Strike over no smoking a rule

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HADDOW, Aird and Crerar (in Newmilns, Ayrshire) is one of those firms which really cares about the health of its employees. So much so that they suspend them for 3½ days if they're caught smoking.

At the end of October, Andrew Black was given a 3½ day suspension for smoking outside of the smoking area. In fact he lit the cigarette on the way to the area and had only stopped to ask a workmate a question when spotted by Mr Allan, the firm's manager.

As soon as word got round the factory about the suspension, the weavers went on strike severity of the 'punishment' After the Executive Council of their union, the Scottish Lace and Textile Workers' Union (SLTWU), had met to consider the dispute, the strike was declared official.

Management at Haddow, Aird and Crerar responded by locking out the rest of the workforce at the factory, and also the entire workforce at an associated compstrike meant there was no work for them.

In an attempt to enforce a 3½ day suspension on someone caught smoking in an area where for the last sixty years smoking had unofficially been allowed, management was prepared to confront a strike by the weavers, and lock out nearly 100 workers.

But the union has adopted a very conciliatory approach to the dispute. Solidarity strike action was explicitly rejected: 'We ask for your support, but not for industrial action' • wrote SLTWU general secretary James MoChristie in a letter to Scottish TUC general secretary Jimmy Milne.

Notification Moreover, the union did not challenge management's 'right' to discipline a worker ('we agree that our colleague... should be punished, but not in the way he workforce had not been forewarned of the 3½ day suspension penalty: "if a course of prior notification , had been adopted, the union would have been fully behind it' (McChristie again, in a letter to management).

After a fortnight of the strike and lock-out, management backed down - but under pressure from the employers' federation in the lace industry rather than the by Mike Grayson The suspension ced to half a day.

The withdrawal of support for the Lee Jeans women by the Tailor and Garment Workers' Union, the betrayal of the Glencroft dispute by the Hosiery and Knitwear Union, and the superwet approach of the SLTWU in this dispute, underline the need for a single union for the whole of the clothing and textiles industry, on a class struggle basis and under the democratic control of its membership.

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