twice as hard for very little extra money. A man being paid £4 a day for a 5-day week would be getting £20 a week. Take away tax and insurance-that would leave about £15 and for that £15 he would work at least 60 hours. But the main problem with the lump is it is a block to trade union organisation on sites. It undermines trade union organisation and has been used to break strike. A classic example of this is the Minters dispute in South London where the men walked out over two months ago over victimisation of labourers by the employers. Minters have now brought in lump labour in an attempt to break the picket. -Why do workers go on the lump?
They can avoid paying tax and insurance stamps but this is not a gain for them but a gain for the employers because it is the employers who have to pay most towards the stamps and SET. Also if they were organised in trade unions they would get far more wages and would be in a position where they could fight to improve those wages. -How do you organise on a building site? On my site, we have held three or four canteen meetings in which we've put forward the policies of the union and stressed the need for building workers to unite. At one of these meetings a call was put forward for a "Kill the Lump" demonstration and this was carried unanimously. On Bryants job at Woodgate Valley, the largest council site in Birmingham, the management made a move to smash the trade union organisation. The management representative cnicrcu une canteen at the cnd of the tea-break and informed the site committee that they were sacked. All 200 men downed tools, the management then sacked all the men and brought in the police to remove the site committee members from the site. But they refused to go and a strike meeting was held in the canteen. Resulting from this meeting was a demand for compicte reinstatement of all the men with no loss of pay for the time they stopped work. Within two hours the management capitulated and the SCLCSS00 3035 00am - After the demonstration, what next in Birmingham? To fight lay-offs in the winter. Although we've had the only com ced a lot of building workers of the need 1000 10 01 man of the shop stewards committee has said that if and when the fiest employer lays men off because of inclement weather, we will assemble 1,000 men and march them down to his office. I don't think this will be sufficient to force the employer to reinstate those men he has laid off. I think we should fight to make "five days work or five days pay" the main demand to be taken up by the union, and it will be up to the shop stewards committee to ensure that tus acmand i tought for all ine way by every member of the union. We must forward now to fight for:
£1 an hour 35-hour week No lay-offs in the winter Full pension scheme A month's holiday with full pay Full pay during sickness and injury A closed shop in Birmingham With regard to the last demand, we intend to disregard the Industrial Relations Act in order to achieve a closed S20D.
Interviewed by Birmingham Moles Conditions in the trade are so bad that a union as bankrupt (not just financially but also politically) as the ASW is completely powerless to fight for the very basic demands that are necessary.
The lump is just one example of what building workers are up against. When a local authority (say) decides to build, it can either undertake to do the job itself, by direct labour, or as the more usual situation, give the job to a private contractor. The contractor in turn will sometimes let the job out to a smaller firm of sub-contractors, who will manage the labour side. They are paid by the main contractors, take their cut and then let the job out again to the workers who become the sub-sub-contractors on a labour only" basis. The workers thus employed work for a set price for each individual job. They are regarded by the contractor and sub-contractor as self-employed, who therefore take no interest or responsibility in his health or welfare. As well as the fact that the individual worker on the lump has no security, this labour constitutes in effect scab labour and has often been brought in to defeat strikes, etc.
But the lump is just one aspect of the conditions that the building workers must and are beginning to fight against. The individual bonus rcheme is another whereby a worker is not only pushed to the limit physically, but creates a situation where the workers are competing against one another and are thus divided. A worker is given a job to do in, say. 40 hours. If he completes this job in 20 hours, he will be paid at, say, 50p an hour, that is £10. It is then left to the management how much he will be paid per hour for the time that he has saved the Company. This is usually worked out at 50%, that is 25p an hour. So for the 20 hours he has worked, he will receive £15. If he finishes the job in 40 hours (the original time agreed), the worker not only gets no bonus, but he also probably gets the sack for not doing the job in a shorter time, thereby saving the firm's time. This system of bonus payment generally constitutes one-third of the basic wage. But because it is up to the employers to decide how much time should be allocated to each job, full advantage is taken by the management by cutting the hours allotted to each job. So if the hours for a job are cut from 40 to 30, the worker must finish the job in 15 hours to receive the same bonus of E5. But that only gives him a payment of £12.50 for the job.
It is clear that it is necessary to fight these, and other forms of blatant exploitation that exist on the building sites. The workers are divided by these means, and it is important now to organise to smash the lump and to unite all workers in the trade. But the fight against the employers cannot begin to succeed while the ASW has its present leadership. An example of the class-collaboration of the ASW occurred at the St. Thomas's Hospital site in London.
Negotiations between Laings, the main contractors, and the ASW had established in principle some kind of incentive scheme. The management refused to negotiate and so the men began a work-to-rule. The labour force was sacked and the management brought in Whelan & Grant, a lump firm. The dispute was made official by the ASW, but after three weeks the Executive called off the strike, thus allowing Whelan & Grant to operate on the site. It accepted Laing's assurances that Whelan & Grant was a member of the National Federation of Building Trade Employers (that is not labour only), although it came to light at that time that they were not in fact members. The terms of the sell-out were that Whelan and Grant should operate the National Working Rule Agreement and that they should at some later stage operate some kind of bonus scheme.
This kind of activity on the part of the present ASW leadership clearly shows that its interests do not lie with the rank and file building worker. The recent demonstration in Birmingham showed that some workers were aware of the true role of the ASW leadership. The Member of Parliament from Houghton-leSpring was received very lukewarmly and even laughed at by some workers when he suggested that the only way to kill the lump was through legislation. The speaker from UCS, in contrast, was given a good reception and the workers clearly identified their struggle with that of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. But it was Pete Carter, speaking on behalf of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee, who made the best intervention and who obviously had the sympathy of most of the men on the site. He saw an integral part of the struggle in the building trade in the fight against redundancies and layoffs. Seven sites stopped in all and building workers from all over the country came on the demonstration. Students from both Aston and Birmingham universities pledged their solidarity in a concrete way by proposina to stop lump labour from working on the campuses, as was the situation at present. The demonstration itself was very militant, and the sight of 2,000 building workers chanting "Kill the Lump" marching through the streets of Birmingham must have been an unnerving one for the few workers who continued to work. But it was after the "official" demonstration that the real indication came of the workers' determination to get rid of the lump, regardless of what their leadership said or did. 300 workers took over the main roads in the centre of the City and marched to the ATV Centre site, which is riddled with lump labour. They demonstrated effectively both to Bryants, the main contractors, and the men working there, that they were not going to tolerate such a situation. It was noticeable that the ASW bureaucrats were absent from this demonstration.
What remains to be seen now, both in Birmingham and elsewhere, is how soon the building workers see the need of building a strong union while at the same time realising that this can only be achieved within a democratised trade union. Many more sellouts on the part of the ASW, without active Workers demonstrating agdinst the Lump in Birmingham opposition from the membership, will only serve to demoralise the men. The Building Charter is perhaps a step in the right direction, but one should be clear about the role of the Communist Party in this Charter. It is interesting to note that in Birmingham, while a number of excellent rank and file militants have an allegiance to the CP, so also do a number of leading bureaucrats. And this ambiguous situation no doubt exists elsewhere. What is needed now is a clearly worked-out strategy to fight the ASW leadership, this to be seen as part of the fight against the lump, the appalling conditions, for better wages, etc. And in practice, in the day-to-day struggles that are likely to occur over the next period, the shop stewards committees must themselves take the initiative in democratising the union at site level.
T. van Gelderen P. Hampton J. Vickers GLOSSARY ABT: Association of Building Technicians ASPD: Amalgamated Society of Painters and Decorators ASW: Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers ASWCM: Amalgamated Society of Woodcutting Machinists AUBTW: Amalgamated Union of Building Trade FATU: Furniture Timber and Allied Trade Unions* GWU: General and Municipal Workers Union NAPO: National Association of Plaster Operatives NFBTE: National Federation of Building Trade Emplovers NFCU: National Federation of Construction Unions NJCBI: National Joint Council for the Building NUFTO: National Union of Furniture Trade Operatives NUPCM: National Union of Packing Case Makers T&GWU: Transport and General Workers Union TUC: Trades Union Congress SET: Selective Employment Tax *Formed by amalgamation of NUFTO and ASWCM. 1971 Made up of NFU and FBTE