[TWO pickets were knocked down last week by…]

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TWO pickets were knocked down last week by a car driven by Alessandro Saccomando, owner of the Carousel Wafers factory in Glasgow where nine members of the TGWU have been on strike since the end of July for union recognition and reinstatement.

The incident took place on August 16, when over 50 trade unionists and Labour Party members turned up to support a mass picket called by the strikers.

Some of the scabs taken on to replace the sacked workers turned back when confronted'by the picket.. And delivery drivers who, in previous weeks, had crossed the picket lines also turned back in the face of the mass picket, the first of a series which the strikers will be calling.

But very few members of the strikers' own union, the TGWU, turned up for the picket. Whilst the union has declared the dispute official, is organising raising donations, and is paying strike-pay, it still seems to be dragging its feet over implementing • conference policy to defy Tebbit's antipicketing laws.

Saccomando is clearly, coming under increasing pressure as the dispute continues. The dispute is now gaining widespread publicity, particularly the atrocious working conditions in the factory, and the factory's output has clearly fallen.

Saccomando has also backtracked on his previous refusal to talk to the Arbitration & Conciliation Advisory Service (ACAS). Talks were held with ACAS last Thursday (August 18) though nothing came of them: wearing old clothes and leaving off his gold rings and bracelets, Saccomando pleaded poverty and claimed that he only took home £40 a week himself!

POEU engineers in London have escalated the fight against the privately owned Project Mercury by commencing blacking action against the main offices of Project Mercury's financial backers, BP, Cable and Wireless and Barclays Bank.

This is a dramatic step for the POEU, a union which has very little history of industrial 792iBA hive The only offer he made was to hold a ballot in the factory. to see if the workforce wanted a union. But since he has declared sacked all workers who wanted to be in a union, the offer cannot be described as generous, even by Saccomando's standards.

Support for the strikers continues to grow. They now speak at about ten trade union/ Labour Party meetings a week. Thousands of leaflets have been distributed locally appealing to people to help out in the picketing. And there is growing support for the mass pickets.

some of them are bastards, said one of the pickets. But the police are clearly hostile to masspicketing and have been threatening arrests under Tebbit's laws if there are more than six on the picket line.

There are a number of steps which can be taken to help the strikers win. *invite speakers to Labour Party/ trade union branch meetings and raise donations (contact. TGWU, 216, West Regent St., Glasgow G2), *support blacking of the firm's supplies, the flour, sugar and bicarbonate of soda come from large firms (Hovis, Carr's, Tate and Lyle, ICI) which are unionised and where blacking can be organised: *support the picketing; particularly on the days of the mass pickets, and move motions to the Glasgow TGWU District Committee and Glasgow Trades Council demanding that they mobilise for mass pickets, *demand that the TGWU and the STUC as a whole actively implement their policy commitments to defy the Tories' anti-union legislation. strugglt.

It shows the determination of POEU members (particularly in the London area which has one-third of the total POEU membership) to keep BT part of the public sector and to fight in defence of jobs.

The new Broad Left-dominated NEC officially called the industrial action in consultation . with the branches involved. THE workforce at Cammell Lairds shipyard, Birkenhead, are facing a British Leylandstyle management offensive on their working conditions, living standards and jobs.

The management, under British Shipbuilders and government instructions, have issued their 23 point "survival plan" for the yard.

The plan includes:

*The introduction trades;

*Management's right to engage sub-contractors when and where they feel like it;

*Management's right to allocate an individual work outside their normal trade;

*Management's right to direct labour to any area they feel necessary;

*Craftsmen to work with or without mates as required by management;

*Introduction of new procedures, techniques, machinery and equipment where manageTHE • welders at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead shipyard have won their demand for a coded welding allowance on the gas jack-up rig. This came at the end of four weeks of strike action.

As recent readers of SO will have seen, management had refused to negotiate with the welders while they were on strike, but had to back down in the face of united action by the welders and support from other workers in the yard.

The welders won their demand of 15p per hour for ment see fit;

*No strikes for an initial STRIKE ACTION over jobs and working conditions at Swan Hunter's Neptune yard last week was symptomatic of the conditions created by a new management offensive.

LOL DUFFY looks at the new 23-point BS 'Survival Plan' ', and the militant mood of the workers at Cammel Laird on Merseyside.

period of two years;

*Manning levels to be decided by management for all work.

The first move came after the summer holidays when the managing director, Mr. A.D. Lambie, summoned the workforce to meetings in the works canteen on Monday and Tuesday 8 and 9 August, to inform them of the loss of £12½ million achieved by Lairds in the 1982-3 financial year and to impress upon them the need to become more competitive and change those employed on coded welding, and 10p per hour for those who had passed the coded test, but who were not actually doing coded welding.

Although the welders won this dispute, there are more problems to come for Cammell Laird workers who face 1,800 redundancies in October.

If the fight against redundancies is carried out in the same way that the welders fought this battle, then the Tory plans to dismantle and sell off the British Shipbuilding industry can be defeated. their ideas on working practices.

At these meetings the blame for the state of Lairds and the industry was put fairly and squarely at management's door by a number of speakers from the floor - to the applause of their workmates.

The meetings had been called without involving the shop stewards committee in an attempt to use the workforce to pui pressure on the stewards to accept the changes proposed by management.

On 18 August the 23 point survival plan was presented to the Confed shop stewards negotiating committee. A couple of days later, management issued the survival plan to 1300 BOILERMAKERS at Cammell Lairds shipyard, Birkenhead, returned to work on August 26 after an eight-day strike.

The strike started when 40 boilermakers were taken off pay for refusing to work on deckhousing sections of ships. Such work had been blacked by the boilermakers because management had breached an agreement and failed to consult with the shop stewards before putting it out to sub-contractors.

A mass meeting instructed the stewards to insist on an agreement with financial penalties if management sub-contracted without consultation. But in negotiations during the strike management would not budge. They refused to agrec to a penalty clause, and refused to say that agreement must be reached with the, "oilermakers' stewSWAN HUNTER SHIPREPAIRERS TYNE L* Swan Hunter: explosive anger everyone in the yard as a Ders bulletin.

Management want 1,800 redundancies to go through at Cammell Lairds before March 1984. If thy get agreement on just one or two of their "survival plan" points this number will be increased significantly.

The stewards committee is totally opposed to management's proposals and is in the process of developing ways of countering the offensive.

There is still a decision taken by the shipyard unions nationally that if there is one enforced redundancy all the yards will be taken over and occupied. This decision must be given the full support of all shipyard workers as one part of the fightback.

ards before any sub-contracting.

• Despite this, and despite protests from some stewards, the stewards' committee refused to give a lead to the mass meeting on Thursday August 25. They decided to make no recommendation.

Speakers from the floor of the mass meeting demanded to know what the stewards felt, but they were fobbed off by the full-time official.

In the end the mass meeting decided, with a sizeable minority against, to return to work on a document which is worse than the agreement they had before they went on strike.

There is no doubt that the mood of the mass meeting was one where the membership were prepared to fight if they were given a lead. The shop stewards' committee failed to give that lead.

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The reaction of the police varies. 'Some of them are okay,

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