it will be up to local plant management to decide whether weekend working is necessary.
On paper there are no hard figures to indicate that the Corporation's £170 million worth of savings through 44,000 redundancies will be achieved. In practice the ISTC has committed itself to reductions in manning levels and greater job flexibility which would lead to large-scale redundancies. Of course the ISTC wants these to be 'voluntary" which is as voluntary as rape for the thousands of steel workers who will end up on the dole if these plans go through.
BSC assault The carrot for the rank-and-file is the maintenance of the guaranteed working week and the continued surSteelworkers lobbying the talks between the unions and BSC last week vival of certain smaller plants - a concession won by the fighting unity of the South Wales steelworkers, not by the negotiating skills of Bill Sirs. The stick is the steel unions promise to bring their full weight to bear on members at individual plants who are refusing to cooperate with the agreement.
Having left steelworkers to face the BSC's assault, the ISTC leadership have obligingly tied their members' hands behind their backs. The BSC no doubt calculates that if it gives one section a good battering with no threat of national action, its other proposals, plant closures and all, will go through with relatively little resistance.
To add insult to injury, after conceding massive job loss, the executive of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation made the three weekced BSC to "re-think' their plans through determined strike action have received token payment for репеа by une traitorous conditions agreed by the union leaderships. Disappointment plants that struck against the rundown of weekend working or, like Corby and Scotland, called for national strike action must lead the fight for national resistance to the BSC's plans. old Port Talbot strike official. Thus the rank-and-file workers who forleading the struggle the ISTC executive has resolutely refused to embark But the concessions won by their actions have been immediately The defence of the right to work in the steel industry now rests squarenose
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NO SACKINGS.