THE WORK-INS' EXAMINED

As the Briant Colour work-in drags to the close of its tenth unresolved week and a new clifihanger develops at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders the Stalinist leaders of 1,400 engineering workers at Walsall are planning an occupation of their own.

Tube Investments, owned aside all pleas from workers at their Green Lane plant to keep the factory going.

During recent meeting with members of the nine-man action committee set up to fight the closure Plowden tolar posed members their best interests would be served by running the place down in an orderly manner.

No closure date has been announced, but when it is the committee will recommend occupation until the shut-down is postponed or a new owner is found.

The plant manufactures stainless steel tubes for use in nuclear power stations. The chances of a new owner being found willing to maintain the existing workforce in the same lines are even slimmer than those of a printer taking over Briant Colour.

Briant owner Derek Syder abandoned his Old Kent Road factory after losses of £200,000 over two years. far most potential buyers have either not been convinced of the possibility of making the works viable or have hinted at the need to slash the workforce.

While the fight for Briant Colour stagnates, the so-called victory of the original Stalinistinspired work-in at UCS teeters Maration clear that the on the brink of disaster as Marathon Manufacturing Co have not in fact guaranteed anything like the total number of jobs at present existing at Clydebank.

Despite Stalinist claims that bad management and profiteering are the root cause of each individual shut-down, the fate of the work-ins points incontrovertibly at the real problem: recession. mass sackings are an inevitable part of capitalism's light for survival, the Stalinists turn inwards on their own individual opposite-looking tive employers.

This happened at UCS in a graphic way, with the signing of four-year no-strike pledge and the sacrifice of all traditional trade union conditions in order to get a buyer for Clydebank.

Like the UCS leaders, Bill Freeman and Alan Colpitts pick their words carefully.

Derek Syder has undertaken to provide the work-in at Briant's with 'substantial orders and credit. These sual alilee. were vital if the usiness was to be built into the kind of viable going concern with which a potential buyer might be attracted.

Even though no such orders have materialized, and what work there is has been largely won by the work-in committee or from the trade union movement, Bill Freeman is confident that more pressure will induce Syder to play ball.

With the firm still in the hands of liquidator P. Granville White this seems unlikely. Other snags are that prospective employers not only want to slash their work-force, but Freeman claims they are worried lest what they believe to be communist-inspired militancy at the factory spreads to workers in their own organizations. Top: Briant workers and supporters on the march against closure in SHAPELS TrE"

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URK VOf. declining number of vacancies currently pegged at about 500.

A spokesman for the local labour exchange told me that at Il throughout the labour movement and against the Tory government and its unemployment policies is pro-