Slag processors strike for £3 wage rise

By David Maude ONE HUNDRED slag processors at Margam Abbey Steelworks, Port Talbot, have been on strike for a week in support of a demand for a wages increase. The strike decision was taken at a mass meeting last Friday.

ecision lobby share(holders WORKERS FROM the Camden Town and Highbury Rank Precision Industries-who went on an indefinite strike on Wednesday night-lobbied company shareholders a stone's throw from London's Mayfair on Thursday morning.

Inside the meeting, £50,000a-year company chairman John Davis was challenged by stewards on his refusal to settle the men's demands.

Tohn Hannington, secretary of the combine committee, told the Workers Press:

After a series of one-day strikes, the two factories decided to come out in support of our wages claim and against the company's policy-which is destroying the instrumentmaking industry for which we work. • We put in a claim for £5 a week increase in pay, four weeks' annual holiday and a 37}-hour week. As an interim settlement we want the £2, the extra week's holiday and the cut in hours.' An overtime ban has been imposed by ASTMS and DATA members at the two plants after a meeting on Wednesday night.

The men, members of BISAKTA, working for Margam Slag, a subsidiary of the Steel Company of Wales, are demanding an all-round £3 increase without strings.

This would give them parity with those doing similar work in the plant.

About 18 months ago the union accepted a management roposal which was a fore runner to the 'Green Book productivity deal.

The deal soon became apparent as an attempt to split the men by giving about 20 machine operators £5 to £7 bonus, while the rest had next to nothing.

For example, a man loading i lorry: with a Euclid machine ets £5 while the driver get: no bonus at all. The men are expected to work excessive overtime at a low rate.

HIT BACK

They hit back by imposing a restriction on overtime, limiting the working day to 10 The company retaliated by 'poaching' three greasers onto the Steel Company of Wales staff, where there is no union These men began to do work previously restricted to BISAKTA members - the overtime restriction was broken, and the strike was So far they have been told that the £3 demand can only be met if they accept a 25 per cent manning reduction. This has been rejected.

The strike of the Margam Slag workers is only part of a mounting tide of struggles throughout the Port Talbot steelworks.

COMING OUT

In spite of the treachery of the officials of most unions in signing the 'Green Book' larger and "larger sections of workers, basing themselves on the confident offensive of the international working class, are coming out against managements' plans to speed-up the work, break trade union strength and slash the labour Spastics demonstrate at Rome parliament AS ONE million workers staged a general strike in the Milan region, Rome witnessed the most moving demonstration ever experienced in the Italian labour movement.

Several hundred spastics, many in their wheelchairs, advanced in a column on the parliament building in the They were demanding more state expenditure on schools and rehabilitation centres for the handicapped and disabled.

Spastics in 'normal' times are usually treated as objects of pity and charity.

Roused by Italy's 'Red October'. , they press their own demands, together with millions of other workers and peasants.

march meetings