****************************** ramme of sackings that Chrysler could never pull off alone - and at the same time the Government does not appear to take arrect responsibility for the sackings, as the firm remains in private hands.
Wilson gets a new "hit-man" in Riccardo - the workers get the sack. The whole working class faces a terrible blow against the right to work.
The Chrysler deal must be rejected. But it is still only the Linwood plant which has come out in clear opposition to all sackings and demanded nationalisation without compensation to defend jobs. According to present plans, Linwood will be occupied from 5 January to enforce these demands.
Although both the Stoke and oration of the senior stewards with Ryder has meant that thousands accepted voluntary redundancies both before and after the introduction of the Ryder plan.
It has been the determined and consistent opposition of the Linwood stewards to redundancies and their plans for occupation which have produced the fighting spirit and unity of the Scottish workers. This can still be spread to all Chrysler plants by firm opposition to all redundancies - otherwise Chrysier management will seize on the "voluntary redundancies loop-hole to drive a wedge between different sections of Chrysler workers and inside Chrysler plants.
Follow Linwood - occupy to nationalise! The revamping of Chrysler UK to compete with other state-backed car firms is crazy. Support can be won from and £3,600 for Chrysler France.
UK is a result of: depreciation and repair payable to "The Week'). Chrysler's Crisis: The Workers Answer, submitted to the Government by a joint union delegation of shop stewards and staff representatives in mid-December, provides a very different analysis of Chrysler's problems from that put forward by man agement, the Government and the press Far from strikes being the cause of the crisis, about half of all lost production is due to breakdowns, supply difficulties, repair and maintenance. At the same time the average wage in 1974 of employees in Chrysler UK was lower than in any other major car manufacturer in Europe - £2,600 a year compared with £2,700 for Vauxhall, £3,300 for Ford UK, The report argues that the failure of the company in the 1. The company's failure to invest. The Stoke plant is a positive museum: over 80 per cent of the machinery used in the production of the Arrow (Hunter, Sceptre) range powertrain (engine, gear-box, rear axle) and 30 per cent of that used in production of the Avenger engine is over 14 years old - 3 per cent is over 33 years old. In 1974 investment reached the ludicrous level of £15 per worker, compared with £430 per worker at Ford and £258 per worker at British Leyland. This cannot even have covered the cost of The deliberate run-down of Chrysler UK. Between 1970 and 1973 the fixed capital employed in Chrysler UK fell from £53m to £46m. In 1973 the total book value of British plant and machinery was just £19 million - a bare fifth of what Ford or Leyland were employing. Fixed capital assets per man were just £1,550 in 1972, compared with £2,274 1 France and 13.377 in the USA. In 1974 the ITS £15,000 FUND DRIVE!
most elementary needs of existence campaigns and organise effectively inside the labour movement.
the £15,000 Fund Drive. The money you donate will go to:
Building a Scottish Centre A 16-page Red Weekly * Strengthening and improving our publications and central apparatus * Allocating more full-timers to our campaigns.
E1,600 compared with £3,400 in France. and this has been costed against the UK budget. the British Exchequer (2.3m)!
successfully defended We can guarantee that every £1 donated will go towards the fight against capitalism and Wilson's anti-working class policies. With more capitalists going bankrupt every day, fewer and fewer people believe in the ability of capitalism to provide a decent house and job - yet alone a decent life. Socialism is needed to meet even the But how can we get it? The IMG has set itself the task of building a credible revolutionary organisation: strengthening and expanding our publications, and developing the facilities and resources with which to build You can help us in this vital task with money. Help us to win more people to socialism by contributing to We have raised £5,000 so far - including an encouraging £864.92 last week alone. Now we need another £10,000 by the end of February. Send donations to Jo-Ann, 97 Caledonian Road, London N.1. (cheques/POs Machinery valued at nearly a million pounds has been transferred to South America and Spain. Other machines, like those introduced (with a 25 per cent government investment grant) for the notorious "C" car (transferred to France) have been abandoned as scrap. Shop floor estimates of this wastage range from £17 million to as much as £35 million. 3. Design and development work. Since the Chrysler Corp oration took majority control of the UK company there has not been a single all-new Chrysler car made in the UK. Yet many cars have been designed by the Whitley research centre for eventual production abroad or have been scrapped. At the same time sales hand-outs worth between £100 and £200 a vehicle have been offered to dealers on French models -At the same time Chrysler has been involved in the usual juggling of profits, taxes and interests - low export prices to other Chrysler subsidiaries, particularly to Switzerland where taxes are lower than in the UK. The Labour Research Department has calculated that this process of profit transferring may have cost Chrysler UK £93m in the last three years. Thanks to this and similar book-cooking Chrysler has managed in the fourteen years 1960-1973 to gain more from tax and depreciation allowances (£2.45m) than it has paid in total to The Workers Answer is a graphic demonstration of the need to open all Chrysler's books to expose the wheeling and dealing of capitalist business and show the need for nationalisation. On the basis of such a workers' plan all jobs can still be
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