Speeding the job cuts

Scan page 7

ACCORDING to the Daily Telegraph (August 30), British Steel's job-cuts programme is running SIX months ahead of schedule.

20,000 jobs have been cut since the strike, though British Steel's schedule gave until March 1982 to get rid of them.

So much for the steel unions' line of fighting for pay first and then for jobs afterwards. Steelworkers knew that if they could not save their jobs while mobilised and powerful, during the strike, they had no chance after the return to work.

IT LOOKS like Scotland Yard may back down on its sacking of police surgeon Arnold Mendoza.

The Sunday Times reported that it had "established that his [Mendoza's] appearance as an expert witness for the defence in two Old Bailey cases ... led to the yard decision."

Mendoza is London secretary of the Police Surgeons' Association, and the Association's presidentelect commented, "We have to be unbiased ... We must be able to give evidence for the defence without fear of repercussions."

Frederick Shepherd, sacked at the same time as Mendoza is apparently not contesting the dismissal. "1 can't do much about it" , he said, "because it is true that I am over age."

Over-65 police surgeons are nonetheless usually kept on and according to the press Shepherd's sacking is related to his complaints, after the killing of Blair Peach in April 1979, that police doctors were not given an opportunity to examine people with head injuries before they were marched off to other stations.

WAGE RISES below the rate of inflation are now pretty standard. But the bosses are not satisfied. Now there are moves for money wage cuts.

First the Financial Times told its workers that unless they would agree to 7% job cuts - it wanted a 7% reduction in wages. Then last week Pan Am proposed 10% pay cuts. to all its workers, world-wide.

A Pan Am spokesperson told the Guardian that workers in India and Italy had already. agreed to the cut, "and American employees were on the point of ratifying their agreement"

British Pan Am unions responded by opposing the 10% cut - and suggesting an 8.3% cut instead. They have proposed that workers give up their annual bonus.

FT unions are just "discussing" the seven per cent cuts there. And in another airline, British Caledonian, the unions have supported wage CHIs.

Voluntarily

This May, British Caledonian sent out letters to its 6,000 workers asking them voluntarily to give up two 4% cost-of-living increases due this year. The airline branch of the pilots' union, BALPA, not only supported the appeal but also offered to hold all claims for meal and night-stop allowances to November!

Chunk British Caledonian's way of doing it - asking workers to give up a chunk of their wages, while saying that anyone who insisted would get their full cost-of-living money - could hardly be extended to the car factories or the mines.

But employers everywhere will welcome anything that boosts the idea of workers sacrificing wages to help the bosses through the On Monday 31 the vice-chairman of the regional CBI, Reg Parkes, suggested that West Midlands bosses would follow the example of Pan Am in demanding money wage cuts.

RECENT government figures show that average living standards fell 1.5% in the first quarter of 1980. And the increase in total personal income over that quarter was the smallest for ten years.

Meanwhile, 16% of jobs in manufacturing disappeared during 1980. That's the equivalent of one factory in six shutting. In metal manufacturing, the decline was 25%.

Relief

When the Pieta was attacked by some loony, resentful of Michaelangelo's greatness, anger jostled side by side with bewilderment and sorrow at this individual's act.

When Organ's portrait of Lady Diana Spencer (recently metamorphosed into the Princess of Wales) is slashed