Bosses' War in Manning Levels

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After two years of vicious wage controls and with a 10% limit on rises still in force, workers now face an added threat. Callaghan's Lib-Lab coalition government, responding to the instructions of bankers and industrialists, is supervising throughout the whote of British industry.

Their objective is to significantly increase the rate of profit of private enterprise, and to slash the sector in order to minimise the social services and the drain on these profits.

Sir Keith Joseph The effect of each of these moves in the current period of economic stagnation is to throw additional thousands of workers and youth onto post-war record dole queues.

Clearest political spokesman for this latest war on jobs is leading Tory Sir Keith Joseph, who spelled out clearly the feelings of major employers in his speech at the Tory Party Conference:

"Oil will not save us, because by overmanning we are blunting our competitiveness faster than oil will make good" , he said.

The 'prime reason' for Britain's economic crisis is "overmanning and restrictive labour practices" claimed Joseph, who went on to call for "not redundancies" but a "constructive use of wastage" to cut manning levels and unobtrusinroler While Joseph was spelling out this plank of Tory policy, British Leyland management under the watchful eye of the National Enterprise Board and Industry Secretary Eric Varley, were already pressing vigorously ahead with their plans to implement massive speed-up on production tracks.

DISPUTES

Throughout the company, sections of workers have been involved in disputes over new manning levels forced in by management with the complete collaboration of union officials and convenors.

Leyland Cars Managing Director, Derek Whittaker, announced the company's determination to proceed with these measures in a speech on the eve of the Earls Court Motorfair:

"Our problem is not just strikes; strikes are only part of Leyland Cars" disease and only part of the British disease.

*We also suffer as does a very large part of British manufacturing industry from poor utilisation of equipment, from over-manning, and therefore from low productivity..• "Many of the difficulties we have had during the last 2½ years and also recently in a number of our plants, were and are on this issue of productivity.

"We could have avoided them or ended them, by simply allowing an unsatisfactory state of affairs to continue-we have not, and will not, deviate on this key management criteria."

Leyland are ramming home productivity relying entirely on the ability of union officials and convenors to control the hostility of shop floor workers.

CONFRONTATIONS

These moves by Leyland follow on tough confrontations on Fleet Street which brought major attacks on working conditions at the Financial Times and Daily Express.

No the Express management has announced fresh plans to slash the number of journalists from 600 to 500 and extend the working week from 40 to 45 hours, along with a cut in earnings.

But in some other sections of industry different tactics are being adopted to force in manning cuts.

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