Support Sandersons week action

Scan page 10

.£1.10 . £2.20 . £5.50 £10.00 The strike for union recognition and reinstatement of a sacked shop steward at Sandersons Forklift Trucks is now in its sixteenth month.

The strikers have shown tremendous strength and their spirits remain amazingly high, but the strike is destined to end in the same manner as Grunwicks unless the TGWU national leadership are forced to step up the action.

The picketing and limited blackings such. as that by workers at Fords, Basildon, which the strikers themselves organised, is having a crippling effect on production at the factory.

Step up action

The main task now is to force the TGWU to step 1 p the action so that support Is no longer scattered ans spast iodic.

The factory owner, Roy to conduct a ballot of the workforce, which went in favour of the union, he took up his real position and called a meeting of the workforce to tell them they could have a union, but if they did he would sack them.

Faced with this type of opposition the TGWU should be using all its power to gain a victory, but up to now union officials have acted abysmally, advising them to cut the size of the picket, even telling some that they should get part-time jobs.

Lump sum Sacked steward, Phil Gillat's case has even been upheld by an Industrial Tribunal and a lump sum of £2,500 paid over to him by Sanderson as compensation.

Whilst not aiding the fight for reinstatement, since these bodies have no powers to get people their jobs back, the money carries severe dangers, since it throws a shadow over the struggle by putting a weapon into the hands of the and risks splitting the unity of the strikers themselves.

The only principled way to deal with this now would be for the money to be put immediately into the strike fund to assist the financing of the struggle.

Requests for a levy to finance the strike have been consistently refused at Regional and National level.

And the inevitable confusion has arisen over the date of a week of action originally called for 21-25 August, but put back to 11-15 September at the request of Moss Evans.

Evans has also given over responsibility for the strike to from Cowley Ron Todd, now TGWU National Organiser and formerly Secretary of the London Region.

However no hopes should be raised by this move. For the last four months before his promotion up the bureaucratic ladder, Todd presided over the Garners strike in Central London, where the issues are almost identical to Sandersons, not least in the adamant refusal of the full-time officials to organise the measures required for victory.

Every effort must now be made to make the mass picketing during the week of action a success and branches should be demanding intensification of blacking plus the imposition of a levy.