Jobs threatened at

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For months now ularly of fuel injection designed to protect the jobs In Lucas workers at mass meeting in Birmingham the NUJ paper, The Journalist.

Police lashed out at pickets and drove them from the street as a closedcircuit TV system filmed the scene from a nearby police van.

Two lines of police prevented pickets reaching the scab vans which refused to stop for the two or three NUJ members allowed inside the police ranks.

This week representatives of Newspaper Society chapels meet in Birmingham to discuss a call from the Provincial Journalists Industrial Council for one-day strikes in support of Nottingham.

These strikes must be used to build pickets three or four times the size of last Saturday's to shut down distribution of the paper.

• PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report For months now there have been persistent rumours of redundancies and short-time working at the • large CAV plant in West London.

As yet the management have not asked for either redundancies or short-time but. manning levels are already under attack and jobs are being lost.

Lucas CAV is part of the Lucas corporation and is a major supplier of components to the motor industry, particularly of equipment.

As the economic crisis is reflected most sharply in the motor industry so the suppliers also feel the pinch. ..Management have been pointing at their order books claiming that trade is bad and there is barely enough work to keep the plant ticking over.

In the light of this worrying situation the unions have reached an agreement whereby any jobs falling vacant must be filled from inside the plant and no-one is to be recruited from outside..

• This supposed • to designed to protect the jobs of workers already employed by CAV but is actually an agreement to deman parts of the site. The departments with the highest wastage of labour are obviously those where the work is the least desirable, therefore it is practically impossible to get anyone to transfer to them.

Speed-up Even where transfers are effected they often take months, with the jobs standing empty in the meantime.

As sections become under-manned management is doing its best to enforce speed-up, where necessary, to maintain output.

In accepting the management's figures and their arguments about the viability of the firm the convenors and many of the stewards are bound to go along with measures designed to tide the firm 'over until the boat comes in.

Workers on the site must draw the lessons from the closure of the AEC plant just down the road.

Run down

The plant was deliberately run down over a period of years, with the management always asking for small "temporary" concessions in order : avoid to redundancies.

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