Confed Digs in on Shorter Hours

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The shorter week is now at the centre of the engineering wage claim.

Negotiations were reopened by the employers last Friday, after being faced with over 90% solidarity of engineering workers in the first of the two day strikes.

The EEF was prepared to make an improved cash offer-providing the unions were prepared to drop their demands for shorter hours and longer holidays.

INTED Birmingham engineers But also reflecting the solidarity of the action, AUEW President Terry Duffy told them that the Confederation were not interested in a simple cash settlement.

A commitment by the employers to reduce the working week was, he said, a precondition to the unions entering a new round of negotiations.

This uncharacteristic hard line by right-winger Duffy has brought a new dimension to the claim.

'Shopping list'

For too long the 35 hour week has been seen as simply a part of a 'shopping list' , to be quickly dropped with a cash compromise.

Now a strike of nearly 2m workers confronts the EEF with a shorter working week as the number one demand.

It is true that the demand has been watered down to "a move towards" the 35 hours; but after no change in the working week in the engineering industry for 15 years a break through the 40 hour barrier would be a major advance.

The pressure is on the employer. They are clinging on because they are able to keep some production going under conditions of depressed order books due to the economic crisis.

"Inundated"

Duffy has said it is "a fight to the finish". Alex Ferry, the Secretary of the Confederation, has said the action "may well be stepped up further"

Duffy has also said that the Confed has been "inundated" with demands for all-out strike action.

The Confed leadership should stop forcing workers to fight with one hand behind their backs.

Call an all-out strike now! The claim could now be won in full and a heavy blow dealt against the EEF and their backers Thatcher and Joseph. Edwardes tears out of the Mountbatten assassination last week, the forces of British repression got back into the swing of things by arresting an American television crew and three members of Sinn Fein.

Journalist Pierre Salinger, a former US Presidential aide, was held for 12 hours at the RUC's notorious Castlereagh interrogation centre. in Belfastthough he was spared the routine beating and torture meted out to republican suspects.

Violent

Republican News editor Danny Morrison and Sinn Fein members joe Austin and Richard McAuley were not so

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