[Tony Cashman, a young car worker at Vauxhalls…]

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Tony Cashman, a young car worker at Vauxhalls, Ellesmere Port, starts off with an argument aganist higher wages for skilled workers.

LPYS ANNUAL CONFERENCE, 1982.

Bridlington, 9th, 10th & 11th April.

All Class Fighter supporters should attend.

Apart from the debates in the conference there are many fringe meetings to attend. You should try to get sponsored by your union as a visitor to the confernce. All you have to do is ask! AccomThere will be Class Fighter meetings at conference on Turkey, Racism and Fascism and a NLWYM Rally. We will also be helping to organise a Women's Fightback meeting and a meeting of the Labour Committee on Ireland to which Ken Livingstone has been invited to speak.

So, get cracking and organise your transport Thinking of summer holidays? Well, don't forget the YS Summer Camp 1st-7th August in the sunny Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. Start fund raising for it now. Write to LPYS, 150 Walworth Rd, London SE 17 for details.

Given the fact that every worker in society has to rely on other workers, whether white or biue collar, in manufacturing or service industry, why should so-called skilled workers get more money or better conditions?

Answer: they can do work you cannot do, because they have served an apprenticeship or done some kind of lengthy training.

Carry on Carry on through the question and ask him/her what difference it makes when s/he needs other workers, and cannot do without them to live or to do his/her job.

Then addthe fact that millions could learn to do their job, with proper training and opportunity. Then you get closer to the real reason: for time spent as an apprentice or as a trainee on low money and had conditions.

For this reason, we in Class Fighter must fight to organise apprentices and trainees in the work place and in the unions where they are treated slaves who have no rights, not even the right to vote or strike.

Most are used as cheap labour, doing • routine work like making tea, sweeping up and only learning what is best and most profitable for the company.

Because of the crisis in capitalism over the last few decades and the obvious effects of new technology and automation. the demand for training and skilled workers has dropped dramatically with lots of firms now not training youth at all.

While this and future developments will obviously do away with the massive divides between skilled and unskilled, there is still a need to organise the relatively smaller numbers of apprentices and trainees around the following demands: *Shorter apprenticeships with no age bar to entry. (As most apprentices learn the trade in the first year or so.). *Trade unions should supervise them and trade union cards should be used as proof of skills. *No apprentice should be eniployed in routin production work or tea-making or sweeping up.

Capitalist

*Full trade union rates of pay from the start for all workers. *Full trade union rights; the right to strike and org anise. *The right for everyone to study both job-related courses and the extension of, general education in the firm's time. *Sexual equality in pay and employment.

Inequality in pay, like any other inequality, whether in sex or in race only serve to divide the workers by making them fight each other rather than fighting the real problem of the capitalist susiem