Talbot strikers face closure threat

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CONFERENCE ior mass action against Tory anti-union lav *Strikes and occupations against the cuts!

Saturday November 3, 10.30am-5pm to all trade unionists and delegations Godfrey Webster, 99, Barclay Rd, Warley, me trial sub/six months/one year director George Turnbull last week announced the company's intention to close the Ryton plant in Coventry if the tenweek pay strike is not settled quickly.

Throughout the strike management has stuck doggedly to its original offer of 52% in response to a pay claim of over four times that amount.

It is clear that Talbot's parent company Peugeot/ Citroen is determined to increase significantly the amount of profit it can squeeze out of workers or chop jobs on a grand scale.

Incentive scheme

Throughout the negotiations management has insisted that extra money will only be available through an incentive scheme.

The benefits in regular hard cash from such a scheme have been so dubious that the union negotiators have so far refused to settle on management's terms.

Many meetings at both Ryton and Stoke have regularly voted overwhelmingly to continue the strikes despite sustained campaign by management and the local press to push the carrot of incentive payments.

Rumours

In the background there have been constant rumours that Ryton at least would 19.20 be closed if a settlement was not reached.

As we go to press a mass meeting of the Ryton plant is being held to report on the abortive negotiations over the last week and to discuss the closure threat.

It is not clear what the convenors will be proposing at this meeting. They should refuse to be coerced by the latest management threat and turn instead towards a deepening of the dispute.

As reported in last week's Socialist Press the Stoke strike committee has waged an active campaign of gaining support from other trade unionists.

This has included successful moves to stop supplies of spare parts coming in from Dublin.

The Ryton strikers should take a lead from Stoke and throw themselves for *Prepare to force out the Tories! labour movement bodies Credentials (£1) and details from; Citroen cars coming in from the continent.

At the same time links must be forged with other groups of workers coming into struggle.

All out strike At Rolls Royce's Parkside plant a mass meeting of workers there voted to respond to the company's intention to lay-off its whole national workforce by calling for an all-out strike on the confed's engineering pay claim. A unified front of all these forces must be forged in a determined effort to fight the employers.

If Talbot decide to close Ryton then there must be a fight throughout the motor industry for the nationalisation without compensation of the whole of Talbot UK.

Democracy in the Movement NATIONAL CONFERENCE West Midlands RATES:

Trial sub (UK):

10 issues, only Six months One year..

Europe:

Six months Rest of the Six months Two unions that were led into acceptance of relatively low pay increases in last winter's pay round last week

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