Fight at Data firm

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Sun 25 July - Sun 1 Aug Discussions on women's liberation, revolutionising the labour movement, Poland, Ireland, the world Trotskyist movement, ano Spend the week in a rural setting in the East Midlands. Only £32:50 for accommodation, breakfast, tea, coffee and subsidisedtransport. whole show off by offering to tender for the dust contract.

Even if the council AS REPORTED in last week's Socialist Organiser, 30 black workers have been on official strike since May 18 at Sandhar and Kang wholesale warehouse in Birmingham.

The workers are striking against appalling work conditions, low pay (many workers get only 80p an hour, and work well over 50 hours), • and victimisation of workers believed to be involved in the fight for union recognition for the Action has spread to one of Sandhar and Kang's other warehouses, in Kingsland Road, Foleshill, Coventry. Striking workers from Birmingham and Leamington have mounted Jally pickets outside the Coventry warehouse, in an attempt to stop deliveries to S&K and to help the struggle of the Coventry workers.

Most deliveries have been turned back The Coventry worktoree of about 20 has the same wages and conditions, but it has stayed at work. Those Coventry workers who have joined the T&G. in defiance of their bosses are in favour of following the lead of the Birmingham workers, but the regional T&G leadership has said that until the remaining nine or ten workwhelmingly for a return to work? Clearly, the sackings, no longer just a threat, had an influence. But this could ers not in the union have joined, they will not call Coventry out on strike.

Help build support for blacking of S&K cash and carry goods, the stopping of deliveries to the warehouse sictimisthen and for alist union recognition.

Send donations and messages of support to S&K strike committee, c/o TGWU, 211 Broad St, Birmingham 15.

ALY A FIGHT for union recognition has been taken on by seven workers at Caplan's Cash and Carry, Derby Street, Nanchester.

The dispute began when two employees, both members of the TGWU. were dismissed. Their colleagues in the TGWU took up this case as victimisation with the result that they too were sacked.

So at the rhoment the seven union meibers are mounting a picket outside the warehouse gates in an If that sort of thinking dominates a dispute then, Whatever the strength of feeling and solidity of action, defeat will be snatched from the jaws of victory.

Of course, a brave face is being put on the official panic. In almost identical statements, NUPE said "From our point of view, the dispute is not over. All that has happened is that we have suspended COUF industrial action" and GMWU said "There is absolutely no defeat on our behalf - we have really only suspended our action."

Officials have covered themselves by the claim that if any private firm wins the contract, the action will be re-started..

But it will be starting from a position of weakness with the workforce already knowing that their national leadership has no bottle for the sort of action which would win the fight, and support for which was forthcoming from the rank and file. attempt to stop deliveries and close down the Cash and Carry, in order to be reinstated as union members with full union rates of pay and union rights.

The seven union members described the conditions under which they worked previously as appalling. They were working a 48 hour week. including five hours on Sunday, and taking home around £55.

They were continually "IT'S the first time they've all been at work this early" commented one striker at 7.30 this morning, referring to the parked Rolls Royce and other prestigious symbols of achievement in the directors'car park at EDP in Sheffield.

He was one of half a dozen men and women on picket rota outside the gates of Electronic, and Data Processing. Two months ago Jenny Wright organised the workforce there into ASTMS and the management retorted with her immediate dismissal at ten minutes notice.

The workforce then chose to strike for her reinstatement and for recogabused at work by the owner and had to work in what they believed to be dangerous conditions. Their, canteen facilities were almost non-existent, with the workers themselves having to club together to buy a kettle and a table.

The workers need help with donations as they have been out of work for three weeks now. The address to send donations to is: David Jones. 24 Broomfield Drive. Manchester 8. nition of their union. Management then sacked all union members, and have persistently refused to meet strikers.

Management are importing scabs from city centre employment agencies. SOS and Windsor are suspected, using high-speed taxis through the picket lines.

However, to their credit, Securicor, Red Star Parcels and the GPO have so far refused to cross the picket This is an important dispute not only because victimisation is abhorent, and effective union organisation of workers is necessary, but once the principal of union recognition in one newly established computer company is established, an important lead to others will be given.

This is another symptom of the rapid and ruthless growth of the new technology appearing as highprofit sweat shops with huorescent lighting, carpets and pot plants.

ASTMS are backing the dispute officially and have called for support in. the blacking of EDP products and computer programmes and have helped set up and publicise the workers' . Case.

A hardship fund is open. Please send all donations and messages of support to: EDP Strike Committee. c/o 61, Wostenholm Road, Shetfield, S7 H..

Brian many other issues. Films, socials etc Claimants £21.

Further details fron 'Summer School' PO Box 135, London N1 OL neR GAY R

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 10 June 1982 Page 1:

A Wandsworth mass meeting votes for action against privatisatio ON THE day that HMS Sheffield was sunk with the loss of 20 lives, 27 people died on Britain's chronically congested roads. These two sets of statistics, and the absurd imbalance in national significance given to them, express the real economic and political priorities of Thatcher's Britain.

They also reflect the two fundamental principles that run through the whole domestic and foreign policy programme of the Tories: to re-establish Britain as a vigorous, interventionist sub-lieutenant in Reagan's imperialist ship of war: and to break up the social and economic gains made by the British labour movement since 1945.

For whilst the Falklands expedition has been shedding lives by the score, the onslaught on the nationalised industries has been proceeding apace.

Nicholas Ridley, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, put the government's policy in a nutshell: 'The introduction of competition must whenever possible be linked to a transfer of ownership to private citizens and away from the state. Real public ownership - that is ownership by people - must be and is our ultimate goal"

The government have been pursuing their policy of 'privatisation' with venom since 1979. In that time, they have sold £3.7 billion of public assets in both nationalised industries and in companies in which the National Enterprise Board had a controlling stake, to private financiers.

Indeed the Tories are planning to steal further £2 billion of assets in the next three years.

Provisions are already on the statute book to permit the privatisation of British Airways, the British Transport Docks Board and the disposal of subsidiaries of British Rail and British Telecom.

The National Enterprise Board has sold off the following publicly owned shares in private compan+ ies.

1979: Hird Brown, 20/4 million; ICL, £37.2 million.

1980: Brown Bovery Kent (Holdings), $2.6 million; Barrow Hepbury Ltd, 50.27 milion; Computer and Systems Engineering, £2.14 million, Fairey Holdings, $21.8 million, Ferranti, £55.2 million; Middle East Buildil'o services, zu.i. milon, New Town Securities, Mt mila-.

£0.13 million; R.R. Chapman, $0.35 million.

1981: Automation and Technical Services, £0.9 million; Negretti and Zambra ltd, £0.5 million; System Designers International, £1.19 million; Energy Equipment, £0.8 million. This gives a total of £124, 480,000. в Д. -ro. help ailing companies, almost always a series of practical stipulations were laid down before public money could be invested. The electronics giant, Ferranti, is a classic case here.

The post-Benn regime in the Department of Industry in 1976 demanded that a policy of "divisionalisation" be applied within Ferranti before substantial aid could be given. In other words, the inter-site and interplant negotiating committees that had won significant gains in wages and conditions during the 1960s must be broken up.

Sebastian de Ferranti was told quite clearly by the DOI "you must get a stronger grip on your costs of production before the government can be convinced tht it will receive an adequate return on its investments"

The result was a massive onslaught on shop floor organisation that resulted in the workforçe's nose being pushed out of having any say into how "their" Labour government's investments were to be democratically controlled within the company.

By 1979 many of the NEB companies were in a relatively profitable state, yet the morale of the workforce was not exactly at a peak and capable of repelling the Tories' moves to sell off the public shares in the firms. It was the same story in the majority of companies in which the NEB had a controlling interest. advance, and also the stiffest resistance to Tory monetarism, has come from the transport industries.

The Tories are pursuing a policy of creating a massive shift in freight and passenger traffic from rail to road. The principles of the market economy have led to cut-throat competition among express coach firms and exacerbated Britain's road congestion.

Instead of developing a cheap, efficient and safe rail network, the government are now proposing to introduce private auctions into British Rail's activities.

Provisions for the sale of BR properties in hotels, land, hovercraft, Sealink and now the Engineering Workshops have or are being made ready for private consumption. Already BR's hovercraft subsidiary has merged with Hoverlloyd, its main competitor, to form a private firm, Hoverspeed.

The most momentous developments, however, are being reserved for the rail network itself and for the principal unions, the NUR and ASLEF.

using a number of com- The oovemment. are ALO bined devices to prepare the ground for. private sale of the industry..

This includes cuts in cash limits (by £53 million for 1982-3), the tying of agreements on electrification proposals to "proven" increases in productivity, the abolition of the 1919 agreement on the df hour week through the introduction of flexible rostering, and the dismembering of the Engineering Workresourcing of BR compared to its European counterparts. According to the NUR stewards "more money is spent on the Paris Metro than on the entire BR network"

They go on to argue that 'in 1976 BR engineers featured in the top 25 of the manual workers pay league. Today, some grades - toolmakers, die casters and testers - are not even in the first division. Similarly, platers, welders and shipwrights have fallen from fourth to sixteenth place in this period"

How can the lories seriously argue that high wages have caused the collapse of industry?

Last year the 13 BR engineering workshops made a profit of £1.3 But the real motivation behind the government's plans was revealed on 15 May when BR executives told the press that BR's wagon fleet is to be cut from 132,000 to 40,000 in the next three years.

4%%o 0Itne un stotalrau 10301_ I11 - T7789_1.4-1.91 freight stock will be in private hands in 1986, compared to 16% today. There will be 25,000 privately owned wagons on the network by 1986 compared with 17,000 at present.

The extra 8,000 wagons will be produced by private manufacturers. And 5,000 engineering workers in the workehans umrhore that is, who were described by their "friend" the Financial Times (10 October 1980) as having "a able by 1986. Britain is bottom of the railway investment league table.

Government subsidies to European Railways.

Italy 68% Belgium 50% France 44% Holland 44% W. Germany 39% Britain 29% One steward at Horwich put the problem well: "If Thatcher could build a railroad down to the Falklands then all of a sudden we would become an "essential industry" to be preserved at all costs." The Horwich JAC have galvanised the whole of their local community behind them in the attempt to halt a closure that would result in the town having an unemployment level of 51%.

Dennis Green (chairperson of the JAC), has stated:

'If BR pushes ahead with its closure policy we shall be seeking not just a national rail strike, but also to bring into action the Triple Alliance of railworkers, miners and steelworkers, to force a change in Thatcher's crazy economic policies"

A national rail strike has airedy been agreed by both the Joint Rail Council and the CSEU for sometime after June 7.

Cynical However, • sinister rumours are now beginning mimnure ara naur horinnian to percolate out of Unity House in London that 'cynical' Syd Weighell is preparing to argue that preparing to move in on what was once one of the main bastions of working class organisation: the docks. After devastating the industry through severance pay-induced redundancy, the government are now confident that the British Transport Docks Board can be dismantled and its 19 registered ports handed over to a consortium of private companies called Associated British Ports.

The government intend to sell 49% of the equity in the holding this year. After that they will take no further part in the industry.

With the workforce drastically weakened over the last 10 years, the Tories are doubtlessly confident that they can inflict revenge on the dockers for the defeat they suffered during the Pentonville Five strikes in 1972.

It is clear that the onus for organising • the fightback against the Tory attack will fall to the rank-and-file Joint Ports Shop Stewards Committee.

The Tories have taken on and chewed off different sectors of nationalised industry in a piecemeal fashion, but this has more tn din with tartical timing rather than lack of strategic coherence.

Tebbit's law is an instance of Thatcher's strategic grasp.

By placing • industrial relations in this legal corset the Tories are aiming to hamstring any prospective upswing in industrial militancy in such a web of repressive constraints NOEL HIBBER' looks at the Tory strategy for nationalised industry.

have a plan for clearing up the rubble and debris left by decades of inflationary governments. Costs have to be cut back 'The unions' tentacles have to be taken out of those institutions and areas of life for which they were not designed. The market has to be placed once again on its rightful the UK economy, centre of throne - at the The latest gem to come to light from the Tories think tank is the introduction of Free Trade Zones - as they operate at present in South East Asia - into Britain. The proposal, at present under discussion the Department of Trade, will establish six large zones next Britain's largest ports.

Conglomerates of merchant banks and companies will be encouraged to buy land and build factories in these areas, which will become in effect, self-regulating enclaves of foreign capital on British soil.

All existing legislation, from Company Law to the Employment Protection Act or the Health and Safety Act would not apply inside the Zones. Even local councils and police forces would have jurisdiction whatsoever inside the enclaves. .

Wages and conditions for workers in these areas, of course, would "be determined by the natural laws of the market place" These islands of laissez-faire capitalism would act as pressure points on the rest of the economy -pushing down standards of working and living accepted for years - thus taking labour back to square one in terms of basic organisation.

Such projects as this would have been thought inconceivable only a decade ago. The project for socialists today is a simple, but hard one — the reconstruction of a broad socialist movement inside the trade unions and • the Labour *The Horwich LocO Workers Joint Action Committee pamphlet can be obtained from Dennis Green,: Horwich JAC, Horwich LocO Works, Chorley New Road, Horwich, Lancs. Tel: 26 66801 ext. 7351.

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