confronted with this (for them) impossible choice by the demand for the sliding scale of hours.
This could work as follows. If one mill in a complex is to be closed, then all the workers should struggle in the complex on the basis that the labour time saved should be spread across the entire complex, thus resulting in a shorter working week for all the workers. This unifies the workers. All the workers can easily understand that it is to their advantage not only to get a shorter working week but to force the issue of the scale before BSC gets round to closing their particular piece of plant. They can also avoid all the demoralising business of haggling with one another over who is to get what job, working excessive overtime to get their names on shortlists, etc. In the case of SPT and Park Gate, for example, the same idea can overcome the disunity of the workers. Instead of fighting among ourselves for a piece of equipment, fight together for a common aim, after which BSC can arrange its equipment as it pleases!
A struggle conducted on this basis, not by steelworkers alone, but with the help of the many thousands of other workers affected by steel closures in the surrounding area, would change the balance of forces in such a way that BSC would either have to grant the principle of the sliding scale - the right to a job - which would be a tremendous encouragement to workers elsewhere in the industry to take up the same demand or grant at least a reprieve instead. If the same thing was then put into practice by the workers in plant after plant, BSC's closure programme would either grind to a halt or it would have to grant the principle to the workforce as a whole.. This is the way to beat BSC. But this can only be done if: (a) the workers understand that the aim of reorganisation from BSCs point of view is not for the purpose of getting rid of outdated" a rationalisation. Compare for instance the plant, or because the product of this or that plant is not profitable - rather, it is because too many men are producing steel under the present international competitive conditions; and if (b) the steel militants can organise themselves on an inter-regional basis. While there is absol utely no reason why the workers in a plant facing total closure should not adopt exactly the same strategy, it is clearly that much more difficult, and various local "solutions", which aren't solutions at all, more readily appeal to workers faced with a massive catastrophe than those in a stronger position. This is all the more likely because the closure of a steel town mobilises the entire labour force in the district, workers who are not so immediately aware of the national situation in steel. The leadership of such struggles easily falls to MPs and the like who are the incarnation of localism.
NATIONAL LEADERSHIP This is why it is critically important to build a national leadership of steel militants who can pose an alternative line to that of the union bureaucracy, and who understand that the struggle in steel should be used as an oppor tunity an opportunity missed at UCS - to activate the entire labour movement for a struggle against rationalisations and redundancy on a class basis and not on appeals by this or that group of workers to the market peculiarities of this or that industry. The struggle in steel could be used to show how the slogan of the "right to work' can be concretely realised - not on the basis of demanding the full employment' which the ruling class was able to give in the Fifties, but on the basis of struggle. Steel militants in various parts of the country are making an effort to form a national rank and file organisation with a functioning national paper. For further information, write to: Ron Thompson, 64 Gros venor Road, Rotherham.
STEEL
The Coming Redundancies and How to Fight Them (includes 'Confidential Report' on closures)
An IMG Publication 15p Essential reading for all steel workers and all those concerned with the fight against capitalist rationalisation in steel, this pamphlet was written with the aim of helping workers in the steel industry to work out a strategy for fighting the redundancies which have now been announced Order from: IMG Publications, 182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
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ration for the next ten years. This it has understated the figures.