[page 9]
Following are excerpts fron an article in the September issue of The Southern Patriot, a U.S. paper.
The four-month old strike by women members of International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE) Local 174 against Alliance Manufacturing a subsidiary of North American Philips, aims at winning a contract including vege raises, seniority rights, and a grievance procedure.
SHENANDOAH, Virginia: Three hundred women who have been on strike here since June 2 received a telegram from President Nixon recently, asking them to go back to work in support of his wage freeze. "I hope every worker in the country goes on strike against the wage freeze," ponse. "Can you imagine what that would be like - if everybody went on strike?" Like so many people in Appalachia, (the women) used to think industry would solve the problems of chronic unemployment and poverty in their community. So, 10 years ago, local people raised $57,000 in door-to-door donations, to encourage the company to locate here. ... Now one man, who donated $100, says he only hopes that someone will blow the Alliance conpany off the face of the earth. ... Alliance made a policy of hiring mostly women, since they could get away with paying them half as much as men. The wage scales reflect thin policy. The starting wage here is X1.60 an hour and the top wage, 31.76. plant, in Ohio, the average wage is $5.10. ... "We didn't want this strike, but we had no other choice. We didn't have any didn't give us any offer or leave it."
The company lawyer, George Gardner, drove by Sle picket line the first day "with the window rolled down and a big smile on his face, едк in his face. And he rolls that window ap real fast, you know, and his car is plastered with eggs and rotten Lomatoes. • . .
Гіпен. . . . was the renIt Alliance's other choice because they You either take what we and he gets an They was afraid. They know we're a bunch of women, but they better We believe in what we're doing and we are going to fight for it."...
The company quickly got an injunction limiting the number of pickets to three. . . . More Chan 25 (strikers) in all have been arrested. . . . The women have made gate collections at plants up and down the Shenandoah Valley. Members of UE locals in nearby Waynesboro and Staunton contributed to the IUK local's strike fund. . . . And when the women put up a picket line outside Alliance's Ohio plant, more than 85 percent of the workers honored it and closed the plant down. Students and workers from other plants, and the University of Virginia, have joined the picket The only drop in support has been from the strikers' own union. • • . The IUE undercut the strike by coming to an agreement with the conpany that the women would no longer picket and shut down the parent plant in Obin. • . • But the strike has picked up momentum in the last few weeks, ax the women resuned mars picketing outside the plant. ... "We feel that the next few weeks will make or break the strike," said local treasurer Mable Breeden.
- CEYLON -Prema Manampero, one of the many women members of the JVP (Ceylonese revolutionary organisation) raped and killed by "socialist"
Mirs. Bandaranaike's police & army.
The next issue of SOCIALIST WOMAN will carry full background information on the situation in Ceylon.
[page 10]
Rosemary Sales has recently returned from Derry. Hose Curry, I.R.A. Section Leader, and Gerard O'Hare, a Republican volunteer, were killed