Car Strikers

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Vauxhall workers from the Ellesmere Port plant remain solid in sent hundreds of pickets to the firm's Luton plant in a bid bring to out workers their The strike is in opposition to a company offer estimated at 17% in the press and 13% by convenors and loaded down with more strings than a grand piano.

Scab labour

One penalty clause insisted on management's "right" to deploy scab labour to break unofficial sectional strikes, while others included rigid bell-tobell working, increased productivity and. greater flexibility.

In cash terms alone the offer is far short of the Vauxhall claim for a 25% increase linked to a cost-of-living clause and a "shorter?' working week.

And although management are reportedly ready to "reword" the clause on the use of scab labour, Ellesmere Port workers have correctly rejected the entire Leyland Senior Stewards, and are putting the challenges through procedure.

The danger of this is that the initial feeling • created when workers are first told what grade they are in can be lost in weeks or months of procedural wrangles.

The scale of this initial hostility can be seen from the wave of stoppages throughout Longbridge when the grading sheets were first issued.

Similarly in the Cowley Assembly Plant many stoppages have taken place and last week the night shift forklift truck drivers went out for a night.

The most important decision came when the bundle as unacceptable.

Meanwhile national union officials have been called in on the dispute as it begins to affect car production at Vauxhall's Luton and Dunstable plants.

AS WE GO to press a mass meeting of Talbot workers at the Ryton assembly plant have voted overwhelmingly to defy the Peugeot-Citroen threat to close down the factory and are continuing their 11week strike against a 52% pay offer.

The leadership in Stoke has declared its support for this principled stand.

Ryton's AUEW convenor declared in a BBC interview that he now thought the plant would close, but that such threats meant that workers had to 'stand up and be counted:

This is true: but at the same time any attempt by management to close the Ryton factory must be met by a policy of immediate occupation backed up by an appeal for support throughout the motor industry and full scale union blacking of all Peugeot-Citroen vehicles at the docks.

Cowley Body Plant production workers stewards voted overwhelmingly not to go through procedure but to go to an immediate mass meeting as soon as the new grading sheets are issued, and to recommend to that meeting a vote for indefinite strike action.

Feeling

The company knows the strength of feeling on this issue in the Body Plant.

Although they were amongst the first to earn the 'parity' payments they are amongst the last to be issued with the controversial grading sheets. strike action in pursuit of a pay claim for members of the CPSA and SCPS.

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their strike action on wages, and last week