THEY WON, Will productivity

Printworkers_ A good deal of nonsense is being spread through the national Press by the printing employers in an attempt to distort the present state of affairs in the printing industry.

Eight weeks’ strike benefit for fifteen The unions are claiming a basic working week of 40 hours, an increase in basic weeks on the street. This is what the wages to £11 10s. plus 13s. cost. of living executive of the Amalgamated Enginbonus, and certain domestic variations eering Union is giving the victorious which vary from union to union.

woikers at Harland and Wolff, ScotsWhen the last agreement was reached, in toun (Glasgow).

April 1956, it was agreed that it would run for three years, to be ended by either side Summoned to a meeting last Saturday giving six months’ notice. morning, the workers were told that their This notice the nine unions involved gave is a journal of Marxist theory refusal to obey the executive’s instruction in October 1958; they also put forward and practice, edited by John to return to work—i.e., to accept defeat— their claims and suggested amendments to made them ineligible for any benefit.

Daniels (Nottingham University), the agreements. The executive, however, was prepared to At the first meeting with the employers Peter Fryer and Cliff Slaughter grant benefit up to the issuing of its first early this year the employers rejected the (Leeds University). It is indis- instruction. entire claim. pensable reading for the factory The outcome of the strike—victory militant and the serious student against victimization, and the prevention of EIGHT-PAGE PAMPHLET redundancies—apparently has no bearing of Marxism. It is obtainable A week or so earlier the employers’ on the matter. Defiance of the executive is organization had refused in advance to dis- from 266 Lavender Hill, London, a crime, and the workers must be punished. cuss any alteration in the agreements and S.W.11, price 2s. Sd. per issue, Though instructed to attend the meeting, had suggested that the present agreements post free. they were not permitted to discuss the should run for a further year. executive’s findings.

Behind this suggestion was the hope that the Tories would win the coming election:

the screw could then be turned hard. BIG RAIL STRIKE This thought had been in the employers’ minds through all the succeeding talks— talks which have been confined to a statement of claims by the unions and a dismissal of these claims by the employers.

The latter even went so far as to issue an eight-page pamphlet setting out in detail how hard it would be for the poorer firms FOR DICK go up?

By Our Industrial Correspondent