Women Lead Way No Pay Fight

Scan page 5

MOTE MODERATE The trade union bureaucracy rest on rest on the more privileged layers of Meanwi Dagenham 140-strong wages has weeks. As the strike Not satisfied by the TUC's plan for massive wage cuts under the 4½7 pay limit, employers at the Atkins hosiery factory in Hinckley want to cut take home pay for their workers by £6 - £10!

The (mainly women) workers in the Hinckley area had to wage a bitter battle during last winter to defend jobs and protect living standards. Faced with moves' to impose speed-up and redundancies they staged a series of one-day strikes, pickets and occupations.

At the centre of these struggles was the claim for the full £6 increase allowable under the Labout government's pay laws. But it soon emerged that their fight for this was not just against management, but against the bureaucracy of the Knitwear and Hosiery Union as well.

"BEST DEAL"

Vic Towers, Secretary of the Finckley and District Branch, settled for a deal which he described as "the best deal we could get". • It gave most workers either a percentage increase or a two-part payment which in both cases meant less than the £6 limit.

Now, instead of rejecting Atkin's managements' wage-cut demands out of hand, the union leaders are desperately seeking a "compromise" figure.

While management want a 15% wage cut, an arbitration board has suggested a cut of 11½%. This has, not surprisingly, been flatly rejected by the workers.

There are no grounds on which a cut in take-home pay should be accepted. If the management are unable to maintain the full workforce at adequate rates of pay their books must be forced open'to an elected trade union committee. If the -employer really is that bankrupt, then he clearly incapable of guaranteeing jobs and wages, and must be nationalised without compensation.

MEETINGS

To put the union officiais on the spot in this fight and to lodge demands for substantial increases linked to a sliding scale of wages to protect against inflation the workers at Atkins must demand and attend regular union branch meetings.

In Liverpool women workers are again in the forefront of the struggle - this time on strike at the Dublier electronics factories in which the workforce is at least half women workers, mainly in the AUEW. They are fighting for a wage claim plus equal pay.

A strike committee statement says that the company agreed a £6 increase backdated to November -subject to Department of Employment approval. At the end of March the Department decided in the union's favour.

But when the company was called upon to pay the backdated increase they refused, saying they would appeal against the decision! And, according to the strikers, they further refused to give the women workers equal pay - at the end of last year they were offered the same pay as labourers, though they are given the same training as semi-skilled workers.

ORLAKES

File at Orlakes in (110 women out of a workforce) a strike over lasted more than four in the Liverpool dispute centres around a wage PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report. 190:29 Jones (right) with Murray workers, hostile to the struggles of the most claim submitted during the f6 legal pay limit.

The women work mainly on presses and packing records. Their present take-home pay averages between £13.50 and £15.00 for a 25 hour week. The employer's first offer was a puny 7p per hour increase. When this was rejected the offer was upped to 10p.

Getting the message that a fight coula win still more, the workers voted for strike action. This was met by management attempts at intimidation - threatening to sack workers if a strike or any other industrial action took place.

• T&GWU In response to these threats a mass meeting of three shifts met and decided to join the T&GWU -up to this point there had been no organisation in the plant.

The next step was organising a picket of the factory, blacking goods in and out, and stopping management's attempts to employ agency staff. In this they were backed up by Dagenham Trades It took 2½ weeks before the strike was made official, and the first steps by T&GWU District Official Canfield was to attempt to reduce the size of the picket to six -stressing the need to "give management a chance"!

In what is now time-honoured T&GWU routine the official's main energies were then directed to bringing in the "independent" ACAS arbitration. This was linked to the call for the women to go back to work "for negotiations to continue"

Keturning to work would of the more privileged layers oppressed.

They are a particularly oppre sector of the working class enti to the same rights and facing same crisis of leadership.

STRUGGLES Only by drawing women in struggles against the employ showing the relation between thi particular problems and those the whole of the working class c women's. oppression be serious fought.

We must fight at every point organise women into the tra unions whether they work full tu or part time. And in the fight t organisation women will provi additional support in the fight 1 new leadership against reactionary bureaucrats who tu their backs on oppressed layers workers.

As Trotsky points out it is on the sharpest social crisis which w draw forth the mass of t oppressed who will come forwa with their own demands. The fa that women now emerge struggles throughout the country an indication of the upheav: caused by the crisis and t possibilities opening up.

As Trotsky wrote:

"Millions of toil-worn little mi to whom the reformist leaders hi never given a thought will begin ' insistently pound on the doors the workers' organisations. TI unemployed will be drawn into t movement. The agricultur workers, the ruined and the sen ruined farmers, the oppressed the cities, the woman works housewives, proletarianised laye of the intelligentsia, all these w seek unity and leadership (Transitional Programme) ssed tled the the en ad to "COMMON SENSE" TIM