The six-week old dispute at the Imperial London Contractors site in Bedford Way, London, where 13 scaffolders were sacked for alleged restriction of output," has now become the focus for a major test of strength between employers and workers in the building trade.
Last Monday morning building workers from several other sites in central London came to support a mass picket outside the ILE site.
Management reaction was immediate, At Laing's only mean that an all-out offensive is being in Tottenham Court Road the convenor steward prepared both on the flying picket tactic and was not allowed back on to the site until after a three hour strike, And at the Trollope and Coll's site in Leadenhall, management withdrew recognition of the convenor steward upon his return. MORE AT STAKE?
The latter site has now been shut down by unanimous decision of the melt. Moreover, convenor stewards at four other Trollope and Coll's sites in the area were due to join the Leadenhall picket line on Thursday. Either management are arbitrarily victimsing one steward of, if they withdraw recognition of all the stewards, much more is at stake, This could on site organisation.
The Trollope and Coll's sites are extremely well-organised, so the employers" confidence must ahriously be riding high, One reason could be that the dispute at the ILC site is still in the balance. The number of scabs is not decreasing, and with management help they have attenipted to set up a self-proclaimed works com mittee. It is obviously the orgeniertion on He site that management want to break; by giving credibility to the scah 'wurks committer" they hope to undermine the position of the militants outside even if they are offered their jobs back NO EXCUSE There is now less excuse than ever for the bureaucracy of the C'EU (construction section of the AUEW) to refuse to make this strike officiaL A positive decision would certainly strengthen the cfforts to get the scabs off the site. But whatever happens, this dispute has sufficiently weakened union orginisation on 'the ILC site to give Trollope and Coll's manage. The worker-director is a hybrid which Europ can capitalists have been trying to breed lor some time as a means of incorporaling and weakening the working class. EEC membership has now brought discussion of this genetic wonder so Britain: the last month has seen important statements on workers partiespation in industry' from the Labour Party National Executive, the Liberal Party, the TUC, the CHE, the Engineering Employers" Federation (EEP) and other groups. The Tory Goveroment has promised a Green Paper on the subject for September All this is in response to a proposal from the Common Market Commission (whose industrial relations director is Jack Peel, ex-head of the dyers" and bleachers" union) that all Buropean companies should have two-tier boards of directors with workers' representatives on the supervisory boards. The proposal is modelled on the West German system; and it is largely envy of the relatively low strike reoord of German industry which has persuaded other European capitalists that worker-directors might be an antidote to millaney. CONSULTATION So far British capitalists have rejected the proposal. The CBI says worker directors would undermine the prerogatives of manage ment. The EEF finds the EEC proposals inconsistent with the well-estublished principle that a Company's board acts in the interests of the Company as a whole?! And the far-right pressure group Aims of Industry fears the
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Workers control capitalist style