Ownen Asociation and the TGWU, on behalf (in me no nice strike to record, the f the men, with no Two years ago, trawlermen were a non-union area of industry. Now they are demanding full union membership on board all Hull trawiers, the right to have a shop-steward on board-each lip; and a pay ris low has this total reversal of the situation come about? To answer this question it is necessary to examine the situation of a trawlerman.
BASIC PAY Sidetrawlen: £14 16 0 per week.
Sterstrawlen: E15 J0 4 per BONUS aranteedy: up to 16 13 c HOURS day weck: average 95 hour Im bad conditions, often work more than 18 hours per day).
OUTLAY Until recently, each man provided his own "gear" clothes for Arctic conditions. even his mattress.
CONDITIONS Virtually all fishing carried out in Arctic waters, often 30 degrees below zero, where to touch metal is to lose one's skin, where the potentially incapacitating dangers of frost-bite are very real, where ice so easily forms on the superstructure-making the ship unstable-where the seas can dwart any but the largest trawler.
Breakfast, six days a week is fried fish, only on a Sunday will the men see such "luxury"
as cups and tomatoes. For a three-week voyage, the men get just six cans of beer.
Only since last year and at the discretion of the skipper, the men are allowed Yahr. for supper. (Food is only slightly better on the newer, bigger, stern-trawlers, the freezers.)
No contact with the Union is allowed while at sea, should the men have any grievance the skippers do not allow it.
The skipper is law, jodge, and executioner at sa. Some carn as much as E10,000 pa.-yet with the increasing number of larger ships.
many of them face redundancy.
Trawiers have the highest accident/death rate in the whole of British industry-witness the three trawlers that went down last year, with a loss of 59 lives -St. Romanus, Kirk Cleveland and Kingston Paridoe. They went down in Arctic seas because of the weight of ice that formed on their superstructure: this made them so unstable that in the heavy seas they just rolled oner. While the old trawlers continue to give the colleges of Commerce and Education proved owners a good retum on their capital, they will not be replaced with more sea-worthy vessels. (Shipping trading profits as a whole in 1969 rose by 32.9%. hile average other profits in industry rose by 18.9%).
The trawlermen have only about a week ashore before again sailing for the fishing grounds. Without full unionisation of the Industry, the hands that are taken on by each trawier are subject to the personal whim of each through the town, and producing a strike skipper and owner. Any man pressing for an Improvement in wages and conditions on board will be viewed by the owners as trouble-makers. and be therefore subject to victimisation. Shopstewards on board each ship would be able to ensure that none of the gains made so far are infringed.
The men demanded £20 a week basic wage, the owners waited until the strike had been called, then offered £19 0 4, which the men rejected. Their other demands, about which the owners have refused to talk, are: 100% union membership aboard the trawlers, negotiations on shipboard shop-stewards, and negotiations on time in port and shipboard conditions. Incidently it is worth noting that the inadequate sum offered only covered time at be paid at two wage rates.
ACCIDENT RATE For their basic wage the trawlermen have to work *18 hours a day for 10 or 12 days every three-week trip. This is in weather that most of us don't know about, and will never experience.
The weather does not count, it is catching fish, gutting it, heading it, washing it, stowing it away, that is what counts. All this on a deck that never stays in the same position, with ice and water pouring over you. So bad are the conditions that it is no surprise to find that the accident rate, 72% above the national average.
makes it the most dangerous industry in the country:
The demands of the men are modest. and century based in dustry. Just as the miners had to call upon workers in other industries for assistance, so too is the nature of fishing. ROLE OF THE POLICE From the very onset of the dispute the police have been employed in a very partisan role, which they appear to have enjoyed. Not alified with "protecting dock property" by unting a continuous counter picket, they une aho asisted in the recruitment and transportation of blacklegs (The number of man-hours involved is beyond imagination). The usc of police and police vehicles is a common sight transporting the scabs on to the docks. (It is also interesting to note that the Hull trawlermen have taken to referring to the "friendly" British bobby as "pig"- the graffiti on watehouse walls bears eloquent testimony to this fact).
Following several confrontations with the police, something like fifty people have been arrested and charged. Obstruction, loitering. and behaviour likely to cause a breach of the police are the most common charges. One man chased by a police car along the pavement was charged with obstruction! Men, their wives, and even children are not beyond the long arm of the law. On the evening of 17 March a fourteenyear-old youth was arrested.
The use of the law has not been restricted to in blue. Or of the provocative acts of their plain sical performance of the gorillas clothes branch, who dress like Burtons dummies and smell like an advert for Old Spice. Amongst the trawlermen and students they stood out like carnations in a farmyard.
INJUNCTIONS When the bobbers and other workers came out in sympathy, the owners responded with injunctions against the unions involved, the GWU and the NUR. In court Mr. Campbell, the owners' legal front, said that the young (their average age would be below 30) and it is clear that they are not only rapidly losing faith in the degenerated apparatis of the Labour Party, but are beginning to consciously see the socialist students as their allies in struggle. Finally, let no one try to fool the Hull trawlermen about law and order being to their benefit. They have already begun to experience it and know that they and militants every where are the targets of capitalist governments. Malcoln Ball Jolier Bearpari
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On Friday February 13th, following six months" taken from the pages of labour history. The Intesse negotiations between the Hull Trawlers
state of the industry, the attitude of the owners and the conditions which reflect those attitudes have more in common with the coal industry at the turp of the century than a twentieth-