FINE TUBES FIGHT

INVESTIGATII Three years ago last month, pay negotiations opened with Fine Tubes, a small American-owned firm in Plymouth. The claim for higher wages affected almost 200 Take-home pay was about £13 to £14 a week at the factory, subsidiary Superior Tubes of Norristown, Pennsylvania.

Management retaliated to the claim by bringing in jobevaluation and work without consulting the unions. Negotiations broke down.

Fine Tubes workers considered the procedure exhausted after six months of futile 'negotiations' and went on strike on June with official backing from both the Transport and General Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.

Three days later the Tories were elected: every employer felt heartened. Here, at last, was a government which was going to take on the unions.

Within two weeks of the Tory victory the strikers received an ultimatum: Either return or be sacked. No one went back and in due course all received their cards.

Tories had declared their intention to change the course OI British history. meaning the existing 'peaceful' relationships between the classes based on the 'boom'. Fine Tubes management had taken the government up on that pledge.

Today 37 men are still outside the factory gates, picketing the plant to enforce the black against Fine Tubes products. They refuse to leave until their basic rights are restored. trial Relations Act became law and unemployment rose to l million without any serious opposition from the bureaucrats at Congress House.

Now with Phase One of the state pay laws on the statute books and Edward Heath forbidding any discussion on wage claims, the union leadership has decided a further meeting at Downing Street is necessary!

It is in that context that these leaders must bear responsibility for the fact that the Fine Tubes strikers still out on the stones.

For at no time have the trade union leaders led mobilization of their members behind the Fine Tubes men. In fact, today they even refuse to use the word "black' official circulars because-presumably-they want to operate within the framework of the Industrial Relations Act.

Fine Tubes, which produce stainless steel tubing, moved to Plymouth in 1962 with €355,400 interest-free loan from the Tory government to set up shop.

At that time-as now-the West Country was an attractive place for investment. As a rule, trade unionism was not well organized in the region, with wages as a consequence being lower than elsewhere.

According to one union official, the rates at the plant, which had contracts for the Concorde project, were low. 'There are no bonuses... only overtime,' he added.

From July 1970 — the day after the strikers were sacked -management began to recruit fresh labour. In early July all the new recruits were given a backdated pay rise and staff status. The fight was on.

But after seven weeks on strike, Ron King, the AUEW district secretary, could only say: "A dispute of this length is surely as important to the West Country as the recent letter from a scab who refused to give his name as he did not 'want to be beaten up on a dark night', to write:

'Has Plymouth really got to the stage where a person with a point of view is afraid to say who he is for fear of being attacked by those who oppose his opinion, but have already stated theirs? What has happened to the English sense of freedom of speech, a right for which wars have been fought and lives lost?

'British democracy, the envy of the world, is founded on the freedom of speech. Were it not, this country would be little more than a communist state without an individual mind,' screamed the editorial.

Here a small group of workers were accused of attempting to bring down the state when the newspaper knew full well that Fine Tubes management had consistently refused to even talk to union officials about the dispute! HATRED Worse was to come from the pens of the editorial writers on the 'Western Evening Herald'. On September 11 they went overboard without hiding their hatred for trade unionism in general and the Fine Tubes men in particular:

'One firm in Plymouth has taken on industrial "blackmailers" and, so far, seems to be winning the battle. Work is continuing, say present employees, with even more gusto than before and productivity has increased.

'How did the firm accomplish what others have tried to do, but failed? By sacking all those who went on strike, refusing to have any negotiations with them, or their trade unions, by keeping on the loyal workers and by starting again, almost from scratch,' it went on enthusiastically.

"The line that the company, Fine Tubes, seems to have taken was that if the rates of pay were inadequate, there would be no staff to run the machines. The fact that the machines are running seems to be the answer to their logic.

'Admittedly, more money is being paid to the staff now than it was when the workers went on strike, but the workers who remained with the company say they are better off without the antagonists.

'It shows that companies can, with enough determination, sometimes stand up against the workers and their unions, and apparently win without finding themselves in the financial strait-jacket that leads to higher prices or bankruptcy.

'Unions must have the power to call for official strikes in retaliation for acts of unfairness or injustice, but on the other hand, shouldn't companies have the right to dismissal and self-preserva'Provision, of course, must be made for this side of industrial relations also to be subject to the same government control as wild-cat strikes would be under the impending legislation. There must be fair play on both sides.' The "impending legislation' was, of course, the Industrial Relations Bill.

In the same month, September 1970, a plot to keep wages low in the West Country was revealed and police moved in to help strike-breakers for the first time.

The September issue of a Tree publication, the 'Plymouth Post', had the headline: 'Don't Pay So Much to West It told of an American firm planning to put up an 800job factory being advised by the Department of Employment: 'Pay lower wages than you planned to-you'll still be paying above the average' A DEP spokesman quizzed by the 'Post' said this was 'standard practice' After 13 weeks of the strike police intervened at a British Road Services depot where Fine Tubes strikers were picketing to prevent the movement of strip tubing — which had arrived from the United States.

The BRS men refused to handle the tubing and men from inside Fine Tubes and a number of executives eventually loaded the material themselves while police removed the pickets from outside the depot gates.

Meanwhile, local union officials were still seeing the dispute in the most naïve way. One told a newspaper in September 1970 that the irresponsible action of what appears to be one solitary individual' was to blame. He was referring to Fine Tubes' managing director Tom Barclay.

CONTINUED