The real tin-pot bosses

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Our cartoonist Tim was completely tied up this weekend producing the above May Day float. Official returns next week. BUS CUTS CAN Workers at two Cornish tin mines now face the threat of redundancy.

The Swiss-based multinational company which owns Mount Wellington recently announced the imminent closure of the mine.

This was followed by a similar announcement last week from the South African owners of the Wheal Jane mine, on the grounds that mining would become 'uneconomical' with the increased flooding that would result from Mount Wellington's closure.

The Cornish mining industry was wrecked in the last century as imperialism gained access to far cheaper supplies.

But a world shortage of tin meant that extraction once again became a profitable proposition in this area, and these two mines were re-opened in the 1970s.

Now with the international slump in production, demand has fallen sharply. For capitalists, tinmining in Cornwall is no longer a viable investment.

Shutting down Wheal Jane and Mount Wellington would add 800 workers to the dole queues in an area where unemployment is already running at 14%.

Predictably avoiding the necessary task of setting up a workers' inquiry to investigate the levels and effects of the flooding as part of the central fight for the nationalisation of these mines, local union officials have attempted to divert the militant opposition of the workers and sabotage their struggle against redundancy.

Harry Stephens, West Cornwall district-secretary of the TGWU, has pointed to the massive government loans to Mount Wellington's owners.

But he has used this as the basis for a call on Moss Evans to suggest that the government seize the mine's shaft and pumps-and then hand them over to Consolidated Goid Mines so that this enormous capitalist enterprise could run Wheal Jane profitably! will hold the 0.2% (approximately £40,000) and "ensure its use for the ending of piecework"

The 0.1% won during the dispute will be paid out at Christmas in the form of a £s lump sum for each worker.

It is clear from the way Rolls Royce workers stuck to their 10% claim that the willingness to fight management is there.

Besides the battles over pay for work done during the dispute in the work-ins at both plants, the key issue coming up will be negotiations to end piecework.

Partial Union leaders are reported as willing to end piecework if earnings can be guaranteed.

In securing an agreement through the intervention of ACAS, management, although forced to back down on piecework and the freeze on upgrading claims, have won a partial gain in their struggle to direct workers towards conciliation and arbitration through a state body (ACAS).

The workers at Rolls Royce will rapidly come up against the fact that 9.8% will not do a great deal to compete with price rises.

The failure of the leadership to confront the wage-cutting Lib-Lab coalition by going for only 10% did not mean that management would suspend attacks on wages and conditions.

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