Screws turned on Timex sit-in

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AS THE sit-in at the Timex Milton factory in Dundee enters its fifth week, signs are that the dispute is coming to a head. Unfortunately, management is making the running.

There has been no attempt to spread the occupation, or other forms of solidarity action such as blacking, to other Timex plants, not even the second Timex plant in Dundee (Camperdown).

Last week, twenty punchcard and computer operators at the Camperdown plant (which produces computers) spontaneously blacked work transferred from the Milton plant. They were immediately suspended. Their solidarity action and management's vindictive response provided a cle • basis for linking up Camperdown and Milton into a united fight.

But the effort was never made by the union leaders. Four days after they began, the blacking and the suspensions were lifted.

The unions' tactics are still to argue that the Timex factory in Besancon in France, to which the watch-manufacturing is being transferred, is being unfairly subsidised by the French government in contravention of Common Market regulations.

Compulsory

Of the 197 workers who faced the threat of compulsory redundancy, only 120 are left in the sit-in. The decline is basically due to management's threat to sack those who refused to accept redundancy (so that they would lose their severance pay). 'CONDITIONS at the mill: workers paid £1.02/hour for a 60-70 hour week. A day shift from 7.15 am to 7.45pm, with only a half hour dinner break. No overtime rates, though overtime working, including Sundays, is compulsory.

'No guaze masks, no first aid kit, no guards on the carding machines.

A picture of life in the textile mills of Victorian England? No: a quote from a leaflet by the Aire Valley Yarns Support Committee describing conditions there which led to the current strike.

The leaflet was handed out at a support meeting in Leeds on May 7.

Liquart Ali, the sacked shop steward, explained to the meeting that they were now in the 8th week of the strike. They had kept up a 7 day a week picket, 24 hours a day, in appalling weather. The strike was official, and they needed more money as the Social Security had witheld payment to 20 involved in the occupation accepted redundancy: and so did another 40 not taking part in it.

Of the remainder of the workforce, 180 are not involved in the occupation and 200 are. These 200 have now also been threatened with dismissal.

On top of all these threats of dismissal, management has also stated that it will be taking legal actiun against 'those unlawfully occupying the Milton plant" though it has yet to specify what this legal action will involve. (Probably the serving of an injunction as at Plessey's and BL in Bathgate).

Divide

Management has also worked to divide off those in occupation from the Camperdown workers by praising the productivity and * industrial relations" record of the latter and claiming that the workers at the Milton plant brought the job losses upon themselves by their low productivity.

Finally, management is also working to deprive the sit-in of support from the rest of Dundee in general. Sinclair Research, whose pocket-size TV sets are due to be manufetured in Dundee, has claimed that the sit-in is threatening the whole project.

The Tories' Scottish Industry Minister, Alex Fletcher, will now be meeting members of the STUC General Council this Sunday (May 8) to try to get them to exert pressure to end the sit-in "for the good of their families.

They joined the union because of the factory conditions, and because they wanted to be treated like human beings. But the police have been treating them just like the bosses!

From • the beginning police were standing in front of scabs, and scab lorries, in order to get them into the factory. As support had increased the Police Task Force - the Leeds equivalent of the Special Patrol Group -arrived, and the arrests started. "This strike can be won, Liquart said, 'we are fighting, we are as strong as when we started, and with more support we can beat the scabs.?

Peter Booth, a full time Transport and General Workers' Union Textile officer for the strike spoke of the importance of the Dundee He may well find that they don't need much persuading. Denied active and meaningful support from their union leders, the Timex workers face a ruthless but skilful management which has succeeded in whittling down at least some of the support for the sit-in, and now believes the time is fast approaching for the final coup de grace.

Only a radical change in tactes by the occupation can prevent defeat, either now or in the longer term. First and foremost, the dispute must be extended to involve other Timex workers, particularly at the Camperdown plant, and a Dundee-wide propaganda campaign must be mounted to counter Sinclair Research's threats of pulling out.

Guarantees of blacking from trade unionists outside of Dundee must be fought for and won to counter Sinclair's threats.

Instead of appealing for capitalişt civil servants to investigate which government: invested what money into which factory in whatever country, the workforce must demand that the company's books be opened to trade union inspection.

And, however difficult it may prove, active support from Timex workers outside of Britain, particularly at the Besancon plant, needs to be mobilised. In the absence of an international fightback by the workers, a multinational like Timex will always succeed in playing off one workforce against another.

It needed real courage, after the loss of more than a quarter of a million jobs in the industry, to join a union and fight for the betterment of conditions.

These 21 workers were among the finest trade unionists in Britain today.

The demands of the strikers are for the reinstatement of Liquart Ali; the reinstatement of all the workers on strike; and for the recognition of the T&G.

Messages of solidarity and donations to: Aire Valley Yarn Strike Support Committee, c/o 34, Dirkhill St., Bradford 7.

Mass pickets at the factory gates at 7pm on Friday & Saturday evenings. All-day mass picket Saturday June 18.