Industrial notes

Short-time at Bristol Siddeley from Alan Rooney. Three thousand workers at Bristol Siddeley's Parkside plant, Coventry, left the factory for half-an-hour last Friday to hear a report from shop stewards on talks held with the management about shortage of work, They decided afterwards to acquaint the Coventry and district M.P.'s with the situation and call upon them to raise the matter in Parliament. Also they agreed that the staff and manual workers' unions should jointly demand a meeting with the board of directors. The meeting further agreed that the joint negotiating committee should take all steps necessary "to resolve the serious position at the factory." Mr, Phil Higgs, Amalgamated Engineering Union convenor, told the workers that since October the work situation at the factory had worsened, He posed the question of whether "the decks are being cleared" for work on the Concord and added that if that was the case why should the workers be made to suffer "by being left on the shelf until 18 months time," Mr, Higgs said he had been told that in the machine shops the position would improve gradually but the amount of semi-skilled work on milling and turning would decline. It had been reported that the fitting shop would have a surplus of 20 to 25 fitters and the extension to the development machine shop had been deferred for this year, Bristol and Rolls-Royce work brought into the factory now equalled 4,500 man hours a week and this would increase to 13,000 a week at the end of the year, “However,” Mr, Higgs said, " we have said that this will only equal work for an additional 200 men and short-time and waiting time at the factory comes to more than that," There is also short-time and even redundancy at the Bristol Siddeley plant at Watford, near London. The B.S.E,. workers are militant on this issue for two reasons:- 1. ‘In the past, notably in the case of the Baginton plant of Hawker Siddeley, shorttime was the first step towards plant closure, Baginton is now shut. 2. 3B.S.E. depends on the Government for its orders and subsidies. The B.S.E. men are arguing that the workers and the Government now should have a real influence on B.S.E, in directing work to plants. Marriage of Inconvenience. The following criticisms of the proposed steel nationalisation measures appeared in the Scunthorpe Star editorial on May 5th. Leaders of the steel industry, who accepted the inevitable some time ago and promised not to put any impediment in the way of nationalisation, can now look forward to it with a certain relish. Those same principals of a backward and decadent industry whose inefficiency and archaic policies provided the springboard for the Government's action are to form the backbone of the new Corporation's executive. Will nationalisation prove to be nothing more than a piece of political card-shuffling using the same old pack? Although the workers have been promised three directors on each of the new group boards they will have to serve their stints on boards outside their owa groups and the shop floor will have to share this meagre representation with technicians and middle management, The worker-directors are to be appointed on the nomination of the T.U.C, rather than elected by the people employed in the industry. Also it must seem incongruous that, having for several years campaigned to get business and commerce to move their operational headquarters away from the congested centre of London, the national government are now proposing to establish the National Steel Corporation right in the heart of the city.