| HOME |
| NERVE |
| REVIEWS |
| ARCHIVE |
| EVENTS |
| LINKS |
| ABOUT US |
| CONTRIBUTORS |
| BACK ISSUES |
| CONTACT US |
Back to index of Nerve 11 - Winter 2007 | Merseyside Resistance Calendar February
21st February 1967: Lucas shop stewards lobby Parliament
below is a reproduction of a leaflet produced at the time
LUCAS–C.A.V. FAZAKERLEY, JOINT SHOP STEWARDS COMITTEE.
National Lobby of Parliament, Tuesday February 21st.
To all trade unionists:
The Lucas-CAV shop stewards committee is seriously concerned at the rising unemployment and the attacks on the hard won rights of trade unions.
The policies of the Government and its bodies at the end of the first six months of freeze, give a further green light to the emp1oyers.
The recent statement of the Prices and Incomes Board calls on employers to tighten up work standards in payment by results systems, Ratefixers, it alleges, are 1ikly to give workers the benefit of any doubt each time rates are altered. This is what it sees as being wrong with piecework systems.
This sort of thing from a Government body is preparing an attack on piecework rates. Meanwhile, further plans for state control of wages are being discussed. A leading member of the Labour Government, speaking at Middlesborough on December 18th, declared:
“There has to be, in any case, bigger inroads into collective bargaining.”
If the unions cannot fight for wages what role have they? Today, we find, that as rank and file trade unionists, we cannot fight inside the factories for the workers we represent, without helping to organise against the wage freeze and anti—working class legislation. Behind our employers are now the Government and the State.
Conscious, therefore, of the threats to working people and the need to organise against them, this Joint Shop Stewards Committee decided at the end of last year to sponsor a demonstration and lobby of Labour MPs on a day in the last week of February.
The A.E.U. Shop Stewards Quarterly on December 20th passed, almost unanimously, a resolution supporting such a lobby.
There has now been a call from the Merseyside Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions for the lobby to take place on Tuesday February 21st. We ask all trade unionists, particularly engineering workers to support a lobby on this date.
At a previous lobby, workers from Lucas met several of the Labour MPs, who said they wore disturbed about the wage freeze. They told us, that if we fought outside, they would fight inside Parliament. We think we should now go in force to London and ask them to step up the fight for a repudiation of the Prices and Incomes Act by the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Raise support for the lobby in your factory or site. SEND A CONTINGENT
for Joint shop stewards
committee.
P.MULLANE (secretary)
90 SCARISBRICK DRIVE.
LIVERPOOL 11
Contact the above address if you want to know about coaches to London for the lobby. Or phone: Royal 7734.