Delivery drivers' strike

_BY SYLVIA PICK_ 'WE SHALL WIN; we've got to win. If we don't we shall lose everything we've built up in the last nine years? So said a shop steward of the Longbridge car delivery drivers, on picket duty at the entrance to one of the storage compounds at Austin's BMC factory.

The Longbridge drivers have been on official strike against redundancy for two months. Theirs was the first strike to be called against the unemployment crisis forced on workers by the Wilson government's freeze policies.

In the first few days of the, struggle strikers forecast that it would be a long job and might prove tough and grim.

Their tenacious fight has involved them in very real financial hardship. They have been receiving f4 per week strike pay eked out by public assistance. With each week that passes the problems of making ends come anywhere near to meeting grows more unmanageable.

They know their strike has also caused hardship to thousands of car production workers, who have been intermittently laid-off from the Austin factory as the storage compounds become choked with cars which cannot be moved. They speak with deep appreciation of the solidarity of many of these workers.

'See those flats over there?' asked the pickets. 'There's bloke living in one of those who brings us tea twice a day. He's one of the blokes laid-off because of our strike' Sympathy gifts • They also tell of gifts from other local sympathisers. Coke for the stove in the hut they have built to make picket-duty more bearable as the days get colder. Sausages to fry for hot snacks.

The drivers speak with contemptuous disgust of the terms offered last weekend by their employers, the Longbridge Group of Delivery Agents (LGDA).

These terms were put forward at a meeting sought by the employers themselves. Their doing so gave rise to hopes that they intended to offer substantial concessions to the drivers in order to get a return to work.

"They offered to take back 75 of the 333 redundant men for one month only, during which time the question of redundancy • Was to be discussed. They must think we're daft. That would have given them a chance to clear the compounds: then they would have announced that the position was unaltered and the redundancies must stand,' one alleged.

"They also made the condition that there must be total mobility between one type of job and another. This would have meant that a driver could be switched an hourwe should our guaranteed week. All the improvements in pay and conditions which we have built up would have been broken down. We wouldn't have been much better than slaves of the firms.' They described conditions in the working lives of delivery drivers up to nine years ago, when they became unionised.

At that time a driver was paid 15s. for taking a car to Newcastleon-Tyne from Birmingham.

No security In order to make a decent living he had to do two such journeys in 24 hours, leaving him little time for rest. High-speed driving was often a necessity. There was no security of regular employment, no guaranteed week.

From a tough poorly-paid job hey had won pay and conditions omparable with other jobs in the Midlands.

A new factor emerged in the dispute early this week when it was rumoured (though denied by MC) that two outside groups f delivery agents were to be allowed to start moving vehicles from the Longbridge factory.

Delivery drivers say there never has been any written contract between BMC and LGDA which prevented other firms from moving cars from Longbridge. All that has existed has been a 'gentleman's agreement'.

How binding is such an agreement likely to prove between gentlemen' when compounds are choked with cars which cannot be moved?

An abortive attempt to underCORRECTION C. Slaughter's article in The Newsletter of November 12 on the ideas of the Rev. lan Paisley contained two printing errors which alter the sense. The relevant sentences should read as follows:

'Fascism is not defined by its ideological content ... ' and 'Paisley's movement, whatever its future in Ulster, whether or not the dominant bourgeois interests decide his political and military organisation as its weapons against the working class, is a warning to the labour movement of all Britain and Ireland.' Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter: s.w.4 mine the strike on Monday ended when pickets were reinforced at the Reabrook Road entrance to the premises of • one of the IGDA members firms. About 30 strikers arrived at the depot saying that they 'couldn't go on much longer' They were persuaded by the pickets to disperse without holding their proposed meeting or trying to enter.

Mr. R. Carrington, LGDA chairman, was at the same time reported as announcing: 'It needs only a few delivery men to go vehicles again, can start moving back and we Striking drivers declare that BMC has already stated that work for 75 per cent of their number could be found, in spite of cut-backs and the economic freeze. They are asking, therefore: 'Why does IGDA find it necessary to sack 55 per cent?' They are demanding a withdrawal of all redundancy notices.

The weakness in the leadership of this strike has been that the Transport and General Workers' Union has made no attempt to enlist the support of car production workers in a drive for a swift victory.

From the beginning the strike has been restricted to a union dispute, affecting only transport themselves see it as a wider issue, involving struggle against government policies.

SHEFFIELD RENT REBATE SCHEME FOR SHEFFIELD Newsletter Correspondent SHEFFIELD CORPORATION housing department institute a rents rehate scheme in the citv.

MAIT да Several months ago the Labourdominated council sent questionnaires to all 63,000 houses inquiring about family income. Sixty per cent of the tenants returned the forms and there was a considerable hostility in the city's labour movement to any suggestion of a rebate scheme.

Shardlows engineering workers, for example, set up a 'rents committee' which advised workers to ignore the questionnaire.

A report from the city treasurer indicates on current estimates that by 1970-1971 there will be deficiencies which could reach _ 641,000 as far as the city's housing programme is concerned.

The Corporation raised the rents in December 1965 in order to make up for deficiencies. However, events over which the city has no control have been building up at local level.

The Selective Employment Tax, which has pushed up the cost of building, the rise in the bank rate from 6 to 7 per cent and the Housing Subsidies Bill, which was halted by the election, and could have stabilized interest speaks rates on housing to 4 per cent are all factors which have forcec the Corporation to revise their present rent structure.

Of course the proposals outlined by the housing management committee place the burden of this crisis on the tenants and the working class.

The proposals put forward are really a means test.

There are alternative schemes, one based on a 2s. 7d. increase, and the other on current rental values. The latter would be reached on the basis of the 1963 Valuation List.

Favoured scheme

It is apparent from the treasurer's report that the second scheme favoured. adopted, those tenants able to pay full rent would pay an average increase on present rents of 22 per cent—7s. 3d. weekly.

For those tenants who cannot afford the new rents, based market values, there are two rebate schemes.

The first limits the rent to one seventh of the gross family income. If the total weekly income is less than €10, the fraction would be one-fifth after a deduction of f3.

The second scheme involves a guaranteed minimum subsistence income to each tamily aiter paying the rents.

These schemes are of course a thinly - disguised method of raising the rents and they ignore the "prices' point of the prices and incomes policy.

Rent increases of this size will come at a time when short-time working and unemployment are affecting the steel industry and a struggle in the working class must be prepared.

It is rumoured that certain left councillors - will oppose the scheme, but this can only be a token strugglesture unless a serious government and for the nationalization of the banks and building societies is waged.

The role of the Communist Party in Sheffield over this question is as yet unclear.. They are participating in a ring-round' of local councillors at the moment. asking various people to vote against the scheme.

The real answer to the question lies in the powerful organisation of the working class.

The 'rents committee' at Shardlows was a step in the right directie to Med in cemen tees sy and These committees should an all-out struggle waged against the wage freeze, rents rises and unemployment.

This is the policy of the Young Socialists and it was these poliwhich the YS Socialist Labour League marched through Sheffield last Saturday (November 19).

Russia and Eastern Europe, and at Fairfield shipyard THE TEN-MONTH-OLD industrial peace at Fairfields shipyard, Glasgow, was shattered by the strike of 130 boilermaker apprentices demanding that increases given to the journeymen as part of a deal made in a 'productivity agreement' between management and unions should also be given to them.

Fairfields was one of the few industrial establishments allowed to go ahead with a wage increase after the wage freeze was introduced by Wilson earlier this year.

But the increase is linked to sweeping changes in the traditional manner of operating in the yards where given trades were always kept to certain well-defined jobs and were strictly demarcated from other trades.

abolishedractice has long been in European yards but until this year has remained within yards on the Clyde and in other parts of Britain.

The shipyard owners and the Wilson government think that a few shillings extra in the wage packet is well worth the expense if holes can be blown in the trade union wall of 'craft protection'.

One thing that the Fairfields agreement is to management have their way is the right of certain crafts to carry higher earnings than others.

They also plan to reduce the apprentice training period fron five to four years.

This will obviously be taken up by other yards which have also begun to agree to similar agreements with the aid of the Boilermakers and other union leaders. The result is that giant steps will be taken in the immediate future to break down the craft nature of shipyard work and produce ships by labour more like the way cars are produced.

Once the technical problems are worked out this becomes a definite possibility, provided that the inions can be forced to agree to the necessary changes.

Only strugglers So far the apprentices are the only section of workers which has entered into struggle to oppose the management The apprentices previously struck work for two weeks but che yard o it a le are in.

join the struggle.

They expected this decision woul e taken at a mass meeting held a week ago.

To their disgust only a one-day token stoppage was. called The announcement of this weak lecision was greeted with hoot f derision and angry shouts trot the youth.

"he strike decision was calle ff the verv next dav so that th apprentices had no choice but themselves to resume their strike on the Monday morning.

Despite appeals by union officials they remained firmly opposed to resuming work until their demands were met.

All apprentices have been sent a copy of an apprentice charter which makes a number of promises of pay increases What the charter and the productivity agreement seem also to mean is that certain trades and apprentices will lose a percentage of their earnings.

action of the youth at Fairfields is extremely important party and in the trade union bureaucracy will be afraid of losing their influence and will be attracted by your apparent closeness to the 'strength' of the Soviet bureaucracy.

As in the 1930's, you long for the days when, in the aftermath of defeats for the working class, middle-class illusions about "peace' and general reforms can make some sort of popular front in which everyone will agree to exclude and attack the revolutionaries, the Trotskyists.

You miscalculate! This time the betrayals of Wilson come atter period of full employment and high expectations in the working class, whereas MacDonald sold out after 1926 and the subsequent unemployment.

This time Trotskyism grows in number and influence, and it has the strongest political youth movement in Britain, or in Europe for that matter.

Your-line-up with the police at the Leeds demonstration is part of the fear-stricken response of your whole political movement to this growth of the revolutionary forces.

You will meet us in every struggle, in every strike and every demonstration, and the more you call the police the more steeled will our members become through their experience of Stalinism in action. And the more your own members in the for the whole of the trade union movement on the Clyde.

The Fairfields experiment was launched as 'socialism'. It is nothing of the sortit by despite the blessing given to Wilson government, the McGarveys and the Communist Party trade union officials on the Clyde.

The shipyard owners are desperately searching for a means to beat their foreign competitors. To do this they must reduce costs and modernise their yards.

Despite closures during the last number of years most of the shipyards on the Clyde are in deep difficulty.

John Browns has failed for the last year to show a profit on the shipbuilding enterprises; Stephens shipyard a million pound loss; Fairfields saved from bankruptcy only by government loans of one million pounds.

Capital amassed

Consortiums are being set up to amass the necessary capital needed to build larger building stocks and dry docks to take the size of ships which can be produced in foreign yards.

To get the shipyard owners out of the red the Fairfield 'experiment' was launched and trade unions, Communist Party members, Labour MPs, left and right, assembled to launch the fake "socialism'.

Shop stewards were sent for braining as work-study experts to a school lent by the Electrical Trades Union at Esher.

Militants who were not inclined to accept were made "redundant'.

Funds made available from the coffers of the trade unions, so that their own members could be exploited more expertly than before!

The apprentices have blown a wide hole in this farce so that the Fairfields model will never be the same again.

Later this week 16 MPs are visiting the yard to inspect the 'new model shipyard' where trade unions jointly capitalism.

they the yard they will walk under the huge board which announces to all and sundry that 'productivity starts here' These MPs must be told to go back to parliament and to fight for the nationalization of Fairfields and the whole shipbuilding industry.

Restore the wage differentials until such time as an apprentice conference has been called at which the whole question of the new Fairfield scheme be reviewed.

Operate elected yard committee.

lling police Communist Party and the Young Communist League will call you to account.

We understand very well what led you to call in the police. We know also that the coming struggles of the working class will give many more opportunities for these lessons to be learned by thousands of workers, young and old.

The Communist movement in Britain will win the leadership of the working class in Britain from the reformists, but this movement will be led by the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League in a fight against those who blacken the name of Communism by . collaborating with the police against us. fore repeat tons we ainst ade against the employing class and against the right-wing Labour leaders. To us, 'left unity' , if it means anything, means a struggle against the enemy class and its agents in the labour movement.

Over your heads, we call upon all members of the Communist Party and Young Communist League to renounce the actions you took on November 5 in Leeds, and to take the road of revolutionary struggle against the class enemy, to return to the traditions of Lenin and Trotsky.

Yours etc.

Jean Kerrigan.

Committee member for Yorkshire).