“news for the bosses! The Business Location File zine…”

news for the bosses! The Business Location File -2 m7 zine which is described as reporting on "industrial development and investment" or in plain language, where a capitalist can make a quick million or two - has been singing the praises of Northern Irish workers in its latest issue, x Workers in the 6 counties it claims "work harder to compensate for the bad image which is painted of their province." Airey Neave was also striking the same note a couple of weeks ago when he compared the leaping productivity of workers in the ‘orth to the falling productivity levels of British workers, ne sceptical people without jobs in the 6-Cos, t think that al! this talk at present - that's ll.8 % of productivity is all very of the working population -well, but what about all” and some 1,475 of these are those businesses that have Fiaster school-leavers, With been affected by the "troubles" almost 2 % unemployment all the investment which the North has the highest went elsewhere as the percentage of workleses of all Provos bombs and incendiaries the regions of the PEC, reduced industry and commerce te rubble? Well, the So its certainly no paradise same magazine has done a for the worker and particsurvey and it seems that ularly for the catholic worker, 21% of firms here have The sectarian character of never suffered as a result the 6-Counties' statelet has of the troubles, All in all always ensured that catholic it appears that the 6-Cos, workers have borne the is something of a bosses brunt of unemployment and paradise, that the better-paid, skilled jobs have been almost Further proof of this has exclusively reserved for been provided by the Dept, protestant workers, The of Manpower who have April unemployment statistics just released the April tell the same old story -unemployment figures, the highest unemployment These indicate that there levels are all catholic ‘are some 64,270 people districts Strabane 27.5% ny Newry 23.5%, Cookstown 22.9%, Dungannon 21.2%, Derry 17%. For heads of households the facts are even more dramatic, Take the catholic ghettoes of Belfast : Ballymurphy 52%, Clonard 46%, Falls 45%, New Lodge 45%, Short Strand 39%.

Such figures haven't really changed all that much from the old days of Stormont when the Unionist bosses made no secret of their efforts to exclude catholics from skilled jobs and ensure that catholic workers paid dearly for their opposition to Orange rule in the 6Counties, But under direct rule discrimination is supposed to have ended, a nasty horror from the past, Promises to this effect were heaped on the anti-unionist opulation after the suspen. ton of Stormont in 1972. And if private employers could not be persuaded to recruit catholic labour then the” Firitish state would itself provide the jobs, Many people thought that the British were making good their promises when the Kennedy Way industrial estate was opened in Andersonstown offering jobs to the hardpressed catholic workers of West Belfast, With state-managed firms like Strathearn Audio and so--called co-operatives like Antrim Crystal, both largely government financed, a brighter future seemed assured for the Falls Poad unemployed, Though firms like Strathearn never employed more than a few hundred workers there were high hopes that the number of firms and the number of jobs would multiply before long. Thus even the paper of the West Belfast Workers Action Council (set up last year around the strike for union recognition at Fiastwoods*) could carry an article which talked of “a healthy future" for Sirathearn and described the firm as"a shining example to industry anywhere", The same article heaped praise on the Strathearn management stating that it aimed to make Strathearn "into the best! if not the biggest of its kind anvwhere in the world.", That was only last summer just just a few months later hundreds of workers,more than three-quarters of ‘the workforce were made redundant , and today the total closure of the plant seems only a matter of time, Just as the high hopes of Strathearn have been dashed so too the promises o the direct rule administration have also come to nought, Interviewed on television a few weeks ago, Denis Faulker (brother of the archbigot Faulker) Chairman of the Northern Ireland Dev-elopment Authority, the organisation charged -with bringing new jobs to the North,admitted that he had no plans for siteing any new industry in West Belfast. And what goes for West Belfast goes for all the nationalist districts of the 6 -counties, The major lesson which anti-unionist workers can draw from the never-changing monthly unemployment figures, the failure of Strathern and other pink elephants, is that there can be no solution to the problem of Catholic unemployment within the context of a partitioned Ireland, The only response which the leader ship of the Northern trade unions has made is the pathetic 'Better Life For All' campaign