Welsh quarry strikers revive spirit of 1900
FIVE months after striking coal miners returned to work in Clwyd, slate quarry workers in neighbouring Gwynedd came out on strike and have been out for 4 months.
The dispute, in the Blaenau Flestiniog area, involves T&GWU workers, employed by three different companies and was sparked off by attempts by the management of one of them, the Flestiniog Slate Co., to end bonus payments. This would have meant a loss of between £25-30 week in wages for the quarryworkers.
As a result of these attempts workers from all three companies decided that from 19 August they would work to rule. This action led to directors in one of the companies, Cwt y Bagail, sending the men home. Members from the other two companies walked out in sympathy. A ballot later voted unanimously to continue the atrike.
The struggle has been maintained with the support of the Blaenau Flestiniog community and its efforts to appeal for help from elnewhere. This support is needed since it took George Wright, the Welsh TGWU's version of Gavin Laird, over 5 weeks to recognise the dispute as official. The continuation of the strike has many advantages which the North Wales miners did not have firstly most of the quarryworkers live in the small area of Blainau
they are therefore not isolated during the strike. Secondly. workers in Gwynedd slate industry are both aware and proud of their history of militancy (for WREXHAM LABOUR PARTY
Wrexham demonstration to suppori the Gwynedd strikers
By YVONNE CONWAY example, neither strikers nor scabs have been forgotten from the great 3 year strike of Bethesda quarrymen in 1900-03). At a recent rally for the strikers, a number of references were made to the 1900 strike.
A Blaenau Women's Support Group has been set up — mainly consisting of wives and partners of the strikers but also of women who were in the Blaenau Miners' Support Group. They, along with the strike committee, have appealled for and found support from a number of sources: South Wales miners, whom they supported Wains thine recent strike too one Wales Miners' Support Groups; the Labour Party (though Interestingly enough not from the local Labour Party branch); from Welsh republicans; from other individual trade unionists and from students in the Gwynedd area.
But support from TGWU officials in Wales as a whole has been very poor. For example not one single TGWU official in Clwyd has so much as publicised the slate workers' case, much less given concrete support.
The most hard nosed, fiercely anti-trade union boss in the dispute, E. Williams, who has so far even refused to speak to the strikers, is an active member of Plaid Cymru. Letters from Dafydd Ellis Thomas, Plaid's President, to Williams have as yet received no reply. The strikers' determination to continue their struggle, despite difficulties, stems from a fear that if they give in to a loss of bonus payments, it will open the flood gates to a continued worsening of their working conditions and an assault on union rights. Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p7
They are only too aware of how bravely and bitterly fought was the battle to win union recognition and improvements in the quarries' working conditions. It took three major strikes, including the 3 year stoppage at Bethesda, to gain the right to be trade union members, against ruthless bosses and despite a very conservative leadership of the old North Wales Quarrymen's Union.
Indeed the parallels with earlier struggles in the quarries are very striking. Those struggles took place in a climate where the fear of unemployment loomed large and was a powerful weapon for the bosses.
After the end of the union recognition struggles of 1874-1903, the workforce had dropped from 16,000 in 1898 to 8,000 by 1914. Also it was other trade unionists and the community who sustained those strikes
not the union leaderships. A huge total for those days of £3,921 was collected in the Welsh communities at home and in America for the union recognition strug gles. Some of this was donated to South Wales miners then on strike.
This connection still exists today.
Whilst the early struggles are remembered, the quarry workers have no intention of reliving the agonies of working in 19th cenutry conditions. The continued support by other workers is vital for the continuation of the strike, as is pressure on TGWU officials in particular to spread support for the strike throughout the union.
Donations and messages of support can be sent to:
Flestiniog Quarrymen's Dispute Fund, TGWU District Office, 17, Segontium Terrace, Caernarion, Gwynedd. •CENTREE
Keith Joseph shuffles the Burnham pack
RECENTLY there have been several significant ments in the teachers pay campaign.
Teachers pay is negotiated through the Burnham Committee made up of representatives of local authoritles, the DES, and teaching unions. The union side is known as the teachers panel, and representation is supposely based on membership figures for each association. The allocation of seats on the panel lies with the DES and its minister, Sir Keith Joseph.
Joseph has used a membership numbers to remove the majority of the largest union, the NUT. The NUT has been seen as the most "militant" in this year's salaries campaign. Although the NUT is still the largest teaching union, it no longer has an overall maJority of teachers in England and Wales.
The Burnham Teachers Panel now consists of 13 NUT representatives, 7 NAS/UWT 4 AMMA SHA, 1 PAT. NATFHE previously had one voting seat, but have now been reduced to non "observer status"
The Headteachers assoclations are over-represented on the relation to their membership figures. If the NUT had the same representation proportionally as the SHA, there would be 54 NUT representatives on the committee!
Joseph is indeed fortunate: how many other industries or professions allow management to select who they wish to negotiate with -half way through a negotiations!
The re-allocation of seats has, however, saved the NUT leadership's bacon. The NUT's campaign, far from being "militant" has, by and large. been weak, disjointed and far behind the rising militancy membership.
On the positive side, the campaign has seen the demand of "no day, no cover" implemented (refusing substitute, or cover, for colleagues on the first day they are absent), strike action has taken place without strike pay (or "sustentation" the NUT has to pay full strike pay when members are called Serious national action - or even protracted local action in several areas - becomes a massive drain on a strike fund which has been "raided"
By JIM TURNER develop- a body the JISTI change in teachers 2 NAHT. 1 Marches — no substitute for all-out action time and time again for other pur- voting by the NUT poses ecutive.) Both these steps have been panel in in response to massive pressure from the membership, and reflect the cam- paign waged by the left in the NUT over the last 15 years. leadership is almost entirely im- press. They have described the NUI press. as the "NUM of the teaching protes- sion" and even compared its General • pecially Secretary. set dispute's Arthur Scargill! teachers' panel seats, direct control, the NUT leadership can engage in its traditional pursuit of its else. tional Schoolmasters/Union Teachers to tillated teaching union) have conve- and niently obliged by deciding to ballot on acceptance of an "interim" settle- . By rule, ment for 1985, while declaring their intention to fight for a 35% in- out. crease... next year! teachers. most leaders have throughout the campaign to trade off Socialist Viewpoint No. 9 December 1985 p8
NULT AYLA below!) and PAS respective leaderships! National Ex- action. reject Indeed the "militancy" of the NUT and has been built up by the Fred Jarvis, as being the With the re-allocation of Burnham Teachers and loss of single pinning the blame on someone In this instance the NAS/UWT (Na- of Association Women of the smaller TUC af- necessity. This will come as no surprise to The NAS/UWT the shown a willingness
conditions of service against a pay increase, and have, if anything, shown even less of a desire for a genuine campaign than the NUT leadership.
Whilst the NAS/UWT leaders pay lip service to the restoration Houghton pay levels established in the mid 1970s (teachers' salaries have dropped by 34% over the last ten years), they have never accepted that restoration should be on present conditions of service. In essence they agree with more work for a Houghton pay level. Their "Interim" settlement
Ano one, least of all the employers. The NAS/UWT position merely signals to the employers that they can continue to make pay offers around the rate of inflation (or just
have them accepted. Talk of restoring Houghton levels becomes just that — talk.
All the signals are that the NUT and NAS/UWT leaderships are prepared for a war of words over the settlement - a tactic guaranteed to set the
memberships at each others throats, rather than at the employers, or the respective union
The NUT must reject the moves for settlement from other associations on the teachers panel, and step up its
NAS/UWT members should vote to
Othe position put by their leadership — a betrayal of the last nine months action and the principles behind it. If NUT members also reject the crude membership war which Jarvis seems intent on carrying out, the basis still exists for active unity of the rank and file of both unions.
Valuable lessons could be learned from this. A debate has recently been initiated in the journal of the Socialist
Alliance, Socialist Teacher, around the question of a
TUC-affiliated union for teachers. Ken Jones, an STA member who is also a member of the NUT National Executive, argues that changes in the nature of the teaching force and the loss of the NUT's overall maJority on Burnham makes this unity a
This debate can take in a long needed discussion on the nature of the Burnham Committee itself.
It is clearly Important to maintain the principle of national negotiations - but now more than ever (and not before time)