Steel Strike Threat to Tory Rule

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produces not for social needs Will he call action on pay?

KEE МАТУ ПСИРОСТИ CORBY STEELFLO 002 WORKERS SAY If the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation carries out its threatened national strike on January 2, the ensuing battle will amount to a frontal challenge to the political and economic policies of the Tory government.

The strike has been called as an angry reaction to the British Steel Corporation's insulting 2% pay offer, which was announced simultaneously with proposals to sack another 32,000 steelworkers in a new wave of closures® throughout the Viability The danger for the Tories is that for the first time a right wing union leadership has been forced to fly in the face of the massive financial crisis facing the employers and to declare their determination to defend their members' living standards, regardless of the "viability" of the Corporation.

And this defiance, reflecting shop floor militancy, could well inspire thousands of other workers to take up the fight against Tory policies in industry and the public sector.

The ISTC, representing half of BSC's 180,000 workforce, is Staggered-Joseph on its own in a position to bring steel production to a halt.

The result could be the first national steel strike since 1926.

Within days, production of cars, components, domestic appliances and other engineering products would begin to grind to a halt.

And the Tories would be faced with an acute dilemma. With the ISTC leaders already rejecting out of hand any marginal improvement on the offer, or a new productivity deal, they would have to choose between two evils:

*They could sanction an increased offer to the ISTCwhich would spur on workers throughout the public sector and in other allegedly nonprofitmaking sectors of industry to struggle in defence of their living standards.

*Or they could instruct BSC to stand firm, and face a crippling strike which would immediately emerge as the focus of resistance to the Tories battery of attacks on the whole working class.

Already ISTC leaders are threatening to mount pickets on docks and steel stockholders to prevent the movement of scab steel supplies.

The strike could thus provide an advanced demonstration of the impracticability of upholding the proposed new anti-picketing laws-or produce pitched battles between workers and police that would rapidly spread in scope, drawing support from wide layers of the labour movement.

There seems little doubt that both BSC and the Tory government are staggered by the ISTC Easy meat After years of the most cringing collaboration with every cutback, closure, and speed-up attempt by management, and with six "worker directors" helping to carry them through on the BSC board, the steel unions must have seemed easy meat for a rock-bottom ST The threatened Corby plant wage offer.

As ISTC leader admitted:

"Our cooperation in closure of steelworks has apparently been interpreted as a sign of weakness."

In fact the GMWU, with 13,000 members in the steel industry, has lived up to management expectations and denounced the ISTC strike call, pledging itself instead to "negotiate" on the derisory 2% offer!

But after making increasingly militant threats of action to prevent the closure of the Corby steelworks-action that has not yet taken place-the ISTC executive clearly feel unable to sell a 2% pay offer together with a string of new closures and redundancies to an angry shop floor membership.

Now that they have called the strike, and named the date, only a brazen and humiliating betrayal on their part or a retreat by the employers in the next two weeks seem to offer a way out.

The strike call transforms the scene for thousands of workers. It offers a much needed lead for action to defend jobs and living standards in other "non viable" industries.

Indeed there could scarcely be a clearer example than BSC of the way in which the crisis of profitability is forcing the capitalist class to destroy whole sections of the productive forces and massively step up the exploitation of the workforce, in order to compete with its rivals.

BSC itself stands to lose £350 million in the current financial year. Antiquated equipment means that it only produces 108 tons of steel per man-year as against 180 in France and over 200 in Germany:

It is so uncompetitive that, with the value of the pound making imports even cheaper, BSC is finding itself wiped out of even the home market.

Ford in Britain, for instance, is planning to cut its use of British steel from 70,000 to 26,000 tonnes next yearreplacing it by cheaper imported steel from Europe.

Overall, BSC expects demand to plummet next year to 15 million tons-against a productive capacity of 22 Bill Sirs: will he chicken out again million tons. Only two out of 14 centres are making a profit.

Hence the hell-for-leather scramble by. BSC management to axe the workforce by over 50,000 and shut down the least profitable and least utilised plants, while the bankers and steel users continue to cream profits off the backs of steel workers.

Nor could a programme of import controls hope to preserve jobs in steel: it would merely inflict additional unemployment on workers elsewhere. British workers should instead link up with workers overseas in a common struggle against their exploiters.

The falling demand for steel is not because there is less social need for goods containing steel: it is the result of the capitalist system, which but simply for profit!

For workers to kowtow WORKERS SAY!Page 2 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 12 Decem Wednesday 12 December 1979

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The split in the USFI-a letter and reply Page

Cont'd p.11, col.1 QUEL • 1 RUNDOWN VORKERS SAY!- CORDY STEELE

CLOSURE OSU RUNDOW CLOSURE Mass pressure on ISTC leaders for action