'big Hector's' Vision F Mass Sackings

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SUBSCRIBE THEAGHT BLANDFOIDA to Socialist Press me trial sub/six months/one year Send to Socialist Press, 31, Dartmouth Park A gauge of the type of union leader steel workers must confront if they are to defend jobs and conditions has been offered by a recent appeal from "Big Hector" Smith, leader of the Blastfurnacemen's Union published by BSC management's paper "Steel News".

"Big Hector" was urging British Leyland workers to vote 25,000 of their brothers and sisters out of a job-in order to save jobs in the steel industry!

"My plea to Leyland men is this. Back the (Edwardes] plan, get Leyland competitive again, because if you don't you'll be committing suicide, and the death of Leyland will be a devastating body blow to major suppliers like British Steel"

Spelling out his own "reluctant" acceptance of BSC's wholesale butchery of steel jobs, "Big Hector" goes on.

"It is not easy to accept rationalisation and reduced manning, in fact it's bloody painful as we in the steel industry know only too well. We've shed tens of thousands of jobs in the last few years.

"And it's especially hard for trade unionists and trade union officials to accept these changes. Their role has traditionally been to defend jobs, but unions are gradually seeing the truth that there is no point in fighting for every job if the end result is no work for anyone."

Soaring unemployment has in no way deterred "Big Hector' from his mission in life -restoring the "viability" of BSC at the expense of his members, and acting as a secondary arm of management.

"In BSC we are still demanning. My union now says to BSC 'you show us where we are overmanned on the blast furnaces or coke ovens, and we'll negotiate phasing out these jobs' "

Smith makes no bones about his nationalist alliance with British capitalism against the workers of the world:

"At the end of the day we should have a leaner, tougher organisation of dedicated steelmen who, with some of the best kit in the world-like the 10,000 tonnes a day blast furnace at Redcar-will knock the hell out of our competitors."

If Smith has his way, then, today's mass sackings at BSC will be only a prelude to tomorrow's mass sackings in the USA, Japan and West Germany!

And for the 25,000 BL workers facing the dole queue he has words of encouragement:

"So it must be with Leyland. I say to Leyland men: we know how you feel, we know the problems, but have vision! Have the courage to do what you know in your hearts has to be Trial sub (UK):

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Hill, London NW5 1HR. done. Don't be misled by the hypocrites who know that changes are necessary, but haven't got the guts to come out and say so. Twenty five thousand men may have to go, but hundreds of thousands of jobs will be made more secure."

For "Big Hector" it is a case of 'workers of the world unite with the employers'-in a cut-throat trade war in which unemployment and recession are spurred on with the aid of union leaders.

"Let us have solidaritysolidarity of purpose, steelmen and car men. To get this bloody lovely country of ours moving again."

"Car men and steel men" have a common interest alrightin throwing abject collaborators like Smith out. of their entrenched leadership positions in the labour movement.

That task needs more than • "solidarity": it needs a political alternative.

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