Concern at Laurence Scott sell out bid
Socialist Organiser1981 1981-08-06Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 12
As an engineering union member 1 would like to express my concern at the so called compromise arrived at by our executive over the Laurence Scott dispute.
Here we have 650 workers giving a practical lead in the struggle that all union leaders say they support: the struggle against unemployment.
Our own general secretary, John Boyd, has gone on record time and time again in our journal condemning unemployment.
The Laurence Scott workers gave him and the rest of our executive the chance to do something about it.
They have: by arranging sell-out of workers who had been on strike for 13 weeks they have attempted to add another 650 to the dole queue and demoralise other AUEW members fighting redundancy.
I would particularly like to draw attention to the role played by my executive member, Ken Cure.
An executive member is supposed to argue for and defend the aspirations of the members to the rest of the executive.
Yet when a mass meeting of Scott's workers overturned the sell-out arrangements and clearly made their wishes felt, Ken Cure went right on defending an agreement that he had no mandate from the members to negotiate the first place.
After 13 weeks of struggle the Laurence Scott workers want more than a return to work with no guarantees whatsoever of continued employment. They want their jobs.
Is there no such thing as union democracy? Do John Boyd, Terry Duffy and Ken Cure believe in union democracy? If so why won't they accept the workers' verdict and continue to support the strike?
What's all this about the workers would support us it we give a lead?' Boyd and Duffy have been all too ready to give a lead - in the wrong direction.
ROBERT BROUGHTON Manchester 15 AUEW