workers press

The Socialist Labour League's press: The Newsletter, Workers Press, Labour Review and Fourth International, 1952–1973. A searchable archive of the scans

Yorks GEC women

By Stephen Johns

Workers Press no. 815, 12 July 1972 · scan page 10

Topics: Women, Housing and rents, Docks, Power workers

Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

demand pay parity OWN WOMEN workers at the Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, GEC factory are on strike over a claim for parity with other GEC workers.

The basic minimum at Middlesbrough for women workers of 21 and over is £14.50 a week, while at Hartlepool it is £15 and at Coventry £15.25 says Fred Gardiner of the electricians' union, to which most of the 1,600 strikers belong.

He said management had offered an increase in overtime and holiday rates, but women at the factory seldom did overtime. He said he was trying to arrange a meeting with the management.

Shop stewards at the factory gave management a week's notice after talks broke down and the strike began on Monday.

In Dover, Kent, male supervisory staff, members ASSOCALON of Sintific, Technical and Managerial Staffs. employed by GEC at a new telephone exchange went on strike over bad pay and what they claim to be 'bad management' at GEC headquarters.

A spokesman said that six sites in Britain had been selected this week for strike action. The stoppage would be spread to other exchanges their demands were not met.

Subscribe!

{20.28 for 12 months (312 Issues) £10.14 for 6 months (156 issues) £5.07 for 3 months (78 Issues)

want to take Workers Press twice £1.56 for. 3 months (24 issues) £6.24 for. 12 months (96 issues)

Fill in the form below NOW anc Circulation Dept., Workers Press, 186a London, SW4 7UG.

Days required MONDAY

(Please tick) TUESDAY Or Full subscript AMI DDI lunou The dockers, who are also blacking several conScheme. out a subscription enclose Dangerous wait-and-see policy on Farm labour doing our jobs-dockers HULL DOCKERS have launched a campaign unregistered ports on the Humber as part tainer firms, say the unregistered ports are employing cheap labour outside the National Dock Labour would like information abou TENANTS in Cumbernauld have been told to "walt and see' what action the Tory-appointed Cumbernauld Development Corporation takes against rent strikers.

This was the dubious advice given to local tenants in the Cumbernauld Rents Action Committee by chairman David Kane, a prospective communist councillor.

So far 550 tenants have withheld rent increases.

With rates instalments due in July-when the full brunt of the increases will be felt-there is every indication the number of non-payers will rise sharply.

But Kane's 'walt-and-see' policy fight against cutback in jobs.

The dally paper that leads the fight again the Torles.

Clapham THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY months. Cumbernauld rent strike is a useless marking of time in the political struggle to be waged by tenants against Tory rent policies.

Total confusion reigns in the misnamed committee of action, which Is in fact a committee of protest, as to the nature of the Tory government. No attempt has been made to prepare tenants to face the legal Intimidation which will certainly be unleashed upon them. They have been lulled with assurances of test cases, etc.

Douglas Gilchrist, a radical to close of their A main target is Howdendyke Wharf where East Coast River Services (Goole) Limited are unloading timber vessels.

The dockers say that men working for East Coast in the registered port of Goole do not have sufficient work to keep them busy and that the company is diverting traffic to Howdendyke.

The dockers are picketing the wharf carrying such slogans as:

here and you will be blacked!

A dockers' spokesman said yesterday: This stevedoring firm is using what is virtually part-time farm labour for what is dockers' work. Our lads are under-employed at Goole and Hull. We can't allow this to go on. Our livelihoods are at stake.' Unregistered ports do not come under the National Dock Labour Scheme of 1947 and therefore can ignore pay and conditions built up by registered dock labour over the years.

EXPORT cargoes of refined sugar are being loaded at Immingham for the first time, say the British Transport Docks Board.

Over 13,000 tons of sugar will be handled by the port this week. Further cargoes amounting to between 15,000 and 20,000 tons are expected to be handled by the port in the next few weeks.

In the first six months of 1972, Immingham has handled 24,309 tons of foodstuffs, compared with 16,304 tons handled in the corresponding period last schoolteacher recently censured by education authorities for revelations to the press about corporal punishment in Catholic schools, is the treasurer of the committee.

He outlined some particularly unfortunate cases among pensioners.

Guest speaker Finlay Hart, Intimated the formation of SCOTA (Scottish Council of Tenants' Associations). The CP-controlled Scottish area NUM, Paisley AUEW district committee and the West of Scotland Shop Stewards' CoSack threat at Portsmouth yard SHOP STEWARDS at Portsmouth dockyard met yesterday morning to discuss management threats to sack all those who refused to work with men who did not take part in their strike last Friday.

Last week's strike was in protest against the government's paltry £1.50 pay offer.

Work on the 'Matapan', which was supposed to be on trial yesterday, stopped on Monday when men who struck on Friday refused to work alongside about ten alleged blacklegs.

By late afternoon the British Rail surcharge PASSENGERS travelling by ship and train to destinations beyond the continental Channel ports will have to pay about an 8 per cent surcharge on the continental portion of their fare, British Rail has announced.

Since the pound was "floated', British Rail have carried Tof extra cost of settling with European railways for tickets sold in Britain. Meanwhile, the surcharge level will be kept under continuous review. EPTU's Chapple at NIRC FRANK CHAPPLE, leader of the giant electricians' union, yesterday became the second major union leader to appear before the National Industrial Relations Court.

The general secretary of the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, ordinating Committee had ated to it.

The reformist perspective of this body is to 'Smash the Act, leaving the Tories still in power.

Under this reformist and Stalinist leadership this big tenants' movement is in considerable danger of betrayal and ultimate defeat.

Only by transforming the rents committee into a real Council of Action can the tenants and workers be mobilized for a political - not protest - fight against Tory rent policy.

yard was involved and only those who worked on Friday were still working. Boats, factories and workshops were laid idle as other sections followed suit.

Management refused to remove those still working and said that anyone not working by yesterday afternoon's muster (clockingon) would have their wages stopped.

A young dockyard worker who had been working on the 'Matapan' told us:

'It's been very encouraging so far, but now we must be prepared to fight this threat through to the end and not back down.

Ex4* -headed his union's team opposing a claim by the 1,000-strong Electricity Supply Union for recognition at the Ferrybridge, Yorkshire, power station. Chapple follows Clive Jenkins, leader of the white-collar union ASTMS, who last week opposed a similar challenge to his union.

← the whole issue

Something wrong on this page? Report an error