Occupy Speke Defend All Jobs

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A 25 iparham, IFL Pickets at the Speke plant COMMITEE PIVET INF A mere three weeks after British Leyland chairman Michael Edwardes drew a standing ovation from convenors for his plans for speed up, rationalisation and the elimination of 12,500 jobs, the casualties are beginning to mount up.

3,000 jobs are to be axed in the closure of the Triumph plant at Speke in Merseyside the Dolomite.

And already Leyland convenors and union bureaucrats under a cover of left' rhetoric are laying the groundwork for a betrayal of the Speke workforce, who have already shown by their 16 week strike against speedup that they are willing to fight the employer.

The convenors know that throughout the Corporation managment are moving to impose speed-up, throwing up hundreds and thousands of jobs. By supporting the Edwardes plan they have committed themselves to supporting this strategy.

At Longbridge cutbacks in the Mini and in the paintshops and at Cowley cutbacks in the Princess are typical of this, with the company using the changes to implement speed-up as well as throwing up labour.

Convenors dedicated to collaboration in such schemes cannot afford to have this challenged by determined resistance at Speke, And are to fulfil their tasks as spokesmen of Leyland's "participation' committees, enforcing mangement policy on the shop floor they must seem to oppose wholesale redundancies.

This is why the supreme 'participation' body-the Cars Council-was the first on the scene, claiming to oppose the closure, alleging that there had been a "fundamental change of philosophy" since Edwardes took over.

But union officials were getting down to the serious business of bartering a price for the jobs to be destroyedhoping to force home acceptance of "voluntary" redundancy at a mass meeting.

Payments

Leyland let it be known they wanted to cooperate in this-and announced that redundancy payments would be well above the legal minimum.

TGWU organiser Richard Palmer replied to Leyland's figures describing the offer as "meagre":

"Men I have talked to were thinking of £2,000 as a bottom-end figure and it is not going to be conducive to an easy transfer."

In other words union officials are starting not from the defence of all jobs at Speke, but from obtaining the right buy-off to defuse a The danger is that, with union officials intending to recommend a return to work at the mass meeting of Speke stewards failure do givehe clear rejection of voluntary redundancy will open the door to acceptance of Leyland's buy off payments.

It is in anticipation of such development that the Leyland Combine shop stewards executive has issued its call to all plants to give "maximum support" "in the event of the membership in

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