In three examples last week, the workers involved as early victins of the Wilson unemployment squeeze have responded in ways which could, if they were developed, be the beginnings of a very important movement. At Pontypool, ICI workers are proposing that they all take a 10% wage cut to enable the sacked workers to retain their jobs. At Doncaster, 1,000 nenbers of the T.&G.W.U. voted unanimously to reject the sacking notices given to 600 of then, because of lack of consultation, and called for the workers of all three factories affected by the ICI run down to act together to frustrate the enployers' plans. And in Willesden, shop stewards at the E.N.V. factory, in response to the employers! decision to close the plant have demanded the opening of the books for independent examination, to compel management to support its arguments with facts. In the latter case, the stewards warn others that American controlled manaszenents, such as that .fE.N.V., are likely to attack militant trade unionism elsewhere in Britain by threats of closure. These three responses are signs that the British workings class, stron and confident, (not cowed by senerations of mass unemploynent, as their fathers were) is beginning to stand up and fight back against the treatment of labour as a conmodity, the costs of which ean. be wilfplly dispensed with, when shareholders'interests demand an attack on workers' bargaining powers. The three forms are not of equal merit however. At Pontypool, the workers have shown real and admirable solidarity to those who have been sacked. But they have accepted the story that ICI'cannot afford! to maintain the labour force at. present ware levels. Surely before any worker offers to help this' firm out of 'difficulties'!, he should, as an elementary right, demand complets knowledge of the firm's accounts. Until that happens he should reject the sackings, as the Doncaster men have donee The E.N.V. example represents the best response of all then, and should be rapidly generalised wherever sackings are threatened. It is a response a whole generation away from the servile acceptance of the ‘inevitable’ consequencies of the vicious economics of the labour market. Let the unions take note! Let then support shop stewards whereever they reject sackings and call for the opening of the books. Let them refuse the notices and refuse negotiations on who is to go. 'Last in, first out' is the rough justice of a people in retreat, acquiescing in, and even making the rules for their own inmiseration. But how can sackings be rejected? The employer has the ‘right! to dismiss men. Ina capitalist, private ownership econony, that is of course a truisn. Even so, the demands should be fought out: 30 hours work for 40 hours
pay! open the books] These should be the negotiating positions. Unions have NOT suddenly lost all their bargaining power because of the freezes they can make their demands effective, through normal trade union industrial powers. The T&GWU in particular, should realize that NOW is the time to activate its own programme for shop steward access to the books, and to management practires. It is no good putting these constructive demands for an extension of industrial democracy into cold storage until ‘after' the crisis. And the message of the men at Doncaster is of obvious importance. Act torethers! Workers should not fight these battles in isolated groups of a few hundred each. Here again, the large seneral coverage of the T & G means that policies can be co-ordinated over a wide field. The ICI behaviour in the present case is so outrageously arrogant, that the unions and the sho; stewards should have no hesitation in mounting a company wide attack upon that imperial stronz-hold. They should recall that it was the ICI which spawnec Dr, Beeching, who so recently spoke of ‘the moral decay of full employment'. The ICI's own immorality is clearly seen and felt today: the first hesitant steps by their victims to raise the banner of a higher morality must be turned into a major march around the demands made at Doncaster and at Willesden.