FIGHTING TO WIN
Revolutions Per Minute pamphlet Number 7
Organising Your Workplace, strike analysis and preventing the murder of building workers
With strike action at an all-time low and trade union membership continuing to decline what can be done to smash the employers attacks on wages and conditions? RPM, with assistance from the Building Worker Group, tries to offer some solutions. Read, discuss and use. More Details on 07967 886257
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FIGHTING TO WIN
Contents:
The P&O Seafarers Strike of 1988-89
How to organise your site/workplace
Preventing Deaths on Building Sites
Published by: e-mail: revoperminute@cwcom.net
Revolutions Per Minute
BCM Box 3328
London WC1N 3XX
07967 886257
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INTRODUCTION
Welcome to issue 7 of RPM which looks at a small number of strikes so that workers forced to take strike action can develop an understanding of the forces they are facing if they are to wage a successful struggle. This is important as the industrial climate is worse for workers than it has been in the last 100 years.
The work also uses two articles from the newspaper of the longest running and most successful Rank and File group in Britain, the Building Worker Group, to give some ideas for organising at work.
In the author's view the forces ranged against the workers consist of the employers, the state and the mass media, all full-time trade union officials and the trade union bureaucracy, the British Labour Party and all the British revolutionary left organisations which are moving to the right in the wake of 'New Labour'.
However, as shown in the articles workers can and do win their struggles with the employers, giving encouragement to others. In recent times Electricians on the Jubilee Line and some Postal Workers have won when they have acted independently of their full time officials.
However, winning strikes have become the exception rather than the rule. Despite many courageous and lengthy struggles far too many workers are being defeated. These defeats lead others to conclude that strike action is ineffective and in 1999 the second lowest number of strikes ever was recorded with only 242,000 days lost to workers taking action in defence of pay, jobs, conditions and union recognition.
Turning this tide will not be easy and this pamphlet, and others also being published by RPM, are intended to play a part in ensuring that the lessons learned from the past and present lay the ground for workers victories in the (near) future.
The employers can be defeated, but only if workers resilience and courage is matched by their organisation and an understanding of 'how to win'.
Mark Metcalf