SocialistAction 1983–88

The paper of the Socialist League, formerly the International Marxist Group, 1983–88

STAND FIRM against six-day working

Socialist Action No. 161, 19 March 1987 · p. 12 of the scan · 434 words

The scan: 161-mar-19-1987-SA-UK.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 4-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 12 of the scan

posed Margam new mine.

The South Wales area director has imposed acduction at Margam before ceptance of six-day talks between leadership of the NUM in South Wales and the Board can take place.

committee member, Tower Lodge NUM This has to be seen as a direct attack on the five day week agreement which was drawn up between the NUM and the Coal Board in 1947. The five day week Poreard inasmach astep forward inasmuch restricted the shifts worked guaranteed miners a week wace negotiated gree meet This wa:

the NUM and is the property of the national union.

It is estimated that the Coal Board's plan for Margam willtake • sever years to develop wil eventually create 800 jobs. This figure is in question because of the effect new nichnology is having on the number employed in coal mines tothe every aspect of mining, will probably mean the actual figure employed when Margam eventually comes stream will be nearer If you compare these 400 jobs, or even the 800 claimed by the Coal Board with the number of jobs that will be lost in the industry as a whole if the five day week agreement is lost, Margam pales into insignificance.

six-day the UK coalfield would mean, according to Robert Haslam's information, in the region of 12,000 job losses a year.

The question of other unions taking Margam has been used to ly unacceptable. Preconditions have been attached to every meeting between the national union and the coal board on wages, and this has now spilled over in to the South Wales Area on the question of the protry and scare South Wales miners into accepting the Board's proposal.

Organisations such as the Two thousand miners and their.

UDM, ISTC and TGWU have been mentioned prospective candidates the NUM does not accept the Margam project.

If we as a union succumb to these accept the six-day coaling concept Margam, it will be a green light for the government and the Board to introduce families marched through South Kirkby 14 March in remembrance of David Jones, killed on the picket line during the miners' strike. new legislation and impose these conditions of work on every miner working on the UK coalfield.

we must stand firn and not accept what is ef fectively the first step to nationalisation conditions the that go along with it and the end of the coal dustry as we know it.

----- pull-quotes -----

THE COAL BOARD's attitude to negotiations with the NUM has, since the end of the strike, been total-

NONAL ONION MIN HORNER YORKSHINE AREA

← Black victory at NUS conferenceScargill urges NUM unity →

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