Spain or a Worker

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Innocenti factory near Milan have been told that the factory will be closed permanently if they refuse to accept an immediate 33% redundancy. In response to this the Italian Metal Workers' Union is calling its 300,000 members in the Milan area out on a one day token strike. This action is hampered only by the leadership's concentration on the diversion of blaming closures on "foreign" companies, rather than the capitalist class as a whole.

LOCKED OUT

In Britain too the battle lines are clearly drawn. At the Common Lane plant workers were locked out by management until they were prepared to accept substantial speed-up. Leyland want over 1,000 redundancies at Longbridge and are proceeding with the reorganisation of production. At AEC, Southall, shop stewards estimate that management require 600-700 redundancies and led a march through Southall in opposition to these cuts. The same stewards lost the vote at a mass meetin‹ in which they proposed a sit-in strike, mainly because they failed to provide a fighting perspective starting with 'open the books' of AEC.

In the Body and Assembly Plants at Cowley management are changin production schedules and imposing speed-up, dropping all pretence of retaining "mutuality" agreements. On the Princess assembly line, following a national press witchhunt on "shoddy work" , management have begun taking systematic disciplinary action against workers. And while the company went on the rampage against working conditions and mutuality, the plant convenors were in Coventry discuss ing "workers' participation"

DISCUSSIONS

At the same time, national ottic-: ials of the main unions were meeting management at the Motor Show (no doubt over a sumptuous meal) to discuss "progress" towards "improving efficiency" in Cowley. In other words they were reviewing management's success in implement ing speed up and discussing how to tackle resistance from shop steward and shop floor workers.

What is emerging, as details of meetings held behind closed doors filter through, is a concerted effort atlevery level of the trade union bureaucracy - from National Officials through Regional and District Officials down to convenors - to drive up the exploitation of their own members.

They are acting on behalf of the Labour government. Their politics dictate that they put the requirements of capitalism in crisis and the interests of the employers in front of the defence of jobs and working conditions of the working class.

The depth of the betrayal of these bureaucrats and the extent to which they are carrying out management policy emerged in a speech made las week by Bob Wright, the so-called 'left' AUEW Executive member supported by the Communist Party.

Speaking in Oxford, Wright called for a 25% increase in productivity in Leyland in the next six months, and went on to give all the employers arguments, in support of the Ryder Report - stating (along with Margaret Thatcher) that Leyland was the 'least efficient car manufacturer in the world' • And he went on to use the same witch-hunting slanders as the extreme right wing against those who oppo: the Ryder speed-up, saying: "there are people who think the closure of the plant will bring about revolution"

MUTUALITY

Not at any point in Wright's speec did a vestige of trade union principle emerge. He covered up the wholesale breaking of agreements by management with the statement "we will not allow unreasonable effort" - leaving aside mutuality and who is going to decide what is reasonable.

But the problem faced by union bureaucrats and employers alike is that the working class internationally is strong. Any move to close th Innocenti plant is almost certain to lead to occupation. In the Cowley Body Plant management has been forced back temporarily from speed-up because of the strength of the workforce. And in the Assembly Plant, following the recent struggles to force the company to open the books, resistance to the management offensive is emerging strongly.

Last Thursday in opposition to new discipline procedures agreed ors, 600 workers on the Princess track struck, immobilised the adof the cars, deployed pickets on and forced Leyland to close the North works. This resulted from a punishment of two nights' suspension without pay inflicted on a worker accused of failing to fit three tiny rubber grommets.

The same workers, connecting this victimisation to the collaboration of the convenors, marched on the management block and dragger out the right wing to answer questions in front of a mass meeting. right, 'left' spokesman for employe But Leyland, driven by the crisis, are determined to implement their plans - starting this week, department by department. On Friday they will again meet the national officials to review "progress" There is no doubt this will be resisted. At the centre of the struggle again is the stewards' demand to open the books. The management base their whole "shoddy work" press witch-hunt (claiming that only 40% of cars coming off the Princess track are in a saleable condition) on the fact that they The Motor Show: scene of class collaboration Every workers knows that a 'major factor in the poor quality of components and shortages worsenin turnüs caused predominantly by the drive for profit in the component firms resulting in speed-up, use of inferior raw materials, inadequate testing and other factors which can only be revealed by opening the books.

INFORMATION

All such information is in Leyland's files. The demand must be to open the books - not just of the assembly plants, but also of the component industry - to reveal the workings of the industry and prepare the case for workers' control and the nationalisation of the entire automotive industry under workers' management. Such enquiries must also raise the question of the banks - who levy huge interest payments on loans to the car industry - and the opening of their secret transactions to elected trade union committees, preparatory to Fighting on such a perspective it is possible to force a halt to the attacks and direct an all-out fight to flefend jobs threatened throughout British Leyland. The question is who - now union officials and convenors throughout the country are pledged to speed-up - will fight to defend Leyland workers?

RYDER

Certainly not the Stalinist-led Combine Shop Stewards' Committee who are up to their eyeballs in Ryder and speed-up. Bob Wright made it clear at the Oxford meeting when challenged that participation was being forced in over the heads of the stewards, that there has been continuous discussion with the leadership of the Combine Committee.

With by far the biggest single Continued on back page col 4 Franco's death is, as we go to press, a virtual certainty. As the old Fascist murderer: gasps his dying breath an intense bustle of activity moun at the palace home of Prince Juan Carlos, Franco's desig nated successor.

Carlos' immediate power base is the army which - despite the diss ident movement among junior officers (evidenced by the recent arrests of officers on sedition charges) remains firmly on the right.

The civilian politicians chosen by Carlos will likewise be from 'FEDISA' the organisation callin itself the "Civilised Right".. This numbers among its members the present Spanish Ambassador to London, Fraga Irribane, who is likely to be chosen by Carlos as Prime Minister. According to press reports the new governmen under Irribane is likely to take "certain steps' in the direction of "liberalisation' These will include a parliament based on universal suffrage, recognition of the UN Declaration of Human Rights and a political amnesty to critics of the regime - excluding those who have engaged in armed struggle against it OVERTHROW The secretary of the Socialist Party (PSOE) Leopoldo Torres talks about the necessity for "a complete break with Franco and a new democratic start". This is impossible without the complete overthrow of the ruling class that has consistently supported France The Fascist state apparatus is strong and well-organised.

The fact that as Franco neared death the Fascists were permitted to step up the campaign against dissident army officers, carry through the murder of Basque liberation fighters, and make further arrests as recently as last week, shows clearly that the "democratic" wing of the ruling class is not strong enough to con template the dismantling of tbe Continued on back page

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Plans to save New York City from financial collapse have been presented to the American Congress - plans which if enacted will mean massive increases in unemployment and slashing of social services and education, accompanied by the stripping of virtually all power from the City's elected officials.

President Ford and the big business bosses who have held New York to ransom are using New York City's money crisis to carry out a major attack on working class living standards and free collective bargaining, an attack which will no doubt become the basis for similar ones in the other large American cities.

UNEMPLOYED

New York Çity is the most extreme example of big city crisis for several reasons. It is a magnet for poor immigrants and up-rooted rural people; it has a particularly large number of unemployed and dependent citizens and tax-exempt institutions; and it has huge numbers of commuters from neighbouring states who do not carry a full tax load.

Years of corrupt and reformist city governments, backed by corrupt and reformist trade union leaders have succeeded in building up a tower of debts on a base of perpetual poverty, and exploitation, maintained by social welfare programmes. One New Yorker out of eight is on Welfare, 25% of which is paid for out of city revenues.

In fact, half of N.Y. City's current budget is spent on welfare, charity and education. But not for much longer. The plan to "save New York" will attack most savagely the areas of social services, education and public health.

Unemployment is envisaged as a major solution - the city's staff has recently been cut by 32,000, including 7,000 teachers and other school employees, and a further 9,000 redundancies are planned this year, (where possible through the back door of early retirement and "natural wastage"). Thus services are cut and work loads increased for those who remain employed. All municipal wages will be frozen for a period of 3 years, as will city spending on medical care and social welfare.

And where do the trade union leaders stand? Perhaps the greatest betrayal has been that of Albert Shanker (Teachers' Union) who gave in to pressures to "save the city" and advanced 150 million dollars of teachers' retirement funds to stave off the city's collapse Shanker mortgaged the teachers' pensions despite his own admission that the measures proposed "are extremely destructive to our school system and to ollective bargaining." The role of the trade union leaders in repressing militant action of their rank and file was clearly illustrated both by the sell-out of the New York teachers strike against the cuts, and by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union's leader Victor Gotbaum, who responded to the threat of further redundancies by apologising that he "might not be able to hold back his troops" Gotbaum's union alone, if mobilised in action, could virtually paralyse New York City.

What the plan sent to Congress does do is to protect the private investors holding City bonds and notes, such as Jacqueline Onassis, whose investments in New York City bonds realise a third of her 341,000 dollar annual income.

MANAGEMENT To quote Mr. Felix Rohatyn, Wall St. banker and Chairman of "Big Mac" , (Municipal Assistance Corp. - set up to manage New York's finances), «The control mechanism is in place and the beginnings of sound management practices have been initiated.

New York City needs a revolutionary not a reformist programme. City employees must, through their trade unions and other organisations, demand that the books of the city be opened to elected bodies and that, in the Bureaucrats with no programme -meantime, the Federal Government guarantees full backing for the City's current budget, and a stop to redundancies and cut backs.

GENERAL To achieve this demand, real preparations for a General Strike must begin now, and the bluffs must be called of the pro-capitalist trade union leaders who threaten a Gèneral Strike as a mere rhetorical gesture.

But of course there is also a political aspect to the squeeze on New York. The extreme right-wing Republicans in the finance houses are all-out to discredit Democrat Mayor Beame - linking the Democrats firmly to their own policies of all-out offensive on jobs and wages. This comes at the same time as candidates for the 1976 Presidential elections begin …to declare themselves, and the Democratic and Republican parties - pushed ever closer together in the economic crisis by their common role as bourgeois parties committed to the capitalist system - search for policies which will help the public to distinguish between them.

There are extreme right-wingers in each party (Reagan for the Republicans and Wallace for the Democrats) and no less than nine candidates for the Democratic nomination announced to date.

And while accident and assassination-prone President Ford goes "pressing flesh" from California to Connecticut - with Ted Kennedy still an opinion polls favourite despite his unsavoury past - and even ex-President Nixon preparing to re-establish himself as a public presence (taking the role of a former, not a deposed President), American party politics reaches a new level of decadence.

The need has never been greater for an American Labour Party to represent the interests of the working class, and such a party must be fought for to provide an alternative in the coming elections.

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The 4,500 workers at Leyland's w.le islamie. . a " res

INTERINA _SA