Build for mass pickets

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summing up the ideas of Socialist Where We Stand - 20p plus 16p postage. 'How to fight the Tories' - 10p plus 16p postage. Or the to together, for 45p including postage. From Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 PORGANISER How to fight the Tories There Where agt the ORGANISER for Fight poirs !! A MASS picket has been maintained at Willan Metals, Catcliffe, New Rotherham, since Monday this week.

On that day a non-union lorry driver with a police escort entered the strike-bound plant and took out seven tons of titanium.

The workers are in the fourth week of their strike over a management 'bonus scheme' which will effectively cut their wages by berween £70 and f40 a week.

This is the first strike at the 15 years. and support -9 s.0z-?00r work2=15 10T* They haven't had a pay rise since 1979, won't take a drop now, and are staying out indefinitely if necessary, until management agrees to take them back on pre-"bonus scheme" terms.

At first management were willing to negotiate, but broke their silence last Wednesday (7th) when the first meeting with shop stewards took place. It seems that the 24 hour picket of the gates is having its effect.

There is a meeting between officials of the strikers' union, the AUEW, and Engineering Employers' Federation representatives, on Wednesday 14th. And on Thursday the Willan Metals shop stewards are meeting with shop stewards from the other factories in the group of which it is part, the Aurora group.

Now is not the time for complacency. Pressure must be stepped up if the workers' demands are to be met. In particular workers at Willan Metals should be calling for support strike action amongst the other local firms in the Aurora group.

Willan Metals is only the first of the group's factories to be faced with the new scheme and it is vital that this battle is won now.

Financial support and boycott action has already been pledged by the other plants. This must now be turned into concrete action if wages and conditions in the Aurora group as a whole are to be defended.

Links with the local labour movement must also be pursued, and recent representations to the Trades Council built upon.

Donations to and information from: Len Wilkinson, 11 Hilltop close, Brinsworth, Rotherham, South Yorks. (tel: Rotherham 78687). side.

And another footnote. The Kuwaiti Petroleum Company has already bought Gulf Oil's chain of petrol stations in Europe. Now, according to the Sunday Times Business News (11 March), it is planning to buy its US chain, through a front company.

Capitalism on the side part 2: private enterprise in China is now estimated [by the Financial Times, March 6] to be about as widespread as it was before the Cultural Revolution.

Private businesses employ about 7½ million people - as against only 140,000 immediately after the Cultural Revolution.

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trial Organiser no.170 March 1984

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