The commission explained that one of the main problems, apart from that of capital investment, was the problem of selling what was produced. As a factory producing raw cloth for manutacturing factories, they were affected by any problems met by these other factories. In particular, they had to cope with the consequences of the import controls imposed on Portuguese textiles by Britain and other EEC countries, since between 40 and 60 per cent of Portuguese textile production is (or was) for export.
But they admitted that they had done nothing to build links with other workers in the industry. For them the crucial question was putting pressure on the State to intervene, financially, in order to keep the factory functioning.
Of course, it is extremely important to ensure that capital investment is found in order to safeguard the jobs. Workers cannot live on air, however revolutionary its content.
Unfortunately, one magnificent opportunity to find new means of obLaming capital mvesument was irrelrievably lost when the workers in the newly nationalised banks put forward their own plan to help the textile factories. hey understood that the question of capital investment was a extreme right-wing members of the management, the struggle developed into one for workers contro. At the
Red Weekly 26 August 1976