FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS LED TO WAVE OF

THE present wave of strikes in ‘the Midlands motor industry is the result of months and months of fruitless negotiations.

Many Nuffield strikers said to me, after the union officials had secured a return to work—with an estimated 20 per cent. voting against the-return:

‘The machinery is strangling us. The union officials are hiding behind it to help the. management, not us.’

The sell-out of the Midland redundancy strikes in 1956 led to a long period of sackings and short time for thousands of The motor workers are now trying to take advantage of the present boom in cag production (artificially maintained by Tory government relaxations on hire purchase and credit, as part of its pre-election manoeuvres) to make good the long period of stagnation antl suffering they endured im. the recession.

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A decent living wage There are three main issues in these disputes: bad piecework ksts; 100 per cent, trade unionism; and the fight of low-paid day-rate workers to bring themselves up to a decent living wage. Day workers, such as crane-drivers, slingers and labourers, often have to speed up their work to keep pace with the speedup of track work; but they get nothing extra for this.

The Nuffield gay workers’ strike brought home the fact that these workers receive an average of only £9 10s. per week.

The employers’ offensive in the motor industry takes the forms of increased automation without extra wages, stiff resistance to 100 per cent. trade unionism, attempts to tighten control of shop stewards’ movements, sackings (as at Standards) —and the use of the negotiating machinery and of willing trade union officials stepping in to ‘get them back to work’.

Without these union officials stepping in every time there: is a dispute the motor workers would undoubtedly be in a far stronger. position.

Take the Nuffield day workers’ dispute as an example.

Here we had a solid strike of over 500 workers who already had four months of negotiating machinery.

Defied the sacred cow They asked for a rise of sixpence per hour. The bosses said ‘No’ to the shop stewards and ‘No’ to the union officials at works and local conferences, as well as ‘referred back’ conferences.

At the local conference stage the day workers decided that the farce had gone on long enough. They struck work.

Then the Transport and General Workers’ Union sent in the big gun to ‘get them back’—Kealy, a national organizer,