Pickets out in foundry strike for recognition

The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 422, 4 December 1965 · scan page 4

Title, extent and credit checked against the scan (17 October 2026, from the scan: page 4, headline under the Industrial Newsletter block, 'By Sylvia Pick'; the headline was left as a fragment at the end of another record; the B'ham AEU item welded after it is cut off). The text is machine-read and not corrected: for anything you quote, read the scan.

•WEknow that it we lose this strike we This was how pickets, standing ou ham brass foundry in the bitter cold, struggle for union recognition.

This dispute has come to a head at a factory in a side street in the heavily industrialised district of Tyseley.

The firm was founded in 1784 and has never in all its career of 181 years had a strike before.

It is a good example of the kind of business which has been ticking over placidly, keeping out of any trouble for decade after decade, until suddenly it finds itself pushed by the sharpening of the class struggle into an open clash between management and workers.

The firm manufactures various kinds of brass valve components. •The only trade union they recognise is the National Society of Metal Mechanics. Of their employees only eight are members of the NSMM. One hundred and ninety-three workers have joined the Transport and General Workers' Union, and are now fighting for its recognition.

Of 193 strikers, 180 were present at a strike meeting, and voted unanimously to stay out till victory was won.

'Some of the men and women have worked here for over 50 years. The one with the longest service is a woman worker who has been at the factory for 57 years. She is on strike with the rest of us.' The strikers include many immigrant and young workers, both youths and girls. Basic wages are £9 19s. 6d. for a 40hour week for adult workers. Boys under the age of 18 earn approximately £5 7s. 6d. for 40 hours, and girls under 18 approximately f4 17s. 6d.

ELEMENTARY RIGHT Standing outside this factory, the oldest part of which dates from five years before the French Revolution and decades before the earliest struggles to build trade unions, there still seems glaring incongruity in the fact that even now, in 1965, workers should be forced to wage a struggle for the elementary right to form their union organisation.

The strikers are making an appeal to T&GWU shop stewards to help them win this first round in the fight for better living standards.

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