Ramsgate Women in Tenth Week of Strike

SOCIALIST WOMAN is distributing a collection sheet in aid of a~10 week old strike at Electronics Laboratories, a small factory on the Haine Industrial Estate in Ramsgate, Kent, East Kent has the second highest unemployment rate in the United Kingdom and this fact plus it being an agricultural area makes for very low wages, The workers at this factory organised themselves into the EETU/ PTU (formerly ETU) to raise their weekly wage from £8.15s to the minimum of £10,15s for a 40-hour week in the engineering industry. Almost the whole production staff joined the union. On April 16th, the employers demanded that workers resign from the union or face the sack, A few men gave in, but 38 women and one man stuck firm (the majority of the production staff). The strike has been official from the beginning and pickets have been organised (with some successes: some drivers have refused to cross the line). Demonstrations have been held in Ramsgate (supported by the locel trade unions) and twice the strikers have come up to picket the parent company's headquarters; Brocks' Alarms, Holborn,