Disputes briefing

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The strikers have organised a support of the Air India India TGWU, c/o Tra

ip shop, Covent Garden, second benefit social for ve heen getting support on Derp aner 21 at the Seven This week they boycot- Southall, Middlesex. The strikers at Stanfords e strikers at Stanfords map shop, Covent Garden, have been getting support on their picket line from staff at several London bookshops and from Blackwells in Oxford. Business at the shop is well down on the normal level, but management have taken on extra staff and seem determined not to take back all the strikers.

Help on the picket line is still needed, as is finance. The strikers have organised a second benefit social for Dece noer 21 at the Seven Dials Club, Shelton Street, London WC2. Messages/ money: strike committee c/o ACTSS, 173 Clapham Rd, London SW9 OQF. Cheques to JA Cook & R PD Hobbs, Stanfords Strike Account.

FUELLERS at at Heathrow have voted to take action ir strikers at the airport. strikers at the airport.

This week they boycotted Air India flights for one diay. They plan to increase this week by week to total boycott.

It seems as thou! gh catering and cleaning si taff will also be taking S olidarity action soon.

Messages/money:

nspor House, 7-9 South Road TGWU members on striki at the Sandhar and Kang cash and carry in Coventri still need donations an support within the TGHT for their call for the disputi to be made official.

Contact: strike commit tee, c/o 88 King George® Ave, Foleshill, Coventry.

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An industrial giant, a industrial giant, leading profit-maker, a pioneer in chopping jobs and increasing exploitation... Noel Hibbert and John Mcllroy look at Arnold Weinstock's GEC an INHUMAN FACE STILL SHOWING IN SPITE OF POPULAR DEMAND GEC largest and wealthiest manufacturing employer in the UK.

The recession's roll call of industrial fatalities has left its financial position virtually unscathed. With over £1 billion in the bank and a £584 million profit for 1981, the company stands as a rock solid bastion of UK capitalism.

Its recent development is a tremendous morale booster for Britain's rulers - and an important lesson for all trade unionists.

Lord Weinstock's empire organising reached its present size in the early 1970s, following mergers with AEI and English Electric orchestrated by Harold Wilson's Industrial Reorganisation Corporation.

Its foundation had been the old Metropolitan-Vickers company which owned the 22,000-strong Trafford Park site in Manchester (where Hugh Scanlon sprang to prominence as AEU convenor in the 1940s).

During the 1970s the company implemented 77,000 • redundancies in streamlining its operations. Meanwhile profits continued to rise and are expected to reach record levels in 1982 The response of stockbrokers like Rowe and Pitman has been to enthusiastically recommend shareholders to buy GEC!

Whatever new Chairman Lord Carrington might say, GEC is doing OK. Ironically, it is benefitting from his own incompetence on the Falklands by gobbling up contracts from the new bonanza on defence and telecommunications spending. "We try in GEC to steer clear of involvements which have as their object to bring about solidarity, that is to behave in common with others simply to exert pressures ...

"There can be no settlements in Stafford on the basis of acrossA recent report on company has noted: " one or two signs of improvement in UK business activity and the export order books continue very strong. The establishment of Factory Automation Systems Technology to coordinate the activities of GEC companies in automated factory systems and robotics is a further indication of the broadening range of activities that will be achieved from GEC's strength."

Weinstock has been extending his tentacles abroad and in the UK whilst at the same time embarking un rationalisation programmes within his 169 subsidiaries.

Schreiber Industries is an example here. Phil Davies, recently sacked convenor of Schreibers in Manchester said: "The relationship of my gaffer, Chaim Schreiber, to Weinstock, is like Uriah Heep's relationship to his boss. Weinstock told Schreiber jump through hoops and close plants' and Schreiber clambered through those hoops and we ended up on the dole."

Moreover, GEC is structured into product groups which are supposedly decentralised and autonomous. In reality, Weinstock operates on a "commandist" basis, presiding personally over rationalisation and new investment programmes.

Over the last few years the company has bought a substantial number of firms.

The Tories tell us that high wage demands make companies like GEC unprofitable. This is why they support Arnold Weinstock when he offers peanuts for a wage increase.

The US Congress, however, published last yeaI a 1,200 page report on a price rigging cartel, named the International Electrical Association. This disclosed that leading UK engineering companies had been involved in defrauding Third World governments of up to £250 million a year through overpricing goods by 40%.

GEC have a director on the IEA General Council and are a driving force behind the cartel.

The cartel's activities have incensed the Americans. Reagan is now considering imposing a ban on GEC imports to the USA because of their cartel activHORROR FIL CAFT WITH AN ities. GEC management, along Gimen other company bosses, have connived together to

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how workers against it.