Sheffield Confed Protest Strike

Scan page 11

(left) George Caborn (above) the threatened factory.

The majority of engineering factories were shut down for half a day last Wednesday n byna Confed District-wide strike.

In the afternoon, 3,000 workers representing most major factories marched through the town in support of the fight to prevent the closure of the Balfour Darwin's Capital Tool Works.

This : follows seven weeks in which 2,800 workers in 14 factories - all part of the Edgar Allan Balfour Group • have been on strike in defence of 400 jobs.

Yet this strike and demonstration, the largest in Sheffield for many years, gained precisely one column inch coverage in the inside pages of the local press!

So determined are the employers to force through these sackings that a virtual press blackout has been ordered to try to hide the strength of working class resistance.

The Engineering Employers Federation is known to be planning every move with the Balfour Darwin management. Forcing through these sackings is crucial to their plans for wholesale sackings throughout the Edgar Allan Balfour group and the rest of Sheffield engineering.

Their attempts to play down the effects of the strike go alongside the efforts of the local bfficials and Confed leadership to hold back a fight to defend jobs throughout the district.

At each stage they have tried to keep the strikers isolated. At first they called only for blacking of Balfour Darwins by other factories in the group.

Then they postponed districtwide strike action. And now when forced to call strike action, restricCammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead has been brought to a standstill by a pay dispute involving 450 platers and shipwrights. ting it to a four-hour protest.

Communist Party Stalinists and right-wingers were dragged in to pack the last Confed stewards meeting to insist that a proposal for 24 hour strike action be overturned in favour of a four-hour strike - a sure way of minimising its effect on the employer while putting up a show of fighting.

The true position of these people came out clearly at the rally after the demonstration.

"There is a much bigger issue involved than just 400 jobs at Capital Tool Works. This is an issue of principle. The employers must go through the procedure they have signed," (ie the status quo clause) explained George Caborn, District Secretary of the AUEW and leading For them the issue is not defending jobs, but verbally defending the national procedure agreement. They make it perfectly plain they are willing to negotiate over redundancies; that they want to put "alternative proposals" to the company.

This can only mean they are perfectly willing to collaborate with the employer m imposing redundancies - provided they can have their say in how they are carried out.

They have no alternative to management's plans to protect its profits at the expense of jobs, because they accept that the viability and profitability of the firm be put first.

The tens of thousands of workers who downed tools on Wednesday to fight to defend jobs must therefore come into conflict with the employers and the union officials who defend them.

For the many workers in Sheffield being put on short-time and the thousands whose jobs are threatened, the fight at Balfour Darwins is part of a fight to defend jobs and living standards irrespective of the employer's profits.

Their jobs must be defended by implementing a policy of work-sharing on full pay where production is cut.

The claims of Edgar Allan Balfour's that they cannot avoid closure must be answered by the election of trade union committees to inspect their books and show the need for nationalisation - not under state appointed managers, like at BSC, where jobs have been ruthlessly axed, but under workers' management.

The national leadership of the AUEW and T&GWU,. like the local press, is trying to pretend this strike is not taking place.

Scanlon and Jones must be forced to call national action in support while a full scale districtwide strike is called, not 4-hour protests.

The employers are mobilising in full strength: the working class must do the same to win.

Together with this must go the immediate occupation of the Capital Tool Works to forestall any management attempt to move out machinery.

*The importance of a determined fight against all redundancies in Sheffield was emphasised on Monday by the sudden announcement of the impending closure of Milspaugh Ltd.

The firm, part of the Sulzer Group, employs, 570 people on heavy engineering work. The Confed is yet to take any position on these sackings but clearly these redundancies must be fought together with those at Balfour Darwins.

The other side of the profits drive is also reflected in a parallel dispute in the yard which began last Friday. 250 TASS members mainly draughtsmen in the The stage has been set for a quick end to long running strikes in hotels at Sheffield and Oxford - but the final decisions still rest dangerously in the hands of key union officials.

Pressure in both towns has forced the respective District Committees of the T&GWU to call for action against the multi-million pound Trust Houses Forte and their canteen subsidiary Gardner Merchant.

If the decisions are carried through hundreds of canteens throughout the Midlands owned by Trust Houses Forte could find themselves without food, drink and profits.

In Sheffield, the T&GWU District Committee has called for national blacking o f Trust Houses Forte. In Oxford, an emergency meeting called for a blacking of Gardner Merchant and all subsidiaries.

So far the only action to have been taken in Oxford was a weak call for the canteens to be boycotted - a demand impossible to enforce.

The demands from Sheffield -put by the Finance and General Purposes Committee of the District Committee - and from Oxford were both sent to the national committee of the trade group for hotels - which includes representatives from workers in food, drink and tobacco. HOTEL UNIONISATION STRUGGLES The strikes at the Grosvenor House in Sheffield and the Randolph in Oxford have now been running for many weeks. In Oxford the dispute is running side by side with a strike at another hotel - the Linton Lodge.

Although not owned by Trust Houses Forte, this hotel is running its campaign against the union in close collaboration with the Randolph.

The Oxford hotels are being backed by the National Association for Freedom - fresh from their successful court action against South African workers.

The response of the union officials has been so inadequate so far that doubts must be expressed about whether they intend to carry out the action now being pressed on them.

The Regional Committee has already shown its ability to duck the issues. A call for strike action of Gardner Merchant workers in the Cowley Body Plant and Service canteens was postponed at last week's meeting while national officials of the T&GWU checked the "legal position".

Shop stewards from the canteen workers have already told the strikers that they will strike as soon as they get the call.

The question is whether the five star effort by the workers involved in the bitter dispute is going to get the service it demands, ör whether the union officials in whose hands their future rests have already checked out of these hotels.