day work with a large drop in pay.
our Party. • What were the factors leading to the success of the strike?
Firstly the wonderful solidarity of the membership, and one nas to remember inat the strike went on. anc on and on, but the support never dwindled. Secondly, the leadership given by the strike committee, and thirdly the way the strike was spread.
We did shut down two factories, and treatened several more. ing a bitterly fought 17 week strike. The issue was management's refusal to take through nationally agreed procedure their plan to sack nearly a hundred workers and to transfer many others temporarily from shift to LEN WILSON, a steward at CSL., had the important task of organising the picketing during the strike. He is an Executive member of Bristol Trades Council, a delegate from his T&G branch to both the local Health and Education Cuts Committees, and a long-standing member of the Lab• What role did the T&G leadership There is no doubt that we had the wholehearted support of the district officer involved, and we must think ourselves lucky because they're not all of the same quality. Also it must be said that our national officer is one of the best, therefore we are doubly fortunate. however is only lair to say inat botn tnese people trom time to time the union bureaucracy. They stood up against it because they understood the principles involved. • Do you think that a support committee would have helped to bring victory sooner?
We did get an enormous amount of sup port, mainly financial, from a very wide area of the labour movement - from Rolls Royce, BAC, Cardiff docks; from the AUEW, EEPTU, ASTMS, and NALGO; and from the Claimants' Union, who made sure we got everything we were entitled to from the Social Security. We also got support from Bristol Trades Council and some Labour Party wards.
we.cio make many contacts ane had meetings with various unions, with the objective of forming a support committee. This was not to be just for the duration of the CSL strike but to be an But the two people organising it together.
Dancies! dispute at CSL trom our end were obviously mainly concerned with the day-to-day winning of the strike, and of course this type of body always takes time to set up CUTS: We have a great deal of optimism about une ruture or sucn a committee ano are continuing our efforts to cement one • Does this strike have any lessons for other workers struggling against redunI think it's important to get straight inat the rignt at col is not really against redundancies but for jobs. If you start talking about redundancies you end up negotiating how many redundancies there will be and how these will be achieved. If you fight for jobs, you fight for everything you've already got.
it s easy to overoramatise one s owi position and attach more importance to It nan is que. However many people have made the point that all Chemicals managements within the Avonmouth complex were viewing with interest the you think it is important for workers outside the public sector to participate in the local committees fighting the It's easy to recognise the hazard to health in our factory. So we have a particular interest in the best means of defending ourselves. This would appear to me to be a health service under the control of the working class, in which there would be a tree and comprenensive occ upational health service under our domain, not management's.
Towards the end of the strike, after we had been out of the industrial environment for about seventeen weeks, we arranged for an independent person to carry our renex tests and take blood samples from a good cross-section of our members, to measure the level and effects of lead poisoning. This operation will be repeated on the same men three months after they've been back at work vve nave demanded that manage
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The 632 members of the Transport & General Workers Union at Common- wealth Smelting Ltd., Avonmouth, returned to work last week after winn-