Industrial Notes

from David Robinson. Strike Action on London Docks. Men working on the West India Dock have decided to continue their week-old unofficial strike over quayside manning arrangements. Dockers walked off the MV Benledi last week after complaining that one gang on the quay was having to unload handle cargo being unloaded by two gangs on the ship. The normal method is for one gang on board to ~ . unload to one gang on the quay. More than 1,000 men are now on strike and 13 ships are idle. Work was further Stbrapted in the Port of London on Tuesday when more than 3,000 men in the Royal Group of docks stopped work for a two-hour unofficial meeting at which they demanded a better deal for older dockers. The meeting was the biggest in recent times and ended with a unanimous vote not to accept decasualisation until the employers met demands for a voluntary early retirement scheme at 60, with severance pay of £5,000 and a pension of £8 10s. a week at 65, with the option of taking it at 60. The Minister of Labour, Ray Gunter, was unable to confirm that decasualisation will be implemented on September 15 before Parliament rose last week because of the pension issue. Some 5,000 dockers are expected to be made redundant in london within the next three years and in order to help ease the situation the employers want to reduce the retiring age from 68 to 65. A dockers' national delegate conference recently rejected their offer of lump sum payments - ranging from £150 to £600 to men between 63 and 67 = in compensation for earlier retirement, unless they were to be made on a voluntary basis. The union is pressing for a much larger sum on the ground that a docker simply reporting for work would get more than £2,000 in three years. The conference also decided to continue pressing for a minimum pension of £5 a week at 65. The very generous terms recently announced by the government for members of the armed forces who will become redundant over the next few years clearly shows the way members of the working class such as miners and dockers are being discriminated against. Schemes for rationalisation, whether they be in the mines, the steel industry or the docks, mst be not be accepted unless realistic compensation is offered to those made redundant. Roberts-Arundel 'Blacked' by Railwaymen. The campaign to 'black' the American-owned textile machinery company of Roberts-Arundel at Stockport, took an upturn last Tuesday when railwaymen in the greater Manchester and Stockport areas agreed not to handle the firm's goods. The decision follows a resolution by the Manchester district council of the National Union of Railwaymen, declaring their intention to redoubles their efforts to make action against the firm effective. The unions have been in dispute with the company since last November when the management dismissed its work force, who were involved in a strike, and engaged non-union labour. Since then the firm has refused to recognise trade unions. Building Strike in Hounslow. Some 200 tradesmen on the Turriff Construction Ivy Bridge housing site for Hounslow Borough Council came out .on strike on Tuesday. Fifty members of the A.S.W. have -been out since Monday in protest against moves to replace the labour force with labour-only gangs.