'Don't think for a moment that this will be a short, sharp dispute. It could be a long drawn out one and it could get vicious at the end.' These were the words of warning with which Bob Morris, Trans port and General Workers Union convenor at the Chrysler engine plant in Stoke, Coventry, greeted WEEKLY Chrysler have tried to con the workers into going back on the basis of phoney proposals for worker participation. But along with this carrot goes a stick. With a deficit of £18 million on its UK account last year, and a strike which will close all its British operations, Chrysler is now threatening total closure of its UK subsidiary.
tiny reactionary band of housewives around Mrs. Sheila Willis who are campaigning for a return to work Mrs. Willis has a historic view of the extra holiday, and equal pay for women workers from 1 July. a mass meeting of 3,000 striking carworkers last Thursday. The carworkers voted overwhelmingly to continue their stoppage in support of a claim for f8 and negotiations towards £15, two weeks the sales figures, but details of all Chrysler's accounts and investment programmes-they could work out for themselves where the money was going to come from. And if Chrysler is broke such investigations would l the basis for a workers' plan to natio alise without compensation and under workers control the whole of Chrysler UK-the first step to the nationalisation of the whole of the car industry, to defend wages, jobs and conditions.
The choice is not a living wage or unemployment. The choice is a living wage and expropriation. Four thousand striking workers at Massey Ferguson's Coventry tractor plan seeking a substantial pay increase have rejected a new company offer worth about £5 a week to most workers. Some have noi moved into occupation of the administration block and locked out staff and management.
The management have tried to move operations into local hotels but at a mass meeting in the occupied plant on 14 May the strike leadership called for flying pickets to go to the hotels and stop staff and management from working. The struggle continues…....
shift production to Spain several years ago, as the factory they own in barcelona - moustas eloq-nas onl been opened in the last 2-3 years on a nev industrial estate. While they are tooling u this plant for the Bobcat' components they are gradually running down produc don t une birmingham plants.
Before this information became know the convenors had not led any resistance to voluntary redundancies (700 so far accepted) and short time working. But now that the threat of the eventual closur of the plant has become a reality, the first steps to launch a fight are being taken.
i an moustry commated by long traditions of sectoral wage struggles, it is a important step forward for the stewards to begin to take up their fight not only in the local labour movement through a resolution to Birmingham Trades Council but also by attempting to build international workers' links to combat ine multinationals.
John Graham (Wilmot Breeden-ALIE
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Bosses locked out !!