THE BIG DOLE QUEUE AT QUALCAST

Ten years ago many foundries in the Smethwick area of Birmingham began taking on immigrant workers as business expanded with the boom in the motor car industry.

Originally seen as a useful pool of unskilled and relatively cheap and pliant labour, the immigrants-mainly Punjabissoon began to take an opposite view of things.

They organized trade unions where few existed before or where they were in existence but quite weak, and were soon driving up wages and conditions.

Today, a decade on, with Britain in the throes of its deepest economic crisis, Common Market entry requires a fundamental restructuring and reshaping of all the main Competition is hotting up as the trade war opens. Monopolies like Birmid Qualcast—which supplies most of the castings for the car industry —are beginning to rationalize production to prepare to fight European competition.

And it is this firm-based in Smethwick-which has just inflicted a serious defeat on a group its Birmid, with 13 works on the site, has-with the open agreement of the Transport and General Workers' Union officials-been able to close its Middlemoor Lane plant, said to be one of the most modern in Britain. It employed over 300 workers, mostly Punjabis. Wages were high and union organization was over 90 per cent.

The Punjabis-all of whom have refused offers of labouring jobs at half their former money-are now all out of the gate and off the company's pay-roll.

The company, led by the Marquess of Exeter, plans to reopen the Middlemoor Lane factory next year with labour from another, older plant, which will then be shut down for good.

With the militant Punjabis on the stones, the company can now proceed to modernize the Middlemore Lane plant.

There are said to be plans to introduce new, automatic machinery from Germany which will probably reduce the required labour force.

And when the plant reopens in a few months' time, as it definitely will, the labour force will have to begin afresh to build up shop-floor organization.

In a sense the firm has got what it has been after for some time.

In 1969, the right-wing leaders of the Labour government felt the working class was getting a little out of hand. body, the Comm ission on Industrial Relations the Smeth- to make an investigation of wick subsidiaries of Birmid Qualcast.

The CIR's brief was to investigate the state of labour relations' at the plants, immediately putting every worker into the public gaze.

Among the Commissioners were George Woodcock, exgeneral secretary of the TUC, then CIR chairman; Alf Allen from the shopworkers' union, USDAW; and, last but not least, Will Paynter, exCommunist Party member and former general secretary of the National Union of . MineThree companies were studied: Dartmouth Auto Castings (DAC); Midland Motor Cylinders (MMC) and Birmingham Aluminium Castings (BAC).

All three were subsidiaries of Birmid Qualcast, itself a product of a merger in 1967 between Birmid Industries Ltd and Qualcast Ltd.

The principal customers of the three - who employed 4,300 workers—were_ BritishLeyland, Ford, Vauxhall, Rootes, Massey Ferguson and Perkin's. They had a near monopoly position, sharing production of the vital castings with only one or two other firms.

Chairman of the components giant was the Marquess of Exeter, the former Olympic sportsman, Tory MP and one-time governor of Bermuda.

The Marquess, whose lineage can be traced to Baron Burghley of 1571, is also a director several other companies. Master of a number of hunts in his time, the Marquess is also Lord Paramount of the Soke of Peterborough.

The CIR investigation found that before the 1960s 'management was usually able to carry out decisions without formal consultation or negotiation with its employees' In fact, up to the end of the 1950s, the degree of union organization in the plants, except among skilled workers, was poor and the management could obviously do much as it pleased.

The company unashamedly turned towards immigrant workers when business boomed during the 1960s.

'Foundry work is by its nature carried out in unattractive conditions,' reported the CIR. 'As a consequence of these changes, the companies turned to Indian and Pak Pur qui reci pan mo ing sen in for:

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