Rolls Royce workers fight back

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were saying they would not Jock out inevitabie. plant. ly using the strike to push We've only been kept official, and in spite of the pushed its luck once too through the 500 redundan- had ibe 500 redundancies of because it suits manage- ment-they're still getting •Witch-huntRY the strikers "have 40p plus postage often and is receiving the cies announced in Septemkind of treatment it has be in the atsonce of any about the latest speed-up; that's ove then we're "held last I.m: 28 Middle Lape, London Na announcement ofitbe spéeda hologal tips afficials, workers Immediately after's ther Flead-front the convenor or i. This makes all the morestfect wiener happens soapermpelmingly continue. ·18 TAN- COMER it is inseparable from this along with the last job. We'rer: mass r meeting *3*3 notto end cout on ther iThursday, the uto' again voted 4hoc ups, the production opera***- are grabbing redundancy amazing the allitude of locaf? weight as well go these the stoke.. tives held a mass meeting money while it is still on Hall, Porchester Rd, Londo W2.

South West London Socialist Organiser meeting with John O'Mahony (Socialist Organiser EB) plus a BL shop steward: Tuesday Nov. ember 17, from 8pm at the Fox and Hounds, Upper Richmond Rd (near Putney BR station).

Liverpool Socialist Organise meetings:

Thursday at 7.30 at the Swan Hotel, London Rd. Nov.5: The Russian revolution, the rise of Stalinism, and Trotskyism.

Nov.12: Bennism and the need to organise the Left. Nov.19: What is fascism?

Oxford Socialist Marxist classes.

Oxford Community Centre Wednesdays, 8pm at 44b Princes St:

Nov.18: The Russian Revolution Dec.2: The crisis of the 4th Dec.16: The nuclear threat.

The Campaign for Democratic Rights in Turkey is organising a conference for Saturday December 12, from 10.30 to 5pm at NUFTO Hall, Jockeys Fields, London WCtr Labour movement organisations are invited to write to the CDDRT, 29 Parkfield St, London N1, for credentials. Delegate's fee is £3. "YOU can get punched on the jaw so many times before you punch back, you can only be hit so often before you take a stand. And that's what has happened here."

This is how one of the shop stewards at the Rolls Royce plant at Hillington (Glasgow) summed up the background to the strike which began there on Tuesday 20 October when management cut by an average of 72% the standard times allowed for jobs on the production line.

Recent years have seen a succession of speed-ups, minimal wage increases, cut-, backs in the workforce and a general worsening of working conditions at the mlant But now management has deserved all along. 135, where they voted overwhelmingly for strike action and • Walked out straight away. Management has reacted to the strike by adopting the Michael Edwardes approach. Notices were posted up around the factory claiming that the strike was endangering the factory's future and could lead to its closure.

Denounced McLean, head of Rolls. Royce operations in Scot-. land, denounced the workers fightback as: "A mean and contemptible demand for money" and threatened to transfer all work being done at Hillington to factories in England.

Management are cynicaloffer.

If management is successful in pushing through the 72% speed-up, then it will inevitably lead to even more job losses, since a smaller workforce will be required to produce the same amount of work being done at present.

"They «Then ran't change the times and keep on the same workforce. It will mean another loss of jobs and that's what we're fighting about," a shop steward told Socialist Organiser.

Bosses at the plant are also refusing to begin negotiations about this year's pay rise (assuming they do actually offer a rise) until the strike is over.

Just as last month, they begin negotiations until they they wanted.

So the strike is not just shop stewards' convenor and Communist Party member George McCormack.

AUEW full-timer Gavin Laird reacted to the walkout by lining up with management. In an open letter to the workers he claimed that management was perfectly within its rights under the terms of last year's pay agreement to implement the speed-up.

Instead of working to bring the rest of the factory out in support of the 1500 strikers McCormack was quite prepared to let them carry on working, so that stockpiled production could be sent out.

This made an eventual _LI.

workin out But once: media strike as well" said the shop steward only days before the inevitable lock-out happened.

Last Wednesday (28 October) management announced they were laying off the 2,500 workers not on strike. MoCormack didn't seem to be perturbed by the lock-out. Hours after the announcement he was meeting with management and AUEW officials (the very ones who refused to make the strike official) to try and engineer a return to work.

Overwhelmingly

But inspite of the lack of any lead from McCormack, in enite of the refusal of the AUEW to make the strike the "mas's"

10.

They would do well to follow the , example of Waltham Forest council, who have made no cuts at all in public expenditure.

Councillors in Barking should take notice of their comrades in other boroughs and join in a unified campaign against the government's plans to undermine state educational provision, health and social services.

NUT members in the Labour Party should make sure that motions urging this approach are sent from their CLPs to the forthcoming Regional Council Special Meeting on 12 December.

fight for a WORKERS Organiser Pamphlet SOVERNMENT ÇAer-AB from Socialist Organiser, P20S 40%0

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 5 November 1981 Puse 15 on the picket li while the officials do nothing but fuss about tribemals ON TUESDAY October 13 41 trade unionists were fined a tele of v4,0501by marnock The previous week the High Court in Edinburgh had imposed fines totalling £300 on five others.

The 46 are members of the Boilermakers' Society, arrested and charged with 'breach of the peace ' in September of last year during the Hunterston oil rig yard dispute.

Two other members pleaded not guilty in KilThe Hunterston dispute began as a fight for safer workin conditions; rapidky 82 so a fight for Teletel sier management had sacked all 900 strikers, and for trade union democracy.

On Thursday August 28 last year, the yard walked out in protest at the unsafe working conditions.

But union officials met the bosses and issued a joint statement accepting:

• no change in working conditions 'until the appropriate time'.

been silent a isation, and unionists in reports.

In a military-style operation carried out on WednesBe ponce arrested Cinema were charm (had the sequel to the arrona was a fresh attempt by the union bureaucrats to force their members to return to work..

Lemmings

The new conditions for a return to work agreed by them and the bosses now also included: cutbacks in the workforce at the yard, the use of sub-contract labour, and individual novement's leaders have sout the carve-up, victimprosecution of 48 trade Scotland. Stan Crooke " employment"

Un Monday October 20, the Boilermakers'teEr TE were finally into a return to nei bosses terme. 300p ent jobs at the yard were lost, the more militant workers were sacked, union organisation was smashed, sub-contract labour was brought in and strikes were effectively banned.

But the bureaucrats had not yet finished their dirty work. After the Hunterston ex shop stewards organised a meeting in Glasgow on Monday November 17, Three months NATIONAL UNION NE OSERY & KATWEAR WOWNE HOSTER 3 KIT RON OF NOREDE

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