IS CUT

The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 100, 2 May 1959 · scan page 4

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.

The proposed joint conference of unions and employers to discuss problems created by new techniques in the building industry ‘will eliminate difficulties which impede the productivity of the industry’.

Announcing this at last week’s conference of building unions, Sir Richard Coppock, general secretary of the National Federation of Building Trades Operatives, also mentioned the million men in the industry who did not want to lose their jobs.

As in all other industries, the building employers have used the increase in unemployment of the last year or two to introduce many new techniques, particularly the manufacture of curtain walls, prefabricated units and parts.

In the last two years some 5,000 bricklayers and 1,000 masons have been forced to leave the industry for good.

JUICIER PROFITS

Yet building firms are making juicier profits than ever. Wimpey’s have netted £4,726,197, Laing’s £1,702,073 and Portland Cement £14,628,000 in the past year.

But some of the union leaders are not doing badly either. Sir Richard himself, according to the NFBTO general council’s minutes, recently accepted a salary increase of £200 per annum.

Will he and his colleagues put up a fight for the rank-and-file claim for a 40-hour week and the fourpence an hour?

As these claims go to the Industrial Court this Friday building workers are keeping a watchful eye on those who represent them —and are discussing the need for a rank-and-file movement to step up the fight inside the unions.