completing their final shift before taking all-out action in support of the '84 wage claim. decision came at mass meetings held last week at the three Jaguar plants in Coventry and Birmingham.
to support the shop stewards recommendation to reject management's final offer and strike November.
The Jaguar claim is for £25, sick pay from the first day, and for negotiations on the grading sucture.
In the final round of talks, management ottered a Jur on terms that were unanimously rejected the previous week.
was calculated insult. It was accompanied by a flood of management leaflets, which declared that there was 'no more money'.
They said that managemen woule nol be moved by strike action, and warned 'Do not be misled'.
By a Jaguar Shop Steward In fact management trying desperately to mislead everybody. Their talk of a 'very generous.offer worth 22 per cent' is utterly false. Even the local papers — no friend of the workers - calculated that for an average production worker the weekly would be £151.93, a rise in actual earnings of 6 per cent' When Jaguar was sold earlier this ycal wallaze ment assured us that the hand-out of shares every worker would not figure in wage bargaining.
Every management statement in the last few weeks appeals to the workforce to count shares held in our names "benefits of working for Jaguar' On their ability to pay, management's deception is most blatant. The fall in the dollar exchange rate over the past year has A massive 81 per cent of the membership voted trom boosted Jaguar profits by 1984 budget forecast. To meet the claim full would cost one-tenth of this year's profits.
The battle clearly over whether management alone decides dispose of the fruits of Jaguar's recent success, or whether the workers who have created it are entitled to demand their fair share. Cowley walk out in 1983 An ARG workers are learning from the miners and realise that an all-out confrontation is necessary to win.
we hope that Ron Todd will give the lead that has been lacking in the past, and won't sell US OWE LIC LIVer the main semi-skilled grade. This is a substantial improvement on the company's original of. fer of between six and eight per cent, tied to productivity strings.
such string was Vauxhall's demand that the rise they had offered was to be based on 'merit' Mick Whitley, TGWU deputy conveno Ellesmere Port told Socialist Action that the result was 'a victory' for While the deal involves malor restructuring of the grade system, 'selfUS CCLUll , the unions are confident that they will be able to deal with these issues at a local level.
Mick explained that a major factor in the success achieved by the unions was the picketing of the ports (Bristol, Sheerness Hartlepool).
The picketing at Hartlepool, the main port for Vauxhall, had been '100 per cent successful', and this was due to the 'sterling work' of local members and trade unionists, who had provided the Vauxhall workers with accommodaGM tion, ce contacts, and so on Vauxhall deal coming at the very beginning of the pay round in the HIOUSLY sensa high level for other car workers With Austin Kover Ford, and Jaguar workers waiting for answer from their employers, the example of determined ac tion from Vauxhall will be the one to follow.