Craft strike ended
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-04-28Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 14 →
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THE STRIKE by steel craftsmen in South Yorkshire is over.
At a mass meeting in Rotherham on Monday night, 25th, the strikers agreed to the shop stewards' recommendation to return to work. The strike was basically over the same issues on which ISTC members in the steel industry in South Yorkshire had struck two weeks earlier. It was a detensive strike to prevent BSC management riding roughshod over the workforce and imposing shift changes without consultation. !
The ISTC returned to work, but the craftsmen, traditionally the strongest section of steelworkers in South Yorkshire, stayed out, believing that the ISTC had given in to management - a beliet shared by many ISTC rank and file activists.
The craftsmen's leader, Bernard Connolly of the EETPU, said of the decision, "We have not gained anything. We have just defended our rights". These rights include consultation on . shift changes, consultation on redundancies, and an assurance from BSC that apprentices will not be made redundant when their apprenticeships are finished.
Given the current state of the steel industry, to defend these points is an achievement. But prospects are far from rosy.
BSC say they want 100 staff redundancies in South Yorkshire.
The strikes by the ISTC and the craftsmen have once again demonstrated the weakness of the organisation of the unions in the steel industry, particularly of the ISTC, whose leadership, under Bill Sirs, were only too eager to settle with BSC in return for very little. The craftsmen stuck it out for longer. However, until genuine ünity can be built between all sections of workers in the steel industry, and a united response instead of regional or individual plant responses, prospects will be bleak.