[THE BLACKING of Staffa products in support of…]

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THE BLACKING of Staffa products in support of the workforce's fight for jobs in East London is beginning to bite.

Following the decision of the National Port Shop Stewards Committee to support blacking two weeks ago, the national container shờp stewards' committee has also blacked all Brown and Sharpe products. Brown and Sharpe is the combine which owns Staffa.

Blacking pledges are also coming from the pits, where Staffa motors are widely used. The South Wales NUM executive has pledged support, and similar decisions are expected from Yorkshire and Scotland soon. Already three pits in Yorkshire have blacked Staffa unofficially.

The shop stewards on the Thames Barrier, which also uses Staffa motors, have given full backing • to the dispute and say their management need spare parts soon or they will have to take the contract elsewhere.

This action appears to be having an effect. Reportedly the management has approached ACAS.

are low at the plant, a speed-up will mean job losses as less people are needed to produce the same amount.

But MoCormack has completely ducked the question of job losses, and instead has called for a 10% increase in the bonus as the basis for negotiating a return to work.

To trade off jobs for higher bonus payments is bad enough in itself, but in the context of the present situation in the Rolls Royce combine it is diabolical. A month before the strike began, management Hillington demanded 500 voluntary redundancies and, at national level, the Rolls Royce bosses want a total of 15,000 jobs to disappear in the period ahead, so as to restore the . company's profits.

If the strike were to take up the demand for a cut in the working week, then the basis for a combine-wide fight against the bosses' offensive on jobs would be laid. But by limiting the demand to 10% in the bonus, McCormack is blacking off the possibility of The morale on the picket line is good, and shop steward Roger Owen made it clear that although the workers are prepared to talk to management, they will accept no less than a guarantee of jobs.

If the dispute is to be won, however, money is still required. The AUEW's strike pay, due since October 16, has only just arrived.

Messages/ money: Staffa AUEW strike committee, 39 Somers Road, Walthamstow, E17.

Stan Crooke IT NOW looks as if the sit-in at the Robb Caledon shipyard (Dundee) will result in the yard being hived off to Kestrel Marine.

The sit-in began on September 19th, when 159 workers moved into the yard to fight for their jobs and retention of the yard as part of the nationalised shipbuilding industry. The Confederation of Shipspreading strike action throughout the combine, especially since the new standard data times (which led to the 7½% speed-up) are already operating in most other plants in the country.

At last Thursday's mass meeting, MoCormack stressed time and time again that the strike was about higher bonus payments "exclusively" for direct workers. He thus raises a pay demand for just one section of the workforce, although all workers at the plant would need to work even harder before it could be paid out.

MoCormack's attitude to the indirect workers is nothing short of absolute contempt. It is craft chauvinism taken to extremes.

Concede:

MoCormack thus leaves the road open for manage.

ment to mobilise the laid-off indirect workers against the striking direct workers. For white MoCormack may not have contacted the indirect WOTKEIS, management

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• - Sacialist Organiser, Thursday 12 November 1981 Page 15