. to the 'guidelines' The redundancy decision is therefore not unexpected, despite optimistic predictions that the company would opt for lower profits rather than See page four any cutback in the labour Faced with a fall in profits, Rolls-Royce has repeated its measures of the early 1960s— massive redundancies.

The management says that unions and wages settlements. the redundancies will be When the strength of the working class limited to a system of compulsory and voluntary retirement among the older nonproduction and white-collar boards for state control of the unions.

There is, however, an un- The 'guidelines' they have now produced doubted threat to all sections of Rolls-Royce workers.

The company's main contract, the RB-211 engine for • call, or approve, or terminate a strike' Lockheed's Tristar, will not These proposals could have been lifted mature until 1971, when deliveries begin.

Added to this is the threat • shop to workers of a cutback in the programme for the Concorde, In effect, the TUC calls for all shop with engines produced by the Bristol-Siddeley division Rolls-Royce.

Union officials have accepted these large-scale redundancies. working conditions.

Their only reaction to the The shop steward, says the TUC, must management's announcement has been to insist on mutual negotiations — presumably that their members can lose their jobs on the best possible officially. terms.

From our own reporter DIE-CASTERS at Tottenham's Gestetner plant yesterday struck for an improved pay offer.

Workers in the fettlingshop, together with the small die-casting machine operators, unions involved. operators have decided have taken this action over the refusal of the management to settle a claim for improved condition money.

Adverse conditions Their claim, on which a failure to agree was registered earlier this month at York, is