WEEKLY surprise to anyone.
ernment announced £25 million as assistance for Herbert, it called for the firm to draw up proposals for returning the firm to profitability.
wer to the Government's request.
Instead of complaining now about being surprised, the local trade union bureaucracy should have started campaigning then for the opening of the company's books, in order to be able to monitor and resist any attempts to cut the workOn top of force.
Coventry is now a jobs disaster area. Latest jobless figures show over 17,000 unemployed compared with just over 8,000 a year ago. At 7.1 per cent, Coventry has the highest unemployment rate in the Midlands.
This year a wave of redundancies from British Leyland and many motor component factories has swelled the dole queues. The Government-sponsored Ryder Report on British Leyland has acted as a cover for massive redundancies and speed-up. In recent weeks new redundancies have been threatened:
GEC, the biggest private employer in Coventry, wants to axe over a thous and jobs, completely closing one of their AT ThaT Coventry tele-communications factories, after Government inspired cancellation of GPO contracts. - in me machine tools sector, along side the redundancies at Alfred Herbert, Wickman's has threatened a number of white-collar staff cuts.
The same thing is happening in the public sector, where Wilson's policies are forcing massive cuts in jobs and services. With unemployment already at 1½ times the national average, opposition to unemployment is mounting. Local authority manual workers have organised stoppages and led militant demonstrations to the Council House. A mass meeting of these workers in the summer adopted a policy of opposition to all cuts and redundancies and for a sliding scale of wages to defend living standards against inflation.
In the face of similar pressure from the factories, even the right-wing leader ship of the local Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions is beginning to discuss a policy to resist unemployment in the area. What is urgently required is a co-ordinated campaign by the local labour movement to develop a conmon jobs policy against unemployment which can be fought for by all sections of the working class in the area. Some of the Herbert workers facing the sack - pictured at a mass meeting last Friday Earlier this year, when the GovThe redundancies are the firm's ansNine hundred of the redundancies tool industry;
set up at once.
tain production "This has come as a complete surprise', bleated Mr Frank Chater, divisional organiser of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, after the announcement last week of 1,200 redundancies at Alfred Herbert, the Coventry machine-tool company. But the Herbert redundancies, half of which will come from the Edgewick and Red Lane factories in Coventry, should have come as no are going to come from 'indirect workers and staff, and it is the staff side that has made the first response.
Last Saturday a meeting called by the Association of Scientific. Technical and Managerial Staffs at Alfred Herbert's was attended by repres entatives from white-collar unions from most of the company's sites.
Faced with the urgent task of preparing a policy to defend jobs and conditions, members of the International Marxist Group advanced the following proposals at the meeting to fight the redundancies: 1 To seek the support of all unions within the company and the Coventry area; as a first step towards this, to lobby the 14 October meeting of the local Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions which is formulating its policy on unemployment; 2 Any attempt to cut jobs to be met by immediate occupation mittee with nine representatives from three union sites.
This committee has been instruc ted to approach the shop floor unions and call a mass meeting of all Herbert workers, and distribute a leaflet at the herbert factories supporting the 14 October lobby of the CSEU. It will also be drawing up proposals for a common levy on the membership to build funds for the struggle.
Of great importance in the Herbert's struggle is the demand that local left MPs like Audrey Wise give full support to the workers struggles. In this way a fight can be launched against the unemployment policies of the Labour Government which deliberately called for the redundancies at Herbert's in the tirst place.
Lobby