The seven week old strike against redundancies and wage cuts at Commonwealth Smelting, Avonmouth, is likely to go on over Christmas. Talks with management and the Arbitration, Conciliation and Advisory Service have failed to produce any shift in management's positions. They still want 114 redundancies and day working while the furnaces are cleaned - a wage cut of £16.20 aweek.
Arbitration
On 8 December, a mass meeting of over 500 of the 638 striking Transport and General Workers Union members agreed to arbitration. But they insisted that this would only mean a return to work if there was a guarantee or no recundancies and if full manning and shift pay were restored. The company refused The workers are digging in for a long strike. Every TGWU branch in the region has received an appeal and money is coming in. A tour of South Wales taking in TGWU branches, miners lodges and the redundancy-threatened steel industry has been organised. In Bristol strikers have spoken to dockers, Rolls Royce and Tennaco workers. Moves have been made to meet British Aircraft Corporation workers, who are facing 1,200 redundancies.
Commonwealth Smelting is owned elsewhere are now responding to the Avonmouth struggle. Workers at the Bloxwich plant at Market Drayton are refusing to accept stockpiled zine from CSL or anywhere else, while stewards at Capper Pass in Hull have arranged collections.
A delegation from CSL will be supporting and addressing a lobby of Avon called by the local Committee against the Education Cuts. The links the strikers are building with the cuts campaign, their willingness to organise jointly with the Claimants Union to get the maximum benefit from the Department of Health and Social Security, and the struggle into a fight for the right to work throughout the region.
Pivot
out the South Wales steel industry. CSL can become the pivot around which the workers in the region can launch a fight back. For messages of support, donations, information, speakers, etc. contact :
Mike O'Dea, 10 Eldon Terrace, Bedminster, Bristol.
supreme'.
Council resources committee decision to organise a support committee are vital steps in tarning the CSL surface.
With major redundancies occurring at BAC, in the print and throughThe fight against unemployment and
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say smelters STEVE BELL
We demand to worl