Fight bosses closure threats

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In the Garners strike, strike, intense preparations have s have continued throughout this ut this week for the March 24 Day of Action.

This event must mark a ONSINKI Ten months ago-first Garners Day PHOTO: PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Wiard, of Actie The now routine management manoeuvre of threatening to shut down plants unless union bureaucrats force through drastic speedup and "voluntary" or compulsory redundancies continues to take a heavy toll of jobs in Last week saw a oneyear "reprieve" granted by Metal Box management to its Portsmouth plastic film factory-after trade únion collaborators had drawn up their own plan for 70 redundancies from the present 560 workforce, cuts in manning levels, and "certain industrial relations assurances" docks.

Union officials boasted that this plan, by saving an estimated £450,000 on the wages bill, would ensure the ›aurence Sparham IFL Duffy This week the Day of, Action was discussed on Liverpool Trades Council and a donation of £130 came straight to the strikers from the Liverpool In London the Hammer. "viability" of the plant.

How it would assist the viability of the 70 union members to be removed from the plan, or the state of health of the 490 remaining is not explained.

But as a further side effect of the deal a similar union report is to be drawn up on Metal Box's plastic film factory in Speke on Merseyside-where Portsmouth production was originally to be transferred.

There is little doubt therefore that the 70 jobs given away in Portsmouth are only the first of a whole spate of redundancies in this sector as local union bureaucrats compete with each other to minimise the wages and conditions of their members.

Meanwhile at GEC's Trafford Park factory 700 workers were last week threatened with closure if they did not lift their ban on overtime and on subcontracting.

And Courtauld's Spennymoor plant .in County Durham management have threatened close down, sacking all 1,570 union ejectioes ponse 30% unlu rejection redundancies.

Duffy praised

measure of union leaders' collaboration could be seen last week when the Institute of Works Managers praised AUEW leader Terry Duffy's attitude to industrial relations.

The Institute called for a change in workers' attitude to redundancy. Rather than the prospect of unemployment, it should be seen as "an opportunity for training for a more rewarding occupation."

The kind of "occupation" that is needed to fight the present wave of sackings rationalisation and closure, however, is workers' occupation of threatened factories, backed by supporting strikes.

Rather than opening text books in phoney government "retraining" schemes while on the dole, workers must fight to open the books of profit-hungry employers who seek to force workers to shoulder the entire cost of their economic crisis.

The fight must be for the defence of all jobs; work-sharing without loss of pay; and the nationalisation without compensation of those employers that seek to foist their problems onto the workforce.

Such policies demand that Duffy and other friends of management within the union bureaucracy are driven from office, and a revolutionary leadership built in the workers' movement.