In the first three months of 1980 there were 7,000 redundancies in the Northern Region notified to the Department of Employment, helping to bring the total at 12 June to 142,707 since the same time last year of 24,000.
In the North and South Tyne areas (covering Gateshead, South Shields Jarrow) there has been a rise of 7,700 since last June to over 47,000.
groups ot workers have been particularly badly effected. First women workers: over unemployment among risen 248%! Second, older workers: over half the workers at plants like Adamsez (sanitary ware), Engineering and Vickers Scotswood were over when their factories shut. Their skills obsolete overnight and they found getting new work almost impossible.
The third group are the young, SCHOOL Newcastle this June 2,455 people left school without a job to go to. 'A phone call to the Newcastle Careers Centre on revealed that there were just two jobs available for them in the whole city - a sales assistant in a butcher's shop and a building labourer's job!
years, women has Tress were rendered young Tuesday 8 July of the East's revolutionary and private capitalists workers Hast industries.
• OI Labour was Labour dawn of a 'new era' in which be the out of industries reconstruction Cof West Newcastle may become on generous handouts of public money to set up on the modern factories in more profitable bank The 1974 manifesto on which elected heralded the the undamental balance of wealth an ower would be shifted from the ric to the workers. Central to this would new industrial policy. •The National Enterprise Board funded by North Sea Oil would be the tool of the first (free) Enter prise Zones' assumption would act like a workers bank with Tony Benn as 'your friendly loca manager ignoring overdraft, was the result - especially in the North East.
But many workers are now asking whether planning agreements and the NEB were an adequate alternative to full-blooded socialisation. This by no means overcomes the central problem of who is going to control 'process of socialisation' and whose interests: Is it going to be th workers through their owe actron pr ÷ Health and Safety Acts will not be binding managers appointed NCB industry or banking?
Even doesn't even mention the only way the this can be done successfully from the workers' point of view occupations against •M25S labour However what it does signify is that a growing number of stewards realise that in practice the NEB acted from lay one like a merchant bank wit the only commercial considerațion:
in mind.
+• The a Vicker's - Committee produced one of the most poured (formerly only industries social services on the Tyne, wellare services, the civil service and being private stewards importantly this effectively as - through and job; to movement action. immediately that the Combin of the worker's the alternatives of producing Chieftain tanks. But well. produced pamphlets are no substitute for class struggle. 750 jobs have gone from the Vickers Scotswood Rd. 350 jobs will be lost this August at the Vickers Elswick plant and another go this September. The case also conclusively gives the lie to the Thatcher argument that more profit automatically leads investment and more : jab Government and EEC aid was into Vickers-Michell Michell Bearings), However far from any signs of the 700 new jobs promised by Vickers, 54 jobs have actually been lost from Michells over the past 2 years.
The government cash limits have forced the nationalised to cut jobs to meet profitability targets but prevented the from expanding soak up unemployment. Over the last 10 years thousands of young workers who previously would have gone into apprenticeships, have found employment in education and the University and the Polytechnic, in the hospitals or in More than a quarter of Newcastle workers are in these services today. But now the cuts have dried up this source entirely and while there have been no compulsor redundancies, 1400 Civil Service job will go in the North in the next two years through "natural wastage".
The latest government recipe for solving the unemployment situatior industry the Tory's Enterprise Zone' proposal. I is the logical Tory conclusion of pas government policy, The proposal is to create inner city zones where no 'restrictive legislation' like the Healtt and Safety Acts will be binding it order to attract small business and create jobs. It is possible that West Newcastle may be the first area to be declared a "(free) Enterprise Zone' Workers have to reject this returr to the Dickensian sweat shop as wel as rejecting the pie in the sky stit peddled by the Labour lefts o the NEB, planning agreements and workers' plans which embroil the in participation sas any formal 'Leyland type' participation plan The fight for jobs has to be wage as a direct struggle to protect every get a 35-hour week first fighting for fall pay during lay-ofk and short-time and to occupy agains closure threats and finally to demang next Labour government nationalises, under workers contre all the basic industries, threater