An international fight

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we can win.

My members voted overwhelmingly in support of taking any action that the Shipbuilding Negotiating Committee calls to achieve our claim.

I think we must occupy the yards, to prevent management and others on the staff coming in to carry out their campaign against the unions. Management have from 4.30 every night to sort out their tactics for the next day and plan their scurrilous propaganda. How much easier would it be for them with all day free.

Management claim we have been offered a £7 a week increase plus fringe benefits. We would certainly like to know what those fringe benefits are. Maybe Lairds management sees the loss of 1400 jobs by March as a fringe benefit. - Previous owners before nationalisation, and the government sins gave taken profits out of the industry and put nothing back ins Be all hope there will be a settlement, but not at any price. There are many dangerous points in management's proposals, not least of which is subcontracting - which could turn the yards into sub-assembly points.

in Lairds the Confed stewards have been making links with those willing to support us in the fight against redundancies and closure. A sub-committee of the Confed committee has now established close links with the County Coun ci and the employment resource group to work out ways of organising around workers' interests. BEHIND the confrontation in British Shipbuilders is a major shift in the international division of labour. -In 1926, the UK was still building nearly 40% of world ship tonnage. As late as 1973, Western Europe still held over 40% of the market.

But by then Japan had already taken the lead, building more ships than all Western Europe put together.

Since 1973 Western Europe has faded to a minor position in world shipbuilding, and even Japan has come under pressure from countries like South Korea. Japan still took 63% of the tonnage of new orders in 1983: but, as the Economist reports: "In a discreet way, Japanese firms now grumble that they cannot compete, using arguments that echo many a British shipbuilder of the 1960s" South Korea had 19% of new orders in 1983, the EEC 5½%, and Brazil 2½ %. Other major producers are Taiwan, Spain, Poland and China.

Shipbuilding is one of the small range of manufacturing industries in which Third World producers have gained leading positions - textiles, clothing, and electronics being the others.

Combined with the shift in production to East Asia has been a slump in the whole industry. Shipbuilding had a boom in the early "70s. With the oil price rises and the stagnation of world trade since then, order books have shrivelled.

World order books totalled 133 million tons dwt in early 1974, but now stand at around 30 million. There is reckoned to be about 40% excess capacity world-wide, and even the Japanese shipbuilding industry has halved its person-hours since 1975.

Shipbuilding in Britain developed when Britain was still a leading industrial power. Strengthened by this country's domination of the world market, and later the safe markets provided by Britain's big navy and by the Empire/ex-Empire, trade unions in British shipbuilding were able to gain a strong position - without bothering themselves too much about politics or about internationalism.

Bust down

Now the employers are out to bust down wages and conditions in British shipbuilding to something nearer the level in South Korea or Taiwan, where brutal dictatorships prevent effective trade union organisation.

To demand the British capitalist state protects British shipbuilding against Asian competition is no answer: it can't and it won't. In shipbuilding, a world industry perhaps more than any other, international workers' solidarity - a united fight to protect and improve conditions for all shipyard workers - is indispensable.

Mù press toan Tored Morld 20- Ju Weater Europe Bouth Karen Brazil 01- source, 13747578°

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160 January

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SHIPBUILDING QUTPUT