Some wages are so low the firm is being subsidized by the Family Incomes Supplement

THE FIGHT on the engineers' pay claim has spread to Ormskirk in Lancashire where the town's main factory has been shut by strike action for the first time in 50 years.

The 350 workers at the valve façtory of Hattersley Newman and Hender struck on May Day for their f5 demand on basic rates.

Their action followed months of negotiations involving management, the employers' federation, stewards and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.

Management's final rates and the introducBurroughs sackings will mean 15 p.c. unemployment HUGE unemployment continues to steamroller its way through the Scottish economy, crushing any hope of a business recovery.

The latest communities to suffer are Cumbernauld, east of Glasgow, and the hard hit Vale of Leven, Dunbartonshire.

Once again the axe is being swung from America-Burroughs Machines are slashing their Scottish labour force by 1,000: 670 in the Vale and 290 in the new town.

This will mean a leap in male unemployment by one-third. On Thursday, when the pay-offs occur, both Cumbernauld and the Vale of Leven will join the growing list of Scottish towns with a 15-per-cent male unemployment rate.

For the men who lose their lobs in the Vale the prospect engineers and, as one Burroughs worker put it to me: 'When a fitter hits the he stays on it, buroo up here, This is not an exaggeration. The Vale has just experienced the run-down of the Plessey electrical engineering plant-out of 750 workers there, only 70 are still employed on the old site. After Plessey Burroughs was the biggest employer.

And in Cumbernauld, one of the showplaces of West of Scotland, 1,200 have been lost in just or year—cancelling out a 1,750 growth since 1969. Male once jobs er a jobs untion of a new bonus scheme based on higher production was rejected by the men.

They pointed to the fact that production had risen 21 per cent in 1970 and that the £3.60 a week they had earned pn the old bonus scheme should be consolidated into basic pay.

Demands for a shorter working week and longer holidays were not even listened to by management officials who described the claims as 'unrealistic'.

The men, who say average wages in plant are £3 employment per cent.

land, Michigan, 7,000 redunrecently. modern business machines.

the same amount of jobs,' the firm's spokesman put it brutally. ever, cannot accept this capitalist logic. They say they will fight the sackings. course,' one shop steward from the Vale plant told me. 'And we have stated we will fight the closure. But we will have to see which way the labour force jumps.

by saying the factory will keep open. But we think we have got a closure on our hands.' women are right to be wary. The memory of the Plessey closure is still vivid in the Vale.

behind the neighbouring Liverpool district, are prepared for a long fight.

They are picketing seven days a week and their strike has been declared official by the St Helens AUEW district committee. "The management is being backed by the employers' federation and the federation is sticking to government policy on wages,' senior steward Harry Guy told me. 'Some of the wages in here are so lowthe foundrymen are on £15 for a 40-hour week FROM STEPHEN JOHNS IN GLASGOW MOU stands denied.

Burroughs blame the cut-backs on the US recession. They point out that in the company's homedancies have been declared September.

The other factor, they say, is the change in the nature of the business machines market and the increasing use of electronics in the company's equipment. Burroughs, in fact, are about to open a new factory in Cramlington, Northumberland, with government aid, to produce printed circuits for the most "This process is more automated and we just don't need battle.

The Burroughs workers, how'We're banning overtime of "The firm is trying to split us their case.

The Burroughs men and -that the firm is being subsidized by the government under the Family Incomes Supple'Yet last year's profits came to £850,000 and the group as a whole made £4}m. It's the first time the place has been shut for half a century and I we've just got to win this one' he said. Plans are now being laid to contact workers in the Yorkshire-based Pegler Hattersley group, especially those at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, who are also claiming a substantial wage increase.

This was. the firm that came into the area trumpeting its intention to award the people 2,000 jobs. Instead the labour force was consistently run down and rumours of closure consistently Then-just before the annual summer holidays last year-the whole work force got the chop and the plant closed last Statistics show Burroughs seems to be travelling the same road. The firm took choice place on the Vale of Leven industrial estate in 1949. A peak of employment was reached in the late 1960s and early 1970s-—after decimalization the decline began.

A total of 370 fobs went in 1970 and another 100 last year. Another curious aspect of the sackings is that they usually take place in the midst of a wages Last year the men were actually on strike when the redundancies were announced and this year they were just about to work-to-rule for the engineering industry national pay claim when the sackings were suddenly announced.

All pleas for a reprieve and negotiations have been firmly rejected by the company. Now the unions are hoping to meet US executives on Monday to put "They killed two birds with one stone,' said one worker I talked to. "The firm got round the wages fight and is trying to get rid of the men it wanted.'

Press, Saturday May 6, 1972 FRENCH Finance Minister