Walk-out over wage freeze

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Nurseries: How & 600 workers employed at an engineering firm in Hull have come out on indefinite strike.

This action came after management at the firm had put up notices informing the workforce that they would receive no annual wage increase, and 10% redundancies througnout the offices and works, with the continuation of the four day week.

The firm, Priestmans, which makes cranes and diggers, is part of the giant Acro group who areas.

The notices were put up on Friday 27 March and provoked an immediate walk-out by all the shopfloor workers, followed by a mass meeting on the following Monday of the membership of all six unions involved.

This meeting voted unanimously for indefinite strike action until all redundancy notices are withdrawn and negotiations begin on a realistic wage increase.

Last year the firm made 65 workers redundant and put the workforce on a four day week.

The workers reluctantly agreed to the short time working with the view of averting more redundancies; but since then production has actually increased though a large majority of the workforce are in such a poor financial position that they were claiming family income supplement, rent rebate, and free milk.

The management, seeing the past cooperation of the workers as a sign of weakness have been encouraged to take this action to further exploit the workforce.

Robot welders

Perhaps more important is the fact that the management are keen to introduce new machinery into the plant such as robot welders, which would greatly reduce the workforce, and would be met with massive resistance.

To carry out such measures the management would have to inflict a major defeat on the trade union movement within the plant, and this could be one of the reasons for this present The strikers have put a 24 hour picket on the gates but the office staff who are in the main non-trade unionists have scabbed by crossing the picket lines to go into work.

Up to now the strike has yet to be made official and though the strike committee see this as one of their priorities they have stressed that they intend to control the action, and in fact refused to allow a tull time official to address the mass meeting.

The strikers have also been drawing support from local trade unionists and have been given full backing by the Hull dockers and the Hull TUC who have also offered to provide the use of the TUC rooms in Hull.

They have also had some contact with other plants in the Acro group with the view of getting a guarantee that they will black any work usually done by Priestmans.

At a special EC meeting of the Hull TUC which was addressed by a member of the strike committee it was agreed that the Priestmans banner would lead a demonstration against unemployment held on Saturday April 4 and that there would be a joint collection shared between the Priestmans strikers and the Hull unemployed union.

The following week will be crucial as attitudes harden, and the danger to the solidarity of the strikers will come from the trade union bureaucracy who in past disputes at the plant have divided the workforce and brought about defeats.

This must be resisted at all costs, by the strike committee continuing to control the strike.

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