On the day the Imperial Typewriters strikers were returning to work, 30 Asian women at Kenilworth Components in Leicester went on strike.
The women went on strike after being sacked for asking for a wage rise and joined the TGWU. Kenilworth is one of the factorles in the Midlands area which employs Asian workers, especially women in bad conditions and with low pay.
The conditions in the factory and the wages of the workers seem like something out of the nineteenth century. The women receive £12 for 40 bours work. The 20 men in the factory work a compulsory 60 hour week in five 12 hour shifts for just Nominally the workers are given a E4 monthly bonus, but it can be and is withdrawn if a worker arrives late for work anytime during a particular month. There is no time and a hall for Saturday work and no candous list goes on and on.
FIGHT
As at Imperial Typewriters the women decided to light.
They took this decision although they knew that the company in the past had sacked individuals, groups of workers, and even the entire work.force for asking for a wage increase.
The high turnover rate has meant that there has been no union organisabon.
Despite these difficulties the women won a victory, in which the Imperial Typewriter strike obviously helped, The Leicester TGWU. embarrassed by the impersal strike, stepped in immediately at Kenilworth.
A return to work was negotiated last Tuesday. However, when they went teen or medical facilities. This horren- back, cleven of them, including two of their spokeswomen, were sacked.
The other women then walked out and the TGWU made the strike official, It took thirteen weeks of struggle to move the union at Imperial Typewriters while at Kenilworth Components, the strike was made official in two days. writer strikers was very decisive in what happened at Keniworth Components. The thirty Asian women were invited to a mass meeting of the Imperial strikers and as a result, twenty pickets were sent to the factory. The committee set up by also met the women strikers to discuss mutual problems and the best way to help the strike were faced with another strike by Asian workers and obviously were frightened of having another 'Imperial on their hands. Negotiations began between management. union and Department of Employment, with Bromley, the TWU official of Imperial Typewriter fame beading the union side.
Magrin.
The help of the Imperial Typelabour. some of the Asian women at Imperial The TGWU and the management A settiement was reached very quickly. The eleven sacked workers were reinstated, It was agreed that there would be no victimisation or redundancies, An increase in pay for cach worker of 15.30 a week was agreed plus a t2.25 threshold payment. All the workers in the factory have now joined the TGWU, In eight weeks time new negoriations for all the workforce will begin The strike at Imperial Type writers has shown how the militancy and determination of black workers can force the trade union movement to act, It has also given a lead to other black workers in the way to fight agrinst their particular exploitation as a source of cheap EXAMPLE They have set an example to white workers how to organise a strike directly involving the mass of the worken. This is an effective way of ensuring that the union bureaucrats are unable to sell out disputes.
All the workers will benefit from the action taken by these Asian women at Kenilworth and this nicans it will be much casier to unify the junta workforce - black and white, women HOSPITAL WORKERS in Wessex will be urged to stop work for half an-hour on 11 September, the anni. versary of the bloody overthrow of the Allende government in Chile.
The news that the Wessex hospitals shop stewards have made the call for the stoppage was announced at a demonstration in Portsmouth last Saturday organised by the local Chile Solidarity Campaign.
About 130 people marched through Portsmouth city centre to the main gate of the dockyard to protest against the presence of two frigates supplied by the Government to the Chilean junta. At the dockyard the demonstrators observed a two minutes silence in memory of all those murdered by the Chilcan Another step forward for the solidarity campaign was taken in Newport last week. After un IMG public meeting in the town with Tariq Ali, local EEPTU convenor Roy Morgin and Ken Holmes of the Labour Party, a local Chile Solidarity Campaign committer has been ser up. One of the committee's tasks is to prepare for a Chile week" in the autumn to include the planned national balf-hour stoppage on 11 September.
This planned stoppage is now gathering support up and down the country and all trade unionists should ensure that they come out on that day. Such protest strikes will help to spread the idea that action needs to be taken against the junta, and to ртерате for a really mussive national demonstration on 15 September.
----- pull-quotes -----
call for half-hour stoppage