Who Profits from Bsc's Losses?

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The IST's strike broadsheet Steelworkers Banner, produced to give a "steelworkers reply to BSC"

reveals nearly as much about the treachery. and deception of the steel union leaders as it does about the obvious frauds perpetrated by management.

IST leaders have year after year merely accepted BSC and governmènt figures indicating huge losses on steel production:

and have gone on from accepting these figures to accept thousands"" of redundancies, shop-floor speed-up and succession of plant closures.

Known all along

Yet the inside page of Steelworkers Banner reveals that the union leaders have kiown all along that BSC's figures are completely spurious.

This year's predicted 1300 million loss is examined in general terms in a steelworkers balance sheet" which reveals that:

*£188 million is to be creamed our tnis year in interest •Payments to the banks.

*€135 million is to be spent by BSC this year on using domestically-produced: coking coal-an item of expenditure covered by government subsidies in other EEC countries.

*£81 million has been allocated to building up steel stocks to ride out any industrial action taken against the closure of Corby and Shotton steel works.

*£10 million is earmarked for attracting new jobs to areas where BSC plants have been shut down!

: *£10 million has been paid as a levy to the anti-working class alliance of European steel producers, the ECSC.

*The overtime bill in this supposedly "overmanned" 'industry will be £80 million this year-while BSC proceeds hell-for-leather for mass sackings!

Double book-keeping These items alone add up to staggering £504 million of expenditure which results from UNION DUES LUFLIFE government policy decisions; LUrUy SIEELWOrKS. the double book-keeping which distorts the figures from every nationalised industry in Britain, or from the exploitation of steel workers by the banks and trusts that benefit from the £188 million interest payments.

Profit

In other words the British Steel Corporation actually functions at a profit of over £200 million-the bulk of which finds its way into the pockets of private capitalists!

But the ISTC figures are only a start. There is no investigation, for instance, of the profit margins of the steel industries' suppliers, transport contractors and consumers.

There is no breakdown of who exactly profits from the interest payments.

Nor is there any accounting for the profits and growing scale of operation of the private steelmakers, and the moves being made by the Tories to prepare chunks of BSC for a return to Gotall AT THE TOF rau ana coar jops also at stake the private sector, while others are consigned to the knackers yard.

The ISTC leaders now declare that they want "an enquiry into the blundering corporation management which has lost £1.4 billion in four years?

But, with. six supposed "worker directors" on the BSC Board, and obviously far more extensive_knowledge than they have divulged about the Corporation's finances and operations, the question is why the ISTC, nominally pledged to fight plant closures, 'has not already launched a full workers' inquiry with elected workers committees to open up the books of BSC.

Fraud

Of course the reason is that the right wing ISTC leaders recognise that such a campaign would demonstrate unmistakeably to workers the fraud of repeated government/management claimş. that BSC is not "viable", , the continuing huge NoW HOLD ON LADS-YOUR INSTRUCTIONS FROM HEAD OFFICE WERE QUITE CLEAR:

NO SECONDARY.

profits extracted by the capitalists from "loss-making" industries and the need not only to fight now in defence of every BSC job, but to struggle also for the nationalisation without compensation of the private steel firms, stockholders and contractors, and for the entire industry to be placed under the management of elected workers?

committees.

Such a fight: requires not only the defeat of the Tory government, but the removal of the anti-working class Labour leadership-for whom Bill Sirs is one of the main right wing cheerleaders.

It is up to steelworkers, therefore, to take steps to begin such a struggle in conflict with the ISTC bureaucracy.

It looks like the much postponed outcome of the inquiry by the AUEW Executive into Derek Robinson's sacking has been put off yet again.

As we go to press, the North West Executive member has been quoted as saying the result could be out "in February"

Earlier this month Terry Duffy announced the result would be out on January 22.

With the number of branches condemning the _Executive's handling of the case now numbering over 350 and with Duffy's election coming up this year it is clear the Executive have a problem.

Every AUEW member should be increasing this pressure by getting their branch to demand a recall National Committee to call al-out strike action in defence of Robinson.

Every AUEW branch should be demanding a ballot of the union to remove the entire Executive over its handling of the case.

ISO WHERE'S LEN?. JUST -LIKE HIM-ALLAYS TAKING THE EASY JOBS, HERE WE LEN ARE TAKING ALL THE STICK FROM THE MEMBERS

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