Massey cutbacks bring jobs

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tion plans for the Ebbw Vale steelworks will mean redundancy for half the existing workforce unless a determined fight is begun now.

This week saw the start of negotiations on the early closure of the heavy end of the works, in which management are attempting to press NELS Foot Production cutbacks at Massey Ferguson in Coventry have led to attacks on jobs in the companies which supply components for the firms.

Birmid Qualcast at Warley are to sack 390 and 15 staff out of the 600 who work in one of the foundries.

One whole gang has been cut out and the other reduced.

At present the sackings are going through procedure but the fight has been weakened by the acceptance by the Maintanence Department of redundancy and redeployment.

At Sterling Metals, Nuneaton, the Iron Foundry is working a 2-day week and workers there expect redundancies to be announced.

Massey Ferguson itself is expected to make an announcement of future There have been large scale lay-offs over the Easter period and the company stated some weeks ago that full-time working could not be guaranteed past April 1.

The big five producers in Britain, Massey Ferguson, Harvesters, Ford, David Brown and British Leyland (the only British-owned firm)K each export over 75% of tractors produced.

It is the downturn in world sales of tractors in 1977, following a boom in 1976, which has led to the sharp reduction in work available at Massey Ferguson.

The decline in tractor exports from Britain can be seen by looking at the figures 1975-136, 289; 1976-140, 570;1977-126, 077.

All the indications are that sales will further decline this yeatiot only Not only Massey Ferguson is being hit by these developments. The International Harvesters for example, are planning 18% redundancies out of 1700 workers at their factory in Bradford.

In each case the employers aim is to force the effects of the economic crisis of capitalism onto the backs of the working class.

The central demands necessary to begin a fight against sackings at all these plants are for a restricted amount of work available to be shared between the workers in those plants-with no loss of pay.

And alongside this campaign for the opening the company books must fought for.

Inspection of the companies' books would prove the need to save jobs through nationalisation without compensation and under workers management. this situation round.

The last AUEW Shop Stewards quarterly meeting on March 29 passed a resolution from the Anderton International Shop Stewards Committee at Shipley, calling for a policy of a sliging scale of wages to counter productivity deals which lead to redundancies. It also called for a special meeting of Shop Stewards in Bradford to discuss unemployment and redundancies.

This motion was endorsed last Wednesday (April 5) by the District Committee of the AUEW.

The conference should be used as a focus for policies which can counter the closures and sackings.

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