The Plessey (Swindon) fight for a 'no-strings' pay rise Sankey's

SWINDON, the railway town in rural Wiltshire, is now on the brink of the biggest wages struggle of its history. Over 6,000 workers in seven Plessey plants have revolted against low pay - they want cash, they want it now and they want it without strings.

To emphasize their determination, a productivity deal, carefully constructed by management over the last 12 months, has been scrapped and a demand for an 80 per cent increase in the basic rate lodged.

The new militancy whir spread, during the summe to workers at the con pany's subsidiary firm r Garrards, has bee summed up by Les Warrer works convenor and chail man of the Plessey trade union negotiating con mittee.

"The Plessey company wi be hit hard — and hit harde than ever before, he said : a mass meeting in support i the claim. 'As far as I and th committee are concerned, w hope the next stoppage wi involve the seven factorie We have got a common causi We want a slice of the cake The Plessey claim is for f and the Garrards worker want £6 10s, both across th board.

The major factor in cement ing this new unity - reveale in the liaison committee cor structed to lead the Garrard: Plessey fight - was a pre ductivity deal introduced b AIC consultants.

Workers learned first han of the dangers involved i job-evaluation and Measured Day Work and the move t throw out the deal came fror stewards who were member of the committees constructe The agreement provides for an all-round increase of 10 per cent with a minimum salary of £2,500 and a minimum increase of £300 backdated to May.

NO ARMS FOR ULSTER POLICE Police in the Royal Ulster Constabulary are understood to have voted to stay unarmed. It was reported in Belfast yesterday that 1,085 were for arms and 1,196 against but there were many who refused to vote.

DUTCH DOCK STRIKE SPREADS Dutch dock workers, on strike for three weeks in support of a pay claim, have now been joined by 2,000 workers at the Philips electrical works in Eindhoven.

Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), 180b Clapham High Street, London, swept through the four Plessey plants and South by management to sell it to the firm's workers.

After this valuable experience management will not be able to dress up any new offer with productivity clauses, nor is it likely that anything less than the demanded increases will be accepted.

Not extravagant With an average rate of £19 for a 49-hour week and less for the many women workers no one considers the claim extravagant.

All the employees are aware of Plessey's fat profits which rose £3 millions in the first nine months of the year to €22.4 millions and they are also aware of the kind of increases won by workers elsewhere.

When Workers Press reporters were in Swindon, Plessey men and women took great encouragement from the news that car components workers at Howard-Tenants in nearby St Margarets had won a £5, no-strings increase.

In all the Plessey dispute promises to become the Sankey of the south.

Workers watch patiently the preliminary sparring with management, knowing big battles are still to come.

Eight hundred of the 3,000 Plessey workers are women and in the three Garrards factories 75 per cent of the labour force is female.

Discontent

Rene Hazel, a convenor al Phe of she 22-mey Ser trades union negotiating committee, told us how the productivity deal sparked discontent and led to the claim.

"The wage demand is the culmination of an entirely new mood which has swept the factories. The productivity deal, because it affected all of US, has tended to unite the plants, whereas before things used to be negotiated separately.

•Wage increases where also had a big effect. People read about these in the papers and the whole thing on the television-other workers getting big increases without strings.

'In the light of this people in Plesseys are just getting fed up of the pay and conditions.

"The AIC deal very soon began to stink. The employers only go in for these kind of things because they want to make more money out of you.

"This is where these consultants come in, to dress the whole thing up and brainwash the workers. They work on the leaders first; they had us away on a preparatory course for a week to get us used to the whole thing.

'It was brought in in February. They gave us 30s for the skilled workers and 26s to unskilled on condition we accepted job-evaluation and work-measurement. After this we could have another pay rise.

Panels

"They set up job-evaluation panels in the four factories and a regional one to represent the lot. Data was going into the computer and where there was a disagreement on the value of a job between us and the management you got what was called an "eccentric decision".

'There were a lot of these, but the consultants kept saying, "well it doesn't really "Then a lot of the stewards who were undecided about it at first began to smell a rat. And eventually we stopped talking about it and decided to 'So we had a mass meeting in early August and the membership decided to accept our recommendation to throw it out and for good measure ask a 4s-an-hour increase, that's £ß a week, with nostrings.

'Looking back, the whole thing was a typical productivity con-trick. You got all sorts of promises, but no hard cash. Meanwhile they were getting us, the stewards, to measure up and evaluate our people's jobs — we decided this wasn't our job.

'We had a one-day strike and a demonstration the first Wednesday in September and on the same dav the Cartarde Convenor Rene Hazel people met and threw their deal out and approached us to form a liaison committee.

'We deserve this money. Rates in the factory are pretty low. The basic for an ordinary production worker is about £12 l6s 5d for men and £10 12s 9d for women.

•With piecework and bonus, you get, say, about £16 5s 9d, and with nine hours' overtime, that's 49 hours a week, you pull out about £l9 before stoppages.

Militant

'The mood in the factory is ery militant at the moment.

have a hard job keeping them in. On the day of the ne-day strike one man vorked. I was called out of bed at 11.30 p.m. and I went down there.

'The workers had heard about this man and they were wild.

I couldn't do a thing; they were already out and the day shift the next day stayed out.

'If the Tories stick their noses in, we will fight it. When the Labour government was in power it interfered with what we considered to be our own business and look what happened there' Dramatic For seven years Bill Baxter, convenor at Garrards' Blunsdon plant has been waiting for the issue that would unify all Plessey workers. The claim, he beliéves, is just such an issue.

'This dispute will probably prove to be one of the most dramatic things that has ever happened to the worker in Swindon.

'Efforts have been made in the past to get us all together, but nothing came of them. Now we have started with proper liaison we will get somewhere.

'Men and women at Garrards have their blood up. They are prepared to fight for this claim and they are prepared to fight right through to the end.

'You see a completely different mood in the town. Instead of being the "countrybumpkins" of the wages fight, we are on the offensive.

'People have been coming into ine area irom places uke into tha nass fanm alanso lila the Midlands, London and the North-East with different experiences. We are sick of being the poor cousins to places like Oxford.

'At Blunsdon they had great difficulty in selling us this AIC deal in the first place. But the other Garrards plant gave it the go-ahead, so we followed.

'We had a £2 phased deal, £1 now and fl after the investigation. This was the maximum, other workers and women got less.

'The set-up was the same as it was at Plessey, regional panels etc.

'But they were very crafty. They gave us a majority on the panels, but when we raised some objection there could be no vote. Really the Tessels were absolutely powerMeeting 'Anyway those workers who had been kept fairly well informed by their leaders began to dislike the set-up and eventually we had a mass meeting in the town hall last May.

'There we decided to go in for £6 10s if the deal was to go ahead.