RUN-DOWN ON

Marriot

strike ends YOUNG WEST INDIAN workers who put up a strong fight against the Wembley firm of P. A. Marriott for nine months have been forced to accept a few pounds 'compensation' for being sacked.

The strike started last July when 50 workers, some of them leading militants in the factory, received redundancy notices. All the workers walked out in sympathy.

But because Marriott's have succeeded in keeping the West Indians out of the factory, it would be wrong to conclude that this has meant a total defeat for the young workers.

Higher wages

Marriott has only kept the factory going by paying far higher wages than he was before the strike started.

By their efforts the West Indian workers have shown that they can organise into a union.

They have stood out for higher wages and a 42-hour week at the factory.

Other employers in the area have received notices saying that they will not be allowed to use immigrants as cheap labour without resistance.

How is it then that with such courageous struggling the sacked workers did not get their jobs back? The responsibility must be laid at the door of the local and national trade union officials.

No collections They did very little to organise sympathetic action from other factories or make collections. Very often they gave in to a small anti-colour feeling in the factories.

Meanwhile the Marriott strikers have to find jobs. Until they do your financial help is needed. After nine months of struggle they do not have much money. Please send your donations to C. Clark, 12 Westbourne Terrace, London, W.2. rude remarks.

It is apparent that this is the last dying phase of the publicity stunt with which the port employers have tried to hoodwink the dockers.

In this case their muchboosted rocket blew up before it left the ground. What can they try next?

Perhaps the port employers and trade union officials are now considering a new version of their scheme, amended here and there to what was last offered to the London dockers.

There can be little doubt that the Merseyside docker will give this version the same treatment as it had in London.

If their latest plan has foundered, it does not mean that the port employers will now give up their attempts to reorganise the dock labour force to their greater benefit.

Mobile

The employers want full use of mechanisation and technical advances by dockers who are a mobile, docile labour force.

They want "labour units' under their absolute control in the same way as their machines —dockers who will be moved where the employers want them; worked how the employers wish, and above all, they want dockers who, like the machines, won't answer back.

But to reach this goal means that the employers have to break down all the working relations won in past bitter struggles with profit-greedy employers. Continuity of employment agreements, manning scales, concessionary payments on abnormal working conditions, all must go.

Further, the employers make no secret that their indirect control of the docker under the l Dock Labour Scheme is irksome.

and other New Deal' ed are the still being chorus of creation of first, second, third and fourth class dockers; to the mobility of labour and reduced manning scales; and the opposition to redundancy, challenges the basic intentions of the port employers.

To fulfill the dockers demands, nationalization of the port transport industry is the only logical step.

Real decasualisation is possible only under nationalization, run by workers' representatives. Only then could there be a real plan for security for the portworker.

In a few months time there will be a Labour government.

Dockers nationally have already demonstrated their opposition to the schemes of the port employers. This should be an amber light to Wilson and that Labour government. Dockers will bitterly resist any collaboration with the national port employers.

They have already shown resentment against so-called members of the labour movement who have connived with the employers in pushing forward the 'New Deal'.

Portworkers will demand that the Labour government supports them against the schemes of the employers and take the industry out of the employers' control. ACTION BY members of the Union of Post Office Workers has forced their general secretary, Mr. Ron Smith, to agree to the possibility of strike aotion over a substantial wage increase.

But as far as Ron Smith is concerned he would much prefer safe negotiations around the conference table with PostmasterGeneral, Bevins, than take militant action. Only the determination of the rank and file postal workers pushed him into making these statements after a two-day conference attended by 1,066 delegates BRICKLAYERS AT Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds' two Cardiff works, Castle and Tremorfa, last Saturday came out in sympathy with three men whose redundancy notices had just expired.

The management claim the men were only taken on to build a new 16 inch Rod Mill furnace. Three days after the furnace was completed they were given a week's notice.

The men say that this statement covers up the speed-up that the management are imposing on the bricklayers.

Over the last few months, the gang of brickies has been progressively broken down from 23 to 16 men. Of these, three are now sacked, two are chargehands and four are out sick.

This now leaves seven men to do all the maintenance work on the two works.

MAINTENANCE

'These men are not just home with a cold, either,' The Newsletter was told, 'in our job when you are sick, you have to stay at home for a few months.' Before the sacking of the three men, the work force was insufficient. With the reduced numbers, the bricklayers were expected to work two night shifts a week, 'with drastic results to our health and family life' , a brickle said.

"The working week is never less than six and a half days, and more often it is seven days. For that we take home a few shilings less than twenty pounds a week, he added.

press for strike action Smith: 'reasonable man' FORTY INDIANS and Pakistanis, employed at the Mansfield Hosiery Mills, Loughborough were dismissed this week after they went on strike for two days.

They staged a walk-out last week after Mr. K. K. Khanna was sacked. The management have refused to accept him as a spokesman on bad conditions and low piece-work rates among immigrant employees.

Similar action was taken last November when Mr. Khanna was sacked for alleged 'political agitation'. The strike forced the management to take him back.

Local officials of the National Union of Hosiery Workers suggested that the strikers return to work and that their 'spokesman' should find a job elseThe bricklayers had demanded the introduction of a rest-day rota, coupled with a pay increase to compensate for the day off. This would have given them one long week-end every five weeks (which is the system worked by the other craftsmen in the works).

The management rejected this demand with the plea that the bricklayers were too important and could not be spared any Sunday.

PRESSURE

Further pressure from the men led the management to offer a 'fluctuating' Sunday.

This was rejected by the bricklayers.

'One day the management tell us that we are too important to have any rest days. The next they lay off three of our gang,' The Newsletter was told.

"The redundancies are being used to whip the brickies into line for the new conditions in the works.

"They are meeting organised opposition and they don't like it.

For the first time in at least 25 years all the bricklayers in the two works are members of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trades Workers.

PLASTIC

New processes are being introduced that will cut down on the amount of maintenance needed. The back burner wall and the intermediate curtain wall of the new Rod Mill furnace are built of new plastic walling that needs no attention for five to seven years.

At the same time, the management is making increased use of contractor's labour to do the work formerly done by the regular gang.

The management have rejected the men's demand that the three men be reinstated. The most they were prepared to offer was three weeks' extra employment for them while they looked for work.

REJECTED

This was rejected as the men feel that it is not just a question of the three finding work, but of the conditions of work for the whole gang in the two works.

Rather than lay off the three men, the management could have granted the rest-day rota and reduced the working week to give them some family life.

A special meeting of the joint crafts committee of the works was called last Wednesday and a resolution was passed condemning the management's action.

Full support for the bricklayers was expresed and financial aid was promised.

workers' n sacked where.

The reasons for Mr. Khanna's sacking are very clear. He has been in the forefront of a fight for better conditions and higher wages but the last thing the hosiery employers want is militant workers.

Leaders of the hosiery union have a long history of sell-outs behind them and there has been very little support from them in this most recent dispute.

Mr. H. Gascoigne, district secretary of the union accused the workers of being too loyal towards Mr. Khanna.

Weakly he expressed regret at the dismissals. •We told them they were wrong,' he said.

Apart from these remarks Mr.

Gascoigne has no proposals for a fight to reinstate the coloured workers.