Industrial News:

Fight Corus Job Massacre

A LOCAL woman told me: "My daughter came back from a school trip telling me they make the best steel in the world at Stocksbridge - a few days later Corus announce they're ending steelmaking there forever!"

Alistair Tice

The closure within two years of the 150-tonne furnace will end a 160-year history of steelmaking at Stocksbridge, north Sheffield. Over 700 more jobs will go from there and neighbouring Rotherham.

"Just imagine a one and a half mile area of steel plant standing idle. And the men there say there is plenty of work to be done. How have management allowed this to happen?" asked one Corus worker.

With reference to management, another woman said: "That bloke wants shooting!" 'That bloke' being Sir Brian Moffat, the Corus chairman due to retire next month. Since Corus was founded in 1999 as a result of the merger of privatised British Steel with a Dutch steel giant, Moffat has presided over 12,000 job cuts.

During the last round of closures, he famously said: "We make money, not steel." Well Corus have not even done that. They lost £458 million last year but that has not stopped Moffat doing very nicely thank you. His successor Philippe Varin will get £1.5 million in his first year.

The workers have not had a pay rise for two years, lost pension rights and been forced to introduce team working. "We did everything management wanted us to do" said one worker.

But that is never enough under this capitalist system which in a world economic downturn says we don't need as much steel. Bosses are already demanding more government aid to finance a further round of planned closures which could affect Teesside and another 2,200 jobs.

Local Labour MPs are just saying how bad this all is. They want our 'allies' the US to lift their steel import tariffs and want more government aid for South Yorkshire. But what they won't say is that the fat cat bosses should be sacked and the steel industry renationalised under democratic workers' control.

Likewise, trade union leaders have bemoaned this latest 'catastrophe' but have not put forward any strategy to fight the job losses. Years of redundancies have taken their toll on workers' morale but unless a stand is taken, starting with a one-day national steel strike, then soon there'll be no steelmaking left in Britain at all.

Airport Workers Demand The Truth

IN MAY 2002 24 security workers at Belfast international airport were sacked for going on strike. The events around the sackings have led some of those involved to suspect collaboration between the management and local transport union (TGWU) officials.

Since the sackings, the leading shop stewards have been evicted from the Belfast offices of the ATGWU (the TGWU section in Ireland) by police called in by the union officials. The sacked workers are demanding that TGWU general secretary Bill Morris conducts an enquiry into the whole affair.

Gordon McNeill, with Madan Gupta and Chris Boyer spoke to Bill Mullins when they lobbied the TGWU leadership in London.

"It started over low pay. Our employers, ICTS, who work in 50 other airports worldwide, were paying us £5 per hour, with no overtime or shift allowances and no sick pay.

They are an Israeli firm and had responsibility for Boston airport, where two of the 9/11 planes took off. As a result, the management were putting more and more pressure on us.

Pay claim

We decided to put in a claim for a wage increase to £6 per hour. But we waited over six and half months for the TGWU to organise a strike ballot after the management made us a derisory offer of a 30 pence per hour increase.

We raised numerous complaints with Bill Morris about Joe McCusker, the local official, who works for Jim Elsby the Dublin-based regional secretary. (Elsby had been imposed by Morris after he had suspended the existing regional official, Mick O'Reilly, on trumped-up charges. See previous articles in the socialist).

We never had acknowledgement from either Morris or Elsby throughout this period and all the staff were fed up with the way we were being treated. There was a spontaneous stoppage by the workers demanding to know where their ballot papers were. They finally arrived two weeks later.

The management, of course, raised hell with the union over our protest stoppage and we were told by another official that they demanded the union get rid of Gordon McNeill and Madan Gupta.

Fourteen days later we got the ballot papers but brother McCusker insisted that we have an indicative ballot first. We got 97% in favour (104 for, three against).

Six days later we had the postal ballot, which returned a 97% vote in favour of strike action. Even McCusker said he had never had such a high ballot for strike action before!

We gave the employers 14-days notice of discontinuous strike action (though we were only legally obliged to give them seven days notice). We intended to go on strike in blocks of four hours to cover the airport's busiest times, starting on 8 May 2002.

At 4am on 8 May we got a phone call from McCusker asking us to suspend the action. He said that the conciliation service of Northern Ireland, the LRA, had agreed to act if the action was suspended. We were assured the employers would make a serious offer at the LRA offices.

When we got to the LRA at 2pm there was a message from the company saying they couldn't make it till the following day. Bill Condit, the senior TGWU official present said that ICTS were abusing the union's good faith.

We gave the company till 14 May, otherwise we would strike. The company said they would meet us the following day with "a serious offer" if we suspended the action again.

When we met them on 10 May they had nothing new to offer but again asked us to continue suspending the action till 17 May. But at the next meeting on 13 May, there was nothing on the table.

We contacted the union's legal director in London, who agreed we would not need to give another seven days notice of strike action. We phoned McCusker and told him this. McCusker then told the company we would strike from 7am the following day, 14 May.

On 15 May, when we came back to work, McCusker contacted both Gordon and Madan to say he was "repudiating" the strike - disowning it and withdrawing official union support.

The management then suspended 24 of the 44 strikers, including the four shop stewards. We tried to contact McCusker but couldn't find him.

Pickets were put on the airport but the majority of security workers had been intimidated by the company's actions. Other unions on the site were told by the TGWU that the issue had nothing to do with them.

The employer has gradually filled our jobs with new labour. McCusker has not been anywhere near the airport or visited the picket lines. We are not allowed into the airport and anyone seen talking to us is pulled in by management.

We have applied for an employment tribunal and we're calling for a union enquiry into McCusker and his handling of our action.

We intend to organise more demos in Belfast and will be calling on all Northern Ireland unions to join us on a mass picket of the airport on 24 May.

We would like to thank all unions for the support they have already given us, in particular the Socialist Party and Peter Hadden for their support and advice. If it wasn't for Peter we would have given up by now."

Please send messages of support to: Belfast Airport Workers, c/o 36 Victoria Square, Belfast BT1 4DQ.

Nursery Nurses Step Up The Fight Against Poverty Pay

NURSERY NURSES in Kirklees, West Yorkshire have voted to escalate their strike action. Following the Easter holidays, a mass meeting decided overwhelmingly to strike for a week from 12 to 16 May. This will be the longest period that the 140 nursery nurses have been on strike. The decision was not taken lightly but these women saw that they had no alternative.

Mike Forster, Kirklees UNISON

So far, there have been four days of rolling strikes but the council appears to be digging in. There has been a war of words in the press but no further negotiations. The local elections in Kirklees saw the Liberal Democrats increase their number of seats but the council is still hung. That means we still have to deal with the deputy leader, Councillor Smithson, who is a Liberal Democrat. Something of a contradiction since he is neither liberal or democratic!

A group of nursery nurses lobbied the election count on the night of 1 May. They were cheered by the support they got from local Socialist Party candidate, Jean Goodison, herself a low-paid kitchen assistant and UNISON steward. Once inside the town hall, they chased politicians all round the building.

The police became nervous, since all election polling agents had been warned throughout the day to watch out for striking nursery nurses visiting polling stations! However, Councillor Smithson did his Houdini act all night and managed to avoid nursery nurses or refused to speak to them.

This is a strike to lift a female workforce out of poverty pay. The council sees it as a chance to take on public sector union UNISON. It is doing its best to demonise these workers, who are amazed that they have been branded as banner-waving militants.

The stakes therefore have to be lifted. A special meeting is being called for to call out other workers in support of the nursery nurses. The prospect of a one-day strike by all public-sector workers is now being posed to break the logjam. Because of employment laws, this is still some way off but it will send a clear message to the council.

Next week's strike will once again be solid. The nursery nurses have come a long way since strike action was first discussed. They are now preparing to visit workplaces all over the borough to raise the idea of solidarity action. This has become a trial of strength. UNISON has to come out of it victorious. Please invite a nursery nurse to your area and keep the messages of support rolling in!

To arrange a speaker from the nursery nurses, ring Kirklees UNISON: 01484 223577

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