Jobs for Sale at Cav

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I me 10 copies of Socialist Press. I ens For a clear Jobs have been under' threat at the CAV plant in Acton for some time.

Now management have come up with some new tactics in their fight to cut manning levels.

Initially the employers were content to rely on wastage and non-replacement to shed jobs.

Now the workforce are being treated to redundancies and early retirement.

The redundancies passed quietly by with hardiy anyone noticing because they were among part-time women on the evening shift.

Last week, meetings were held across the site to explain the management's offer of voluntary early retirement: a lump sum payment and a pension will depend on the length of service.

Overmanned

The reason put forward for this scheme is that the plant is overmanned as orders have fallen off sharply.

The management at CAV are not, as readers of Socialist Press will realise, unique in using the viability of the firm as the basis for attacks upon the living standards of workers.

The problem at CAV, as elsewhere, is that the union leadership accept the viability arguments of the employers.

As soon as this is accepted the only thing that can flow from them is cuts in jobs and wages.

The present offers of early retirement could rapidly lead on to be voluntary redundancies.

The end of the process may be the complete closure of the plant as at AEC.

The only way to combat the possible closure of the plant is to fight now for the work available to be shared among the existing work force with no loss pay.

The unions must defend every job in the plant-there must be no rundown of the worktorce, and no redundancies.

The management's attempts to buy off individual workers must be resisted by uniting the workers in the plant on a campaign to keep every job in the plant, and replace all those who leave.

Open Lucas books

The workers must also demand the opening of the books, not only of CAV but also of Lucas, the parent company.

Only in this way can they get an idea of the real situation of the company and of their future plans for the plant.

With this information the workers can work out the best way to defend jobs.

Another factory in West London, EMI, has similar problems.

Fifty part-time workers have been made redundant and the management want another 130 redundancies among the 2,500 workforce-again blaming falling sales.

The TGWU convenor John Murray is quoted as saying "We have drawn the line at 50 redundancies until the management are prepared to talk about our 14% wage claim."

This clearly means that the jobs are for sale as long as the management are prepared to make a "reasonable" offer.

This year's wage claim CAV is also 14%.

Although he does it in an incorrect way Murray is correct to link the question of jobs and wages.

The truth is that as long as viability is accepted by convenors like Murray, workers can make no gains on either powerful lead to workers in struggle.

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