[Report TELECRAM 42% Action. They strike and with…]

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Report TELECRAM 42% Action. They strike and with ponents from Italy to black support from fellow trade them as well if they manage to Many unions depend on the fight for solidarity action by fellow workers purpose is to inculcate the impression in the public mind that the picket line is a site of violent and wanton destruction.

Threat to life

With that happy facility that the middle classes possess for seeing everything upside down, the picket line is presented as a murderous threat to life and limb (not to mention a denial of the personal liberty of those who wish to hurry unimpeded towards their own exploitation).

The real maiming of body and soul that daily grinds on behind those picketed gates and brought the picket into existence in the first place intrudes not at all into the anguished refiections of these formidable freedom fighters.

For whenever the social reality behind capitalism's contract with labour comes to the surface these pen pushing prostitutes find themselves to be out of ink.

To gauge the measure of the attack proposed in Prior's Employment Bill it is useful to. set up a hypothetical situation in which workers in response to an attack upon their organisation by their management retaliate with a series of actions that are all lawful under the present legislation.

Hypothesis •

Hypothetical situation. The management at one of Dunlop's plants in the Midlands sacks a shop steward. They allege persistent bad time keeping but the shop stewards' committee know that her time keeping is no better nor more than other workers who haven't received a first warning. The committee feel she has been victimised as a young militant, a potential leader in the factory who will give management plenty of trouble. Although management have not followed procedure the committee decide not to fight it that way. For some time the shop stewards committee has felt that the Dunlop management badly need a short sharp shock and they believe that this is the issue with which to administer it.

Action

unionists.

Virtually movement of are stopped management production tr the company the union th extra work. by the factory in dispute.

all supplies and goods in and out and to prevent transferring • other plants in they have asked ere to black any workers For further publicity the shop stewards send a delegation down to London to picket the company's head office.

But Dunlop have associate companies all over the world and the committee hear that some UK orders are being met by exports from an associate company in Italy.

So the committee approach dock workers to black imported components that are suspected of meeting orders usually filled The committee also feel that they should persuade the union in the company receiving comPrime target for through the docks.

Illegal Prior's Bill would have this to say about the picketing that Tories: unionisation struggles this shop stewards' committee at Dunlop's is organising:

1) the picket at the factory in dispute would be illegal-as it consists of two groups of if its picketing impeded passage of goods not involved in dispute.

10o vague An employer trying to break a picket line could just throw one extra item onto a wagon that was not involved in the dispute and he would have a case against a picket line that attempted to stop that wagon.

3) What about blacking extra work at other plants within the company? Well you can't picket those other plants-so you have to find other means of communicating with the workers at the other plants.

And just blacking extra work is too vague. Some of that extra work might not be from the plant in dispute; and if you encouraged the blacking of that, the shop stewards committee either as a body or individual members of it could be sued for damages resulting from unlawfully encouraging the breaking of contracts of employment!

4) The idea of picketing the company headquarters-which is no doubt a good way of drawing attention to the dispute-would not be allowed in this case, as the workers are already picketing their place of work.

They can't do both.

People: who would find it difficult to picket their place of work (caretakers in schools, oil OFER goods nor can transport workers refuse to carry them.

They are not, according to Prior, directly involved in the dispute; they are concerned with carriage only!

6) If the Dunlop workers felt that an Italian firm was supplying work they had previously done to one of their regular customers, they could persuade the workers at that firm to black the Italian exported components.

But they couldn't picket to help enforce the blacking; and if the firm receiving the Italian goods applied for a court injunction to prevent the blacking the judge would grant an injunction to the employer unles the Dunlop workers could show:

a) a regular contract for this work existed between the firm and Dunlop;

b) the purpose of the blacking was just to disrupt. that regular contract and not inspired by any other motive or pressure;

c) that the judge had reason to feel confident (!!) that by blacking supplies to this firm the Dunlop workers were materially improving their chances of winning their dispute.

It is not just one of these criteria but all three tests that the Dunlop workers must "pass" before a judge would decide not to grant an injunction to stop the blacking!

LIAISON

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