NO FIGHT FOR LOBBY BY CLYDESIDE CP Industrial

By Newsletter COLLABORATION between workers and management at Fairfields, Glasgow has been rudely shattered by 80 apprentices who began a strike on Thursday (June 16).

The. apprentices, members of the Boilermakers' Society, are demanding the payment of ls ld and hour increase on the rate and £30 bonus already paid to adult journeymen for the agreement on job flexibility and inte:changeability, signed recently.

On Monday the apprentices demonstrated at the yard gate as workers streamed out for the lunch-hour. Their posters were short and sharp: 'Shop at Fairfields, the cheapest in the country,' 'Don't try and soft soap us, we don't lather,' 'Slavery has been abolished, except in this yard,' 'We stay out until we get paid, or until Fairfields shuts.' They told Young Socialists how more and more supervisors were being appointed in the yard. It was becoming so bad, they said, that there would soon be more foremen and 'white hats' than workers.

DETERMINED

Many of the apprentices were in the walk-out of November, 1964, and agreed that on that occasion they were unorganised and not prepared for a tough fight with the management. Now they were determined not to go back without winning their claim.

When the yard shop stewards' convenor came out, he was greeted by ironic cheers and banter.

The recent record of collaboration between management and trade unions at Fairfields has made it clear that none of the workers' representatives are thinking of a fight with the management, let alone with the government.

Later apprentices discussed the role of the government and the June 22 lobby when a YS speaker explained the fight against the anti-trade union law.

Workers grinned sheepishly as they walked back to work through the lines of apprentices.

Many adult workers also are dubious about the headlong rush at Fairfields to relinquish all the hard-won protective rights that have been established in the last 50 years.

They fear that the drive which is now being intensified in the yard for "productivity" means much more intense work and large-scale redundancies later.

Other sections of workers in the yard have expressed their dissatisfaction with the productivity agreement.

Six hundred semi-skilled and unskilled men, members of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, have protested that the ls ld an hour increase has upset the differential between themselves and the tradesmen. he said, this law would go through.

He said the seamen had received tons of sympathy and collections of money and food were now coming in, but what was needed more than anything were practical measures to black the ships on the Clyde.

'his indicated that behind th ront of sympathy, many prom nent trade unionists in the Clyde were trying to isolate the strike and minimise its effects.

The seaman said it had been impossible to make contact with officials of the Scottish Transport and General Workers' Union in stopping work on several ships which were 'black'.