EXAMPLE For every worker facing redundancies and pay cuts in the present recession, it is the steelworkers who are providing an example of how to fight back to defend jobs and living conditions.
Photo: WORKERS PRESS an end to unofficial strikes, and the setting up of joint managementunion teams to carry through these agreements. It is only the threat of workers spreading the strikes that has so far stayed the pen of Mr Bill Sirs, leader of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, from signing away the future of his workers.
BSC talk in the abstract about the need to double productivity. They Some of the people involved in the recent elections seen at a mass meeting in 1970. WR Cowiey senior steward Reg Parsons is centre with back to camera. Alan Thornett is on the right in a donkey lacket. Speaking is R. Fryer like Shotton and Corby will have their old open hearth steelmaking good deal of the 44,000 redundancies will come from P member Tom White is on the left in a white jacket.
There is no other way that productivity levels can be doubled. Places plant closed down, leaving only a few hundred men to carry out secondary finishing operations. This is where a Benson Report ten years ago. It is to carry out this plan that Wilson nationalised the industry in 1967. But it is only now, with the international recession and the betrayals of the Labour leadership throwing the working class onto the defensive, that the BSC has judged the time ripe to make the decisive moves against the steel unions. In doing this, the BSC thought they would get the new agreement without too much trouble. After all, the ISTC has one of the most right-wing trade union leaderships in the country with no record of struggle. But the strikers in South Wales, Corby and elsewhere have upset these plans.
REJECTION Already the steelworkers have successfully fought off the BSC's demand to end the guaranteed working week - an agreement whereby the majority of steel workers get 80 per cent of their earnings in the event of a shortage of work. Rejection of all the BSC's current econCAN BE WON The battle in steel could provide every worker with concrete proof that the fight against redundancy the Wilson Government and its attacks on the working class can be carried through to victory. It could be the first step in turning the tide against the bosses. What is more, it could provide an example of the sort of brogramme which everv worker needs to fight redundancy * No abolition of weekend working * Reject BSC's 'economy at the expense of the workers' package. * For a national steel strike. * Open the books - for a workers enquiry into the BSC's real plans for closures and redundancies. * Work-sharing with no loss of pay for all workers - the only guarantee of jobs. * Nationalise the private sector.
A workers' plan for steel.