[An appeals hearing SEM scheduled for the Friday…]
Socialist Press1980 1980-12-10Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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An appeals hearing SEM scheduled for the Friday.
Immediately they heard the news, Wednesday's night shift on trim and Metro assembly struck.
On Thursday morning they mounted a picket on the gates. . But that morning no lead at all was given by the Works Committee.
Word was passed around the tracks from leading members of the Works Committee advising them to work normally and await the outcome of the appeal.
Later in the day the Works Committee decided to advise night shift workers on Thursday to work normally in order to "avoid being isolated"
At the same time they did their best to confuse workers and defuse resistance by setting out to "persuade" management to postpone the appeal for one week whilst the trade unions carried out an inquiry into the incident. • Full time officials and convenors are now set up on the plant conducting this inquiry.
The nine victimised workers meanwhile are suspended on full pay and denied access to the plant.
As every militant knows, suspension on full pay is the kiss of death to a victimised worker. It isolates the worker from the workforce and, by ensuring that he receives full wages, makes it doubly hard to secure strike action in his support.
The Longbridge sackings are thus following the well-worn path of a classic union-busting victimisation. Exactly similar tactics of delay and confusion were used by Duffy and the AUEW leadership to carry through the victimisation of Longbridge convenor Robinson a year ago.
These victimisations must be stopped. There has as yet been no joint shop stewards meeting called in, Longbridge to discuss the victimisation; one must be called immediately.
Action must be called defence of the nine before it too late.
TGWU members
. The four stewards victimised are all members of the TGWU.
Moss Evans, arguing that shop stewards must be defended, correctly sanctioned official strike action in defence of Derek Robinson-who was a member of the AUEW.
Evans must now be forced to immediately do the same to defend the four stewards and four other TGWU members if they are not all fully reinstated at Friday's appeal hearing.