Rank and File meet in Manchester to escalate electricians action

Up to 100 construction electricians from across the north and north-west met in Manchester on 1^st October to organise from below in defence of pay and conditions. Others came from the south coast and northern Scotland to contribute to this important meeting.

Seven employers are walking away from the Joint Industry Board national agreement between big employers and the trade unions in the electrical construction industry.  The seven are doing this in order to drastically worsen construction electricians’ pay by up to 35%, a loss of £7500 a year! Workers are determined to resist this – and the other pay cuts, blacklisting and other attacks being made on workers by the employers in and out of the JIB.

Speakers at Saturday’s meeting outlined the current stage of the struggle with the mass protests at sites across England and Scotland, strikes at some sites and prospects of big strikes at several more. Numerous contributions from the floor debated how this can be developed to mass pickets and mass walkouts across all the sites. A very democratic debate also heard from one of Unite’s regional officials but was rightly dominated by the voices of workers from the sites. Confidence was voiced by many workers that this is a winnable fight, provided strike action is organised swiftly enough.

Workers were clear that Unite needs to move swiftly to ballot, but that they won’t stand for pointless delays. In a constructive and fraternal way, Unite’s national construction official McAulay was strongly criticised for failing to seriously lead struggle while attacking good activists from behind the scenes.

The meeting concluded by electing a north-west steering committee of the Rank & File to co-ordinate the campaign and workers agreed that this will work as closely with Unite as possible.