Jaguar Job Fears
Socialist Press1976 1976-07-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 10
A big question mark hangs over the jobs of Coventry's Jaguar workers following the decision by British Leyland to build their proposed new paintshop at Castle Bromwich, Birmingham rather than Brown's Lane, Coventry, the main Jaguar plant.
In a letter to Jaguar workers on July 15th management promised affected would berkes directly and that the future of Jaguar in Coventry is assured.
Workers at Brown's Lane, however, are sceptical about the assurances and stewards have mounted a 24-hour watch on steel stocks bought for the construction of the paintshop.
Similar action is being taken at the Kingstield Road Service Centre which is to close, work being transferred to a new Service Centre proposed for a site near the National Exhibition Centre Birmingham. the Triumph plant at Canley, Coventry, to Solihull.
The question Jaguar workers must ask is: is car production to be transferred from Brown's Lane as well?
Stewards have so far called in Coventry's four Labour MPs who have been assured by Derek Whittaker, managing director of Leyland cars, that the future of Jaguar in Coventry is assured.
But even Geoffrey Robinson, MP for Coventry North-West and a former Jaguar manager said after the meeting that he was far from happy about the assurances. (It was Robinson who arranged for the construction of the new paintshop in 1974.) All the MPs said they were still worried.
The stewards have a right to fear rationalisation and redundancies.
It is not enough, however, to call in the MPs. There must be immediate demand for the opening of Leyland's books - workers have a right to know what plans are being made.
the local Labour MPs are At a mass meeting last Monday, July 19th, Coventry's bus crews voted to call off their lightening one-day strikes. A management/ union working party has been set up to discuss the claim by the busmen for a reduction in the lunch hour. The crews will meet again after about a fortnight.
Proposed night-staff cuts in Coventry's 13 old peoples homes will mean that each home would be left in the care of one person during the night.
The fifty workers at the homes, members of the T&GWU and NUPE have thrastanad atritra antino mmlace
----- pull-quotes -----
serious about defending jobs they Bus s kes Suspended
Strike threat Strike adainst cuts gains