Occupy Gec
Socialist Press1978 1978-03-15Read 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
LIVERPOOL:
SACKINGS' workers at the GEC factory in Fazakerley, Liverpool, are to be thrown on the scrapheap as yet another factory faces closure in the area.
Martin Jay, managing director of English Electric Consumer Products, said all 670 workers on the plant would lose their jobs.
The firm, which makes electric cookers, has just lost an order from the electricity boards for 55,000 cookers, out of a total production of 63,000. Losses in the last three years are said to be £6 million.
The factory is on the same site as a GEC gear factory employing 2,300 workers whose jobs are said to be what the employers call 'safe' Massive changes in working conditions and methods of pay leading to speed-up have been rammed down the * 'AL English Electic workers' throats over the past three years.
These have been sold to the workers as necessary for the preservation of their jobs.
Now the brutal lesson of the cynicism of the employers is being brought home in the most bitter way.
The multi-million pound organisation has picked this factory out for closure despite every effort of the workers' leaders to collaborate.
A company spokesman said:
"Since October there has been a significant improvement in performance and many obstacles to improve productivity have been overcome.
But the market for electric cookers remains very low".
Eddie Roberts, TGWU district organiser responded to the news by attacking the competance of management and declaring that he had NEWES done his bit by with speed up.
Workers at the plant must now see the futility of collaboration.
They must build a leadership ready to fight the closure plans and begin to prepare an occupation of the plant.
The workers should strive to draw in the other 2,300 GEC workers on the site into the occupation.
They must demand that the books, plans and inner secrets of GEC are laid bare to an elected workers' committee and that such a firm which cannot or will not meet the demands of its workers must be nationalised under the management of the workforce without a penny in compensation to the owners.
They must also demand a programme of useful work for the factory with all available work shared out among the workforce without loss of pay.