Pressed steel workers call for nationalisation AS Rootes Motors at Linvood, Scotland, resume full-time

From BOB SHAW working, 600 workers are to be sacked in the New Year at Pressed Steel, the company which supplies car bodies for the Rootes Imp car.

Rootes workers have been on a four-day week for some months and the Imp line workers at Pressed Steel are to start a four-day week in a fortnight's time.

Pressed Steel management plans in January to take off the night shift on the Imp line and to operate only a five-day day shift, resulting in a redundancy of 450 track workers and 150 other workers.

In both the Rootes and Pressed Steel factories during the last year the shop stewards leaderships have adopted a policy of collaboration with the management.

At the Pressed Steel factory they headed a move to collaborate with the management in introducing the notorious Emerson bonus plan which ties earnings to sales of the company's products.

They claimed that by this plan pay would go up and up EMERSON The Newsletter examined the Emerson bonus scheme in its issue of June 27 this year. The article pointed out that the object of the scheme was to scientifically exploit workers.

Dissatisfaction with the collaborating line of the convenor at Pressed Steel has led militants within the factory shop stewards' committees to press for the adoption of a policy linking a fight for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay with a vigorous campaign that Labour nationalize the car industry.

The demand that Pressed Steel be nationalized was put to the MP for West Renfrewshire, Mr. N. Buchan at a works' committee last week-end. His reply was that nationalization of the car industry was extremely remote and, in fact, not possible within the next two or three years.

Buchan, MP for West Rentrewshire, is newly returned to Parliament and is known to many as an occasional contributor to the centrist paper "Tribune'.

At a meeting in Linwood before the election, Buchan stated that the question of the nationalization of the car industry was irrelevant. Militants at Pressed Steel intend to make it very relevant for car workers.

40-HOUR WEEK The Pressed Steel works' committee has demanded that the firm should immediately introduce the 40-hour week and proceed to the operation of a four-day week without loss of pay to stop the sackings.

This is very different to supporting the Emerson plan which says that workers' pay and conditions can only improve if the profits of the company improve.

Pressed Steel management has replied to the shop stewards' committee that the operation of a shorter working week is out of the question.

The factory is then faced with a clear choice, either prepare for a fight with the management for the operation of a reduction in working hours with no loss of pay, or face wholesale sackings and a possible closure of the factory should Rootes motors decide to withdraw their production from Scotland.

To those who say that this is Registered at the G.P.O. as a nerspaper Printed by Plough Press Lid. (TO), f.o. 180 Clapham High Street, Loadon, S. W.4 Published by The Newsletter, 186л Clasham High Stroet, London. S.PV.4 not likely to happen we can only cite the case of Fords who closed a whole factory at Doncaster so that it could rationalise its production. The same firm sacked hundreds from its Dagenham plant.

RUTHLESS

The Chrysler combine to which Rootes fortunes are now tied will ruthlessly assess the profitability of the Linwood plant and decide in the interests of profit.

Pressed Steel workers must draw up the balance sheet on a year's working of the Emerson plan and throw it out. They have to prepare for a tough fight with the Pressed Steel management. Only militant policies will serve in this struggle linked with demands that the Labour government nationalize the car industry.

Motor

exports affected by strike the 270 strikers at the Witton, Birmingham, works of Salisbury Transmission Ltd. to continue their official stoppage over a claim for improved piece-work rates, factories throughout the motor car trade were affected by Monday this week.

This stoppage, now in its third week, must be the cause of some anxiety to the car monopolists whose export trade has suffered because of the lack of axles.

The men, all members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union are demanding 25 per cent increases in piece-work rates.

Laid off

Figures published in the national press at the beginning of this week stated that International Harvesters have laid off 200 men and another 350 were expected to be sent home on Wednesday; Jaguar cars had a two-day lay-oft of 950 and Jensen Motors have resorted to making their vehicles without the rear axles which will be added just before they are exported.

It can be expected that in the near future both the local press and the management will start to bring pressure to bear on the union officials about the hundreds of men laid off.

In every strike where the laying-off of men not involved in the strike occurs, the union officials have given in to the management.

Support

Strikers at Salsbury Transmission must not allow this kind of blackmail to weaken their stoppage. The only way that they can hope to win their piece rate demands is, in fact, to call for the active support of car workers in other parts of the industry.

They must not be hoodwinked by talk from the management about the laid-off men. After all, the only thing that the car bosses are interested in is the profits they are losing in the highly competative car export business abroad.