Press Gang

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THE Daily Star is running a competition. It wants to know if any of its readers can work out how much Michael Edwardes, chairman of BL, gets paid.

To help its readers it haspublished a statement from the Company's Press Secretary designed to put the record straight.

To the workers on BL assembly lnes it looks quite simple. Edwardes had exempted himself from the sacrifices he was inflicting on everyone else.

His rise from £64,500 year to just under £100,000 a year worked out somewhere around 36%.

No doubt it is simple thinking like this which explains why these workers are stuck on the shop floor while Edwardes trundles off to another business lunch.

The Daily Mail puts us right. His rise came "at a compound annual rate of only 5%. "" The paper quotes the Company Secretary as saying this was less than increases to shop floor workers. (How about a whip round down the line to help him out?)

But back to the Star and its helpful guide to his salary. This tells us that comparing Edwardes pay now with what he was on when he was on loan from Chloride is like comparing apples with pears.

The Star competition (you are too late, it has closed) offered free apples and pears for a year to the reader who could make Edwardes pay coincide with a figure worked out on a computer.

There was more to the prize. 'The equivalent of 21 months emoluments at £4.08 per calendar month plus 16.7% obscurity allowance. In short, one hundred quid.

There were few other jokes as BL announced its half-yearly loss. The main thrust of the press comment was to contrast that loss with the unreaonable" demand for an extra £20 a week.

The battle to gow BI workers into submission has started early. Industrial reporters have been thumbing the pages of their dietionaries of insults to hail down on the workers who October to consider the position if deadlock remains.

BL, however, are out to get the best deal they can. If they fail to get a committee of 100% national officials, they will be happy to ressurect a body which has served them well in the past. the report itself a major attack on the workers in Truck and Bus Division is foreshadowed by the turn around from a £7 million profif to a £40 million loss; "Unit costs will need to be reduced significantly if we are to be competitive."

In cars, the report says, "Output per man is 30% This comes in three waves: modernisation of mentioned in the report is «overseas operations" with "India doing particularly well". No doubt the anti-working class nature of Mrs Gandhi's government has helped.

South Africa is discretely not mentioned.