TURRIFF-TAYLOR, the oil pipeline contractors to BP at Firth Queens ferry, Edinburgh, have failed to break union organisition on their site. But the issues opened up in this dispute will have far-reaching effects, as. STEWART MACLENNAN, a member of the strike committee, and member of the IMG, explains:
* Turniff thought they could smash us while we were still weak. We responded by walking off the site and setting up an effective picket which was maintained throughout the dispute and within a week we had won.
The dispute began with a demand for proper facilities on the site. The management granted the facilities but four hours later paid off 28 union members including all the shop stewards and deputies. We were replaced the following day by a "gripsquad" (scahs).
Turriff-Taylor tried in its heavy-handed primitive way to wipe out union organisation on the site. The great physical difficulties only a lew involved - plus the lack of trade union experience forced us to develop rapidly the tools we needed to defend our struggle and win our We formed a strike committee governed by daily mass meetings at which all of us learned to bring up our Ideas and develop them into a coordinated plan of action. The mass meetings issued a daily strike bulletin which was used by the pockets, kept the whole of the TT workforce informed and helped to bring our sympathy striken.
We formed flying squads of speakers to draw in support from the TT supply workers, whose shop stewards organised the distribution of the bulletin, financial levies and blacking of pipes and asphalt. The united action of the locked-out men, the sympathy strikers, the workers at Brodero Price pipes, the Bovis Myton site and more forced TT back to the negotiating table.
Through our own struggle (the dispute was never made official by distance, motion calling for support for Chican artists in the face of severe repression hy take on cowboy contractors, international oil pants, and win. UCATT) we have learned vital lessons about how workers in far-flung sites can brginise and can, when necessary, ers control.
It's necessary for all workers in unionisation and conditions but abso hopin to work our and impose a worker energy policy based on work Some steps have already been takTors. meeting soon to fully disciss the Turriif-Taylor dispute. I will be speaking at a meeting in the docks and at a tew sites in Aberdeen about the All these are important beginnings Most of the steps taken so far lave been around the fight for basic trade union rights - which will be no easy struggle bat hopefully we will sonn be able to organise some far-teaching discussion on all aspects of the oil industry.
The development of North Sea oil is on everybody's mind in Scotland. We have to get together to work out the exact ways in which we can fight for the henefits of the project to go to the working class, not to line the