Allegation in circular to NATSOPA members BROWN AND KING ATTACK PRINTERS' WAGES Industrial Immigrants fight in TGWU against Ministry inquiry Story of break from union is false

THE strike of 800 immigrant workers at the Courtaulds factory in Preston has struck fear into the hearts of the employers and their scribes in the national press.

The strikers are mainly Indian, Pakistani and West Indian, working in the tyrecord spinning department at the Red Scar works. The dispute began on Monday, May 24, when the 'A' group workers were instructed to work 1½ machines instead of the one machine previously worked.

The 'A' group workers staged a sit-down strike and were quickly joined by men in other departments.

Courtaulds declare that their action was in accordance with an agreement reached with the Transport and General Workers' Union for an insulting 3d. per hour wage increase.

The strikers emphatically insist that they were never consulted about this agreement.

The branch secretary and the shop steward were present at a meeting on April 26 when 400 men voted unanimously not to accept any proposals for working 1½ machines per man.

Deal a blow

The strike is clearly a strike of workers against speed-up. It deals a blow at all those employers who seek to use coloured workers as cheap labour on the dirtiest and most dangerous types of work.

Above all it gives a clear answer to all those racialists who seek to separate workers with a coloured skin from the rest of the working class.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the employing class should fear the repercussions of this strike.

In an attempt to stop the strike spreading and winning NCB tenants form association "THE Coal Board is not a social welfare association, said a Coal Board official to a meeting of angry tenants from the miners' estate in Widnes, Lancashire last Tuesday night.

There was a barrage of questions and sharp comments from miners and their wives, whose rents are being increased by amounts varying between 11s. and 14s. 6d. a week, at the xeeting called by The Newsletter.

In answer to questions as to why tenants had been suddenly informed of the rise in a curt letter, the Coal Board officials declared several times that the mining area officials had been given the schedules in advance.

They said the rise was in accordance with an agreement between the National Coal Board and the union in 1952.

Tenants left the officials in no doubt about their feelings. After the Coal Board officials went the meeting discussed future action and formed a tenants' committee.

This will link up with other estates and appeal for support from miners at the local pits, where the tenants work.

A demonstration was planned for the Lancashire miners' gala on June 12. the support of white workers, the press last week-end launched a filthy campaign by declaring this a 'race strike'.

A story was pumped into the Sunday papers that the Preston strikers were to break away from the TGWU and form a coloured workers' union.

The press were assisted in this by the disgraceful statement of the shop steward that the strike was a racial issue.

The strike committee told The Newsletter reporter that this was a distortion which they emphatically denounced.

They are bitter about the treachery of the TGWU. These workers flocked into the union during the past year and they are still determined to fight it out within the TGWU.

Apology

They have written to shop steward demanding apology.

Their letter says:

'The Action Committee of Courtaulds workers, representing A, B, C and D groups, have noticed with regret the deplorable and calumnious statement published in your name in the *Lancashire Evening Post' calling our legitimate strike as "racial.

'We declare that the statement is nothing but an attempt, and even a flagrant one, sidetrack the main issue, which makes nonsense of so-called justice and fair play for which the trade union movement is supposed to exist.

'The committee demand an unqualified apology in public within three days from receipt of the letter and failing that would advise its members to cease membership of the so-called Transport and General Workers' Union.' The committee explained that this letter was written in the heat of the moment. They do feel angry with the union. But they are still confident that their action can defeat Courtaulds and as a result they intend to re-elect their own shop stewards and fight for changes in the union branch.

Refused

At a stormy meeting on Tuesday the strikers refused to accept the advise of W. Heywood, regional group secretary of the TGWU, to return to work on the agreement of 1½ machines to allow negotiations to begin.

Certainly the organisation and conduct of the strike is on a very high level. The freshness with which these workers have organised could teach many lessons to trade unionists in other industries.

Messages of support and donations should be urgently sent to 'Courtaulds Action Committee, 4 Sergeant Street, Preston, Lancashire.

LATE NEWS: The strike committee denies reports in the press that violence has been used in the strike. This is another attempt, say the committee, to stop other workers giving support to the strike.

Smethwick factory segregation have segregated entrances and toilet facilities for immigrant and white workers..

Reports allege that separate entrances, washing facilities, drying rooms, lockers and lavatories are to be labelled 'European' 'or 'Indian'.

This factory, which is to employ about 500 workers, is now being built by the Midland Motor Cylinder Company, a subsidiary of the Birmid Group.

Smethwick's Tory-dominated council is reported to have approved the plans, and the local organiser of the union chiefly involved, the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers, has so far raised no opposition.

Protests have come from inmigrant workers' associations, which have announced their intention of "taking the matter to the Labour government.

This new move towards segregation follows a familiar pattern. Assertions that 'this is no colour bar' are followed by others that everything is in fact being done in the interests of the immigrant workers.

Tory MP for Smethwick, Peter Griffiths, thinks the firm "is to be congratulated'.

Such a move towards factory apartheid should be fought vigorously by the trade union movement. Pressed Steel - Emerson plan in given shop stewards on April 13 to withdraw all support for the operation of the Emerson bonus plan at the Pressed Steel factory, Linwood, attempts are being made by the management to get the stewards to continue with the plan in a revised form.

At a meeting held with the shop stewards, Dr. Gray, the industrial consultant employed by Emerson Consultants Ltd., who were the originators of the plan, said that 'everyone has his own ideas of what went wrong' under the original plan.

What went wrong for the workers at Linwood was that through the bonus scheme they allege they lost at least f2 per week in wages.

For the management what went wrong was that they were Claims are made that Brown 'intervened' by telephoning B. I. Bartlett, chairman of the employers' labour negotiating committee, telling him he should not have agreed to a negotiated settlement on the print workers' pay claim.

He is reported to have been 'disappointed that a deadlock position had not been created'.

An agreement, which could give 120,000 print workers employed in general printing and on provincial papers an immediate rise of 10s. a week, and another 12s. next January, is now being balloted on by nine unions.

Six shillings is a cost of living bonus. The actual wage increase is 3} per cent. With the allowance for the cost of living this increase is brought up to 54 per cent.

Brown is reported to have claimed that with pay and holiday proposals already pres on read hand agreed betore the prices and will receive double the level of 3} per cent allowed under the policy.

Increase

However, Brown himself, along with other members of Parliament, voted for a large increase for all MPs last year.

It has also been reported in the press that those who sit on the Incomes Board to consider wages, receive wages far above those of the printing workers —the most notable example is Bob Willis of the National Graphical Association who now receives £6,500 a year.

The statement by NATSOPA alleges that when the employers' representative had indicated that the settlement had followed the general line of policy as set out in the White Paper, the Minister (Brown) had replied that the printers unable, despite the co-operation of a number of leading stewards, to fool the Pressed Steel men for long.

The management have announced that they will prepare a new version of Emerson for the shop stewards' approval. Some small amendments can be expected which will split up the factory into 'regions' for earning bonus which may be paid weekly or fortnightly. Its effect will remain the same.

Experiences of the Pressed Steel workers during the operation of the Emerson Plan should finally explode the myths, fondly held by the right wing of the Scottish Trades Union Congress and the leaders of the Communist Party, that if only enough factories were directed into Scofland then unemployment would cease to threaten and wages would improve.

By April this year the bonus pool was £100,000 in deficit and only 5td. in the pound bonus was paid. The firm had also slashed the percentage by which it calculated the bonus ratios from 49 per cent to 35 per cent.

The circular continues: 'The executive council at their meeting this week had to decide whether they should withhold this information and these allegations, or whether they should circulate the factual matters that had been before them to the membership' The Department of Economic Affairs has remained silent on the allegations.

But it is a well-known fact that Brown, with the connivance of employers throughout the country, is desperately trying to hold wages down. At all costs he wants to avoid any precedent on a wages struggle being set in a section of industry.

Afraid

The busmen have been offered a 7 per cent increase; there can be little doubt that Brown is afraid any more such settlements will give workers in other sections of industry confidence to press forward with claims.

The disclosures of an alleged Brown-King pact reveal just how far the Labour government is prepared to go in support of big business.

Brown is one-time industrial adviser to the 'Daily Mirror' (one of the papers owned by Cecil King)—a post he relinquished before the General Election. He was working for the paper at the time of the vicious attack on an effective work-to-rule by busmen.

Could it be that the services rendered by Brown on the 'Daily Mirror are now being repaid by Cecil King? The trade union movement must demand an answer and call for a halt to the continuous support the Labour leaders give to capitalism.

new form?

Scottish Correspondent This ratio is the basis for fixing the amount put down for monthly labour costs. The factory therefore made a bonus under the Emerson Plan, if the actual labour costs during that month showed a less figure.

The firm had therefore lopped 14 per cent off what it calculated as the wages and salaries for the factory over a period of 18 months. Workers on the car body track claim that as a result they have dropped as much as f12 per month in wages.

A labour pool was created into which all workers who became redundant were put. They were then to either take any job which was offered them, taking also the lowered rate of pay where this applied, or the sack.

A points scheme operated, which permitted men with senior rating under points based on service, time-keeping, etc., to claim any job from men with a lower points rating.

It was this scheme which caused the strikes which have gone on in the factory since January and which caused at one stage the summonsing, by the COLLIERY under-officials in South Wales have ended their one time, following the setting up of a Ministry of Labour inquiry into 'discipline' which could lead to a big attack on the workers in this industry.

The inquiry demand has been repeated insistently by the area secretary of the officials union (the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers), Mr. E. White.

The men have themselves made it quite clear that there is far more involved in this strike than the mere issue of the 'swearing incident' at Deep Duffryn Colliery, : Mountain Ash, which sparked it off.

Their criticisms of the National Coal Board have been that, while demanding that they should maintain more effective *discipline', it has not given them On Saturday, Mr. White dec- Foyles sufficient support.

lared that this strike was 'the last chance' to end the 'anarchy and indiscipline' that he claims reigns in the South Wales' coalfield.

REJECTED

It was on Saturday that the National Union of Mineworkers South Wales area executive rejected a 'peace plan' put forward by Lord Robens himself.

This plan is reported to have included the restoration of the deputy to the training area of the mine where the original incident occurred, and from which he was removed after an NCB inquiry.

But while rejecting this, the men accepted in principle the letter previously sent to the two unions by the NCB calling for an inquiry.

This acceptance of the inquiry call has since been repeated by the NUM area secretary, Dai Francis.

Even if it is nominally limited to the Deep Duffryn incident, it will be used as the basis for a drive to force greater disciplinary management, of half the police force in the district to arrest workers who defied the firm's lock-out.

Profits for 1964 reached record high at £6,188,000 as compared with £1,450,000 in 1963. (Pressed Steel workers should note, as they tot up their tax deductions, that these profits were tax free in both years.) Shareholders received a total dividend of 35 per cent, plus a bonus of one 5s. share issued for each share held.

Now there are more opportunities for profit-making by Pressed Steel with the new contract from the Chrysler controlled French firm of Simca.

The management have now suggested an immediate bonus of between 3 per cent to 10 per cent (it is as vague as that), backdated to May 24. The fact is that this is likely to be at least fl below what was being earned 18 months ago.

This time there must be no time lost in bringing to the whole factory all the details of any scheme which is being thought up.

Full factory meetings must be held to discuss all the management's proposals and alternative plans drawn up. The factory must be united for an all-out struggle to regain the ground it has lost in wage levels. Newsletter Correspondent control of miners by the Coal Board and to attack the rank and file in the NUM.

This paves the way for increased speed-up and output per miner, which can only lead to unemployment and further neglect of safety precautions.

The attitude of the NUM leadership is in line with their general acceptance of the capitalist policies of the Coal Board.

It was exemplified by area president Whitehead's statement at a special coalfield conference that 'for six years' he had fought to prevent 'a mass stoppage in this coalfield'.