Engineering HISTORIC HOURS BREAKTHROUGH But what more could have been won?

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week's holiday spread over four years-starting off with two extra days this year and one day each, following year.

As well as this the employers offered a basic £73 per week for skilled workers which will raise overtime pay and night shift allowance for most engineering workers.

European scale

The engineering employers are amongst the most determined of the capitalist class and they had taken a stand on the forty hour week not just in Britain but on a European scale.

In Germany a lengthy selective strike by the Metalworkers Union: failed to crack the employers.

The employers hoped at first that there would be no response to the union's call.

Then they kept publicising revolts' which were unsuccessful in most areas except where there were exceptional reasons as in BL, Cowley.

After this they tentatively turned to a policy of lock-out, first tested at the NEB-controlled Rolls Royce.

But this did not create revolts either.

Meanwhile the employers began to split. 1,000 firms conceded the full claim-including over 60 federated firms.

Very few were willing to go the whole hog and lose all their production by locking out.

The fact that under these conditions the employers were cracked shows that if the trade union leaders had responded to demands to call all-out strike action the full claim could have been won and the workers would have not been restricted to a 39-hour week for the next four years.

In reality the likes of Duffy had to be forced into action in the first place. He failed to persuade the AUEW National Committee against action. • And the action of Chapple of the EETPU in declaring, in the middle of the strike, that he would ballot his members for a return to work was clearly Cont'd p.11, col. 6