last Monday.
STEVE POTTER reports The occupiers have every reasonto bethere. Their dispute started when the British Steel Corporation management oi the factory sacked six workers and suspended seven the day after the plant had come out in support of the demonstration called by the National Union of Public Employees in south cast London on 11 May.
Paul Lutener, one of the six sacked and the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation works representative in the factory, told Red Weekly of the suppor which had already come from Greenwich District NUPE and workers at the local Brooke Hospital.
In Brighton they were asking NUPE delegates for support of their lobby headquarters this Wednesday, for money, and to put pressure on their leadership to back occupation.
The Greenwich occupiershave nothing to lose in fighting for the right tostrike. It is as clear as day to all militants like Peter Suret, ISTC branch chairperson in the plant, that to lose the dispute would open up the way to the factory being closed and all the workers in their plants losing their jobs.
He told a press conference in the factory last week of the wave of closures in the surrounding area. Redpath Dorman Long, also owned by the BSC and on an adjacent site to the RSS factory is due to close on the 22nd of this month. The giant synthetic gas processing plant also on SENIO WORDSEE TALl estate is due to make 3,000 redundant before year.
The first that workers in the plant knew of the proposed closure was on 21 January this year, the day that they returned from a sucoessful strike against the appalling safety conditions in the factory. Since then the RSS bosses have stonewalled and refused further information, hoping that the climate of IT LEELALLY would find new jobs.
Only after the workers had occupied and documents come into their possession detailing a move to a much smaller site in Enfield were they fully aware of the management's double dealPeter Suret also told journalists of what he called the element of land speculation in the move.- The British Steel Corporation originally owned theland on which both the RDL and RSS plants stand. This land was transferred free to the two subsidiaries who will now chalk up a healthy profit for them as part and parcel of the move. Of course it matters little to the BSC that this clever accounting Giddle will add more human satisties to the 43 per cent of jobs that this area has suffered in the last ten years.
High rates was anotherreason given by RSS bosses for the necessity to close the three-yearold plant. They consistently refused to listen to the findings of the workers in the plant who had told them that their estimate of the rates was nearly double the real amount they had to pay. The union leadership exposed the little fact that in common with many other big concerns, RSS had used the rates appeal system to avoid paying for three years!
Among the documents in the strikers' possession were those icported in last week's issue of which management used public money to obtain the services of League in hiring and firing workers. They had also used the Special Branch to crossPaul Lutenerand Mike Duffin were their targets. Paul and Mike were suspected by the management of engaging in maustrial saporase which as Paul pointed our is completely alien to trade unionism - especially militant trade unionisms.
This was how the 'esperts" of Photo: G.M COOKSON/RadWonk the BSC put together their case — as revealed in the decuments headed Greenwich Works Sabotage'. A memo from Roobuck, the works manager, to section heads in BSC says, by way of introduction:
*It should be noted that no proof esists whatsoever against any of the Greenwich employees connected Following reports.
Then, astoundingly:
'It is our considered opinior hat either Duffin by himself o he and Latener are responsible for the sabotage...* This conclusion is presumably based on the information which they have obtained, not from the Economic League, who were unable to oblige this time, but from the Special Branch who informed Roebuck that Lutener was an active member of the National Socialist Front Movement (sic)" presumably a reference to the This information is followed by me observacon that thr Branch complaints' on their file against Paul of: 1. Distributing National Socialist (sic) literature. 2. Disturbing the peace during demonstrations. 3 Taking part in illegal demonThe fourth is ommitted, perhaps because they think another one up or because the Special Branch can't count; for Paul has never ever been arrested, charged or convicted anything.
What might have got up the La tactic very accurate plant.
staff at the ISTC members. burcaucrats.
the lid off the whole the union. oul'. have *four couldn't anybody for ance stood bail for someone who was arrested at a demonThe overwhelming case that has been produced by the workers in the piant against management's tissue of lies and deception goes some way to explaining the solidarity in the Apart from shop floor workplant have played a tull role in the occupation, especially five women The same cannot be said of their union. Telegrams galore have been sent to the plant by ISTC officials - all instructing the workers to return to work. As in the Port Talbot dispute strike-breaking not strike-lead ing is the method of the ISTC general secretary and his fellow This was another aspect of the documents, because they took WEIC sordid collaboration between RSS and safety strike, for example, Mr. Banbury of the Clydeside. ISTC telephoned RSS management on 13 January and said to them that they should stick to their guns and that the workforce should be left to sweat it for This was just one example of a now familiar pattern of the union full-timers working hand in giove with management to break the strike.
Some workers in the plant already discussing possibility of a badly needed campaign for members to take control over their own union, linking up with similar moves in The support which they reccived almost immediately from sister plants in the reinforcing section of BSC gives grounds doe: support which the electricians of Port Talbot have receiv wherever they have taken the case.
The Greenwich workers kno that they risk having everythi thrown at them which Special Branch, the Econom League, the BSC and the union bosses can dredge u They are ready. Now they ne the support.
Resolutions, money
speukers: Occupation Comm tee, c/o Ron Mitchell, Kentmere Road, London SEI
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STRIKERS from the occupied Reinforced Steel Services factory in Greenwich, south east London, lobbied public employees in conference in Brighton
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