Reject Cure's Sell-out Bid!

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to pursue our £20 claim described the bonus as across the board on the "snow in the midday basic rate, not for the 'sun" , and he is right. It AUEW National Officer Ken Cure nas circulaicu a winnintado leaflet calling for the consolidation of the lower end of the bonus scale into the basic rate as an acceptable settlement of the claim.

Any move along these lines would be a complete sell out.

He does not put figure on it, but propost's lakug a sum ur money off the bottom of the bonus and putting it on the basic rate.

It could be. for example, 10 points or d2.1s. 1 11CEL £ 2 75 would then go on the That monev basic rate, and the bonus would start paying out after ten points.

Since the vast majority get bonus at that of our own money.

Any sell-out of that sort must be stopped. The mass meetings voted 11N LIMON • C first shabby sell out that springs to mind.

Let's leave the scheme right out of it. We want new money on the basic rate.

We have no control over the bonus scheme at all, and what we do get out of it we have paid for heavily, in manning levels and speed-up.

Dictatorship

Grenville Mawley nas does not rely on productivity, but on company tactics.

If we don't put the basic rate right now, along the lines of the full claim, stop Edwardes' dictatorship, and put some strength back behind the unions - if we don't do it now, when will we do it? We have a massive vote, new models in the major plants, and the official support of It is crucial that shabby, sell-outs of this sort are thrown out nov It simply strengther Edwardes and weaker our claim.

Shop stewards' mee ings and strike commi tees should make the views known now befor the sell-out takes place.

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• £20 NOW!

Organising to win!

not to be turner on to organise fund-raising Meanwhile, at a more ings, and publicity for the LEYLAND orgariser THE WALKOUT of the BL manual workforce at Cowley and Longbridge will halt car production throughout the corporation. But this should not blind strikers to the necessity to organise their forces to give the stoppage maximum impact.

Each plant should take steps to elect its own strike committee, drawing in the most determined fighters against the management offensive. And the call should go out for a national coordinating committee, composed of delegates from the strike committees, to direct the strike.

Support committees should be set up, drawing in representatives from local labour movement bodies.

Allies

Immediate approaches should be made to other sections of workers in each area who are engaged in their own pay review or facing the government's four per cent pay limit.

BL strikers should attempt in particular to address meetings of local authority manual workers, urging them to take action on their pay claim due for settlement in November, and strike alongside the BL workers against the Thatcher government.

Miners, too; whose pay review date is November 1, should be urged to join ON Wednesday 21st, Islington South Labour Party passed this resolution:

"This GC congratulates the workers at British Leyland for their stand against the government-inspired cutting of their real wages.

"1. We call upon the TUC to prepare for a full-scale confrontation with the government a general strike against the deliberate, doctrinaire policy of repression of workers' rights;

"2. We will organise, with other labour movement bodjes in Islington, a public meeting in support of the strike. the fight against per cent limit.

Other sections of carworkers can also be important allies in the fight. Vauxhall workers have also been offered a miserable four per cent, while Ford management have yer to reply to the unions' claim. BL strikers must campaign hard for united action of carworkers against the four per cent - pointing out that a defeat for any one section will herald new attacks throughout the "3. We call on members, wards and affiliated organisations to provide financial assistance to the Leyland Action Committee for their work in organising the strike"

And on Sunday 25th, £61.70 was collected at a meeting of the three Islington Labour Parties, to be split between the Leyland Action Committee and the Laurence Scott strikers.

If other Labour Parties take this as a model, then Labour can become a real factor on the workers' side in this fight against the Tories. industry.

In the same way BL pickets and delegations should fan out to cover BL's huge network of component suppliers and contractors, spelling out to the workforce there the need to defeat Edwardes and Thatcher if jobs in the engineering industry are butchered.

routine level, the strike will strike. place great financial strain on the strikers and their families. Money must be collected far and wide in the labour movement to run the dispute, finance the necessary publicity, and sustain the struggle as long as necessary.

Trades Councils and Labour Parties must be called activities, support meetBL:OUR British Leyland is publicly owned. For years it even had workers' participation as a cosmetic to cover the real face of speed-up and tightfistedness on wages.

Participation was kicked aside by the bosses when it no longer suited them. Now, several insulting pay offers and several ultimatums and closure threats later, BL is still setting the pace for managerial gangsterism.

Faced with a serious crisis, the BL bosses react no differently from private capitalists. Their answer has been to take it out on the workers.

BL was nationalised in order to bail out the private shareholders. Throughout the 1950s and '60s the shareholders had pocketed fat dividends. If you invested £3000 in the British Motor Company in 1952, then by the time of the merger with Leyland in 1967 you would have received £33,000 in dividends.

Meanwhile there was very little investment. In 1969 BL had fixed assets of £969 per employee, compared to Ford UK's £2709. So when the world competition in the car industry became sharper, in the late '60s, BL went onto the rocks.

BL workers came under attack, but the shareholders were safe. The government paid them 10p for every share, although the shares had only been fetching 64p the day before nationalisation was announced.

BL still has to pay millions every month in interest charges.

Nationalisation was not a way out of the mad international capitalist rat race in the motor industry. It was just another way for the bosses to organise themselves for that rat race.

For workers, the only answer is to fight for workers' control. The first essentjal is full information about management's plans - open the books and end commerc 4k~ Lanted and enmmara ial secrecy!

Having opened the company's books, the BL workers should work out their own work schedules, based on work sharing with no loss of jobs or pay. With combine wide solidarity and the willingness to seize the factories if necessary, the BL workerscan enforce this workers' control.

They can establish links with workers in the car com-s ain and internationally.

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level, it would mean paying us an increase out

ponents fims and in the other giant car firms in Brit-