[Sheffield's skyline: private steel firms side-by-side with the…]
Socialist Press1978 1978-09-27Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
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Sheffield's skyline: private steel firms side-by-side with the state sector top of the 100,000 jobs already lost since 1967 when 14 'private companies' were 'nationalised' with the payment of enormous sums of compensation to the shareholders.
Rationalisation
These latest proposals, however, form only a small part of the Labour government's plans to impose a new round of attacks on the whole working-class, combining wage control with massive rationalisation' and speed-up in the public sector.
At the centre of this are the heavy industries, British Leyland, British Rail, British Shipbuilders and the National Coal Board. These cutbacks-involving some of the biggest steel users in Britain-will directly lead to further problems for B.S.C. and threaten to destroy the very existence of this 'nationalised' industry 3333
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AMATEDL UNDSE ANSENS BOSSES with the unions involved not having lifted a finger to prevent this!
The guaranteed week in fact has diverted from the necessary fight for work-sharing • on lull pay to defend all jobs in the steel plants.
The Iron and Steel Act 1967 left in private ownership over 100 companies and their subsidiaries, covering some 160 workers. Although in terms of tonnage production of crude steel the share of the private sector is relatively small-about 10% of the national total-it nevertheless accounts for about 4¼ of Britain's deliveries of finished steel products and for over one-third of the value of the industry's FiE:
to provide the cash necessary to run the entire steel industry under workers' management as part of a socialist plan of production tailored to need and not profit.
What is striking about the history of trade unionism in British steel is. the lack of any tradition of Sharp contrast This contrasts sharply with the steel unions of Germany and the U.S.A.
The largest union in British steel is the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (formerly BISAKTA), created in 1919 as an amalgam of some 14 craft unions and organising some