London Hospitals Open Books

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Health Service shop stewards in Paddington and North Kensington are preparing to defend St. Mary's hospital in Harrow Road which is threatened with an irreversible sentence of death by slow strangulation. local community are to be sacrificed.

In the context of overall cuts in health services, clearly all such plans for new facilities at the expense of old must be Viewed with the utmost suspicion by the working class.

The AHA document carefully selects its evidence to the profits made by upply industries like food and dr J9S.

Not a single health : ervice job must be bargained away. The fight has to be taken up to and to protect the health service budget against inflation by a sliding scale of expenditure.

The management intends to close its consultations by the end of September. These demands have to be taken immediately into the trade unions, the trades councils and local tenants associations. There is no time to lose.

Senior stewards from Chrysler UK plants met Coventry last Friday.

They passed a resolution condemning the Chrysler Corporation for not informing the workers or consulting the government about the PeugeotCitroen takeover.

The resolution went on to demand "meaningful guarantees" on future job security and full consultation at each stage of the takeover.

Information .

Earlier in the week Moss Evans, General Secretary of the TGWU who had led the union delegation to see Industry Secretary Eric Varley said the unions were embarking on a programme to obtain the maximum possible information on the effects of the takeover and research officers from all the nine unions at Chrysler UK have begun drawing up an assessment of its likely effects.

At no stage, however, has any union leader demanded full access to Chrysler's books nor have they demanded the same of Peugeot-Citroen.

A brief statement to employees by Chrysler UK management leaves the future of Chrysler jobs wide open.

For example, "PSA PeugeotCitroen have expressed their intention to assume in a form appropriate to the new circumstances, all the obligations of the agreement between -Her Majesty's Government and Chrysler Corporation" emphasis).

"In order to ensure continuity of operations and a smooth transition PSA have indicated there will be no major changes to management organisation during the transition period and have further stated that it is their intention to preserve as far as possible the organisation structures within Chrysler UK" (Our emphasis).

These extracts speak for themselves. They are designed to smooth the transition period.

The Chrysler senior stewards' statement also calls for the implementation of the June planning agreement outlining expansion of production.

Some Chrysler workers feel they would be better off with the opportunities opened up by the Peugeot-Citroen deal.

But all they face is the deepening of competition between the car giants leading inevitably to speed-up and sackings.

The way forward is the fight for the nationalisation of the whole motor industry without compensation and under workers management as part of a socialist planned economynot the division of car workers into profit fodder for different car firms.

The immediate fight is for information. Militants in Chrysler should put forward the demand for the election of Open the Books Committee s in all the Chrysier plants.