Lesson of Singers: Collaboration Won't Save Jobs!

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Clydebank factory, with the loss of 3,000 jobs. • The company blames plummeting orders for their machines and "falling productivity" for the closure.

Speed-up

But only 15 months ago, with total collaboration from plant covenor John McFadyean, the company forced through a plan to "save" the plant from closure-at the expense of 2,800 jobs over four years and a drastic increase in productivity.

The subsequent redundancies and short-time working at the plant have served only to prove the folly of such reliance on crisis-ridden capitalism to secure jobs. NOINA Indeed the more that union leaders bow, scrape and grover to the employers, offering to help step up the exploitation of their own members and pledging to assist in raising profitability, the more they pave the way for future attacks.

The company, of course, continues to point to its balance sheets and claim that the Clydebank plant was a loss-maker.

The Singer corporation as a whole in fact made $26 million profits in the first half of 1979.

But for workers at Clydebank the profit or loss by any particular capitalist is of incidental interest: their requirement is secure employment, decent wages and healthy workI shall AT THE conditions.

In a period of world-wide capitalist slump, it is becoming increasingly clear that no private employer can meet these requirements. They seek everywhere to 'rationalise' , to speedup, to hold down wages and close unwanted plants.

McFadyean's brand of class collaboration offers no way forward.

The answer in Singers, as in all threatened plants, must be to occupy, open the books of the firm to elected union committees to show the systematic exploitation of the workforce, and formulate a workers' plan for future production and demand full scale trade union OH CHRIST- HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO SELL 25,000 REDUNDANCIES TO THE MEMBERS ?..

COŁED:

BUT SIR.. WE WERE IN A TIGHT CORNER... (SOB) I COULD EVEN LOSE MY JOB!.. WE HAD TO AT LEAST GO THROUGH THE MOTIONS OF OPPOSITION, BEFORE IWINDING IT UPAT THE CONVENORS' MEETING Singer boss Larry Mihlon support in the struggle to defeat the job-slashing Tory government and force the nationalisation of the plant, without compensation under workers' management.

At UCS such a fight could have been waged against Heath.

Singer workers now have the chance to do SO against Thatcher. The alternative is indefinite unemployment.

.../ KNOW-I'LL JUST SET UP AN "ACTION COMMITTEE".

THAT'S ALWAYS WORKED BEFORE:

REMEMBER SPEKE?!

IT AT THE INVENORS EETING...

RIGHT BROTHERS, THIS IS NO MME FOR MOCK HEROICS....) O.K.- ALL THOSE IN FAVOUR OF ACCEPTING BROTHER EDWARDES' PLAN? —EH?!!

medicine and CONVENORS CONFERENCE of private other omisAfter weathering clashes with the police thugs of the Essex "Force Support Unit" which left two shop stewards hospitalised and 13 workers including two deputy convenors arrested, Vauxhall strikers have called off their effective picket of the Harwich transport depot.

The picketing, by Ellesmere Port workers pursuing a pay claim, had tied up £15 million worth of imported cars and spares.

It was so successful that TGWU National Secretary Grenville Hawley sent a strict instrucLATER.

THESE CONFED KAFFIRS UP occupations and strike action to defeat the cuts. tion for the pickets to be withdrawn, and Vauxhalls obtained a court injunction for the removal of named pickets and equipment from the gates of the depot, But the turing point in the 20 day picket came when Ellesmere Port convenor John Farrell responded to appeals by transport drivers from Silcock and Colling and Dependable Delivery. They claimed that the picketing had caused 20 layoffs and threatened them with the sack.

Now that the pickets have been withdrawn, these same drivers are working overtime to get the delayed scab supplies through to Vauxhall plants and dealers.

/OPERATOR, GET THAT WRETCHED HERE AT ONCE!

DON'T WORRY, SIR MICHAEL, IT WAS MANLY THE C.P. BLOWING OFF STEAM... AFTER ALL, IF IT , TOOK ME A DAY OR TWO TO COME ROUND TO YOUR POINT OF VIEW, IT COULD TAKE THE C.P.

ANYTHING UP TO A WEEK!

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SOCIALIST SOCIALIST

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TO NOW?. DAILY CONFED REJECTS THEY VOTEDL WHAT? OOH WELL