Thirty five Pakistani and Indian workers are on strike at the elastic braiding factory of E. Jaffe & Sons in Nottingham in another major dispute over sweatshop conditions and racist practices in the area. This follows the recent disputes at Crepe Sizes and the Mansfield Hosiery Mills on the same kind of issues.
The workers at the factory have been "expected" up till now to work a 72 hour week with no overtime rate. In addition, conditions at the factory are appalling, training contracts are manipulated to obtain skilled work at apprentice's rates, at is impossible to work out how the wages are made up, and so on. Ten months ago the first steps to change this were taken when the workers voted to join the T&GWU. Management bare consistently refused to recognise the Union - it would be 'illegal", they say, because the T&G, is not registered with the Government"! At the same time they have tried, largely unsuccessfully, to split the workforce by offering the higher paid jobs of gang lender and foreman to selected Pakistanis. All this came to a head when a section of the workforce decided to strike on May Day. Man agement were enraged, and decided to teach the Pakis a irason. Next day one of the strikers, Sarwar Mohanned, was sacked on the spot for allegedly Tinishing early. Alter Red Weeksy 19 May 1973 Pog: 2
But this assumes that at least a part of the in-