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deleirens By Tessa van Gelderen all those company's proposal.
Bob Seers, depots. They Hackney.
Africa of around the Greenwich area.
Neither the ever are built hy organisation was kept intact.
in WOrKIOICE more dancies do not take place. the way and th NOT one person will go out the gate - that was the response of British Oxygen workers at Hackney depot to management's notice of 28 redundancies. on Wednesday of last week voted unanimously to reject the prepared to discuss with management in any way until they withdrew the threat to close the acetylene department. A 'failure to agree' was noted and now the real battle begins.
British Oxygen claim that it is necessary to close the acetylene department for financial reasons. They produce all sorts of weird and wonderful figures to prove that Hackney depot is less 'cost-effective' than other (management's nice word for getting the push) throughout this all part of the Oxygen and that it would cost too much to update equipment at The Hackney workers aren't really convinced by these arguments. There are already discussions taking place at a national level on BOC's "streamlining' plans — so why announce this closure separately? There is no shortage of customers at Hackney (who supply local needs and also In fact, customers are being turned away every day at Hackney because there are not enough cylinders — the company won't invest in the depot. The acetylene would still be needed in the area, and it would have to come all the way from Cardiff; hardly a money-saving operation.
Hackney depot is is going to fight these proposals. Around Hackney, jobs are fast disappearing, first at Lesneys, now at Ford. They know that the defence of jobs must be a united fight; that is why the Hackney TGWU branch is supporting a mass lobby of this year's TUC Congress in Brighton demanding 'No to unemployment — for a 35-hour week now', 'Fight to kick out the Tories'.
The threat of redundancies also lurked behind the proposal to divide installation engineers between 'industrial' and 'medical'.
If that had been allowed to go through, undoubtedly with weaker union organisation, a number of them would have been given their cards.
Last week Southern Region depots affected by the engineers dispute, in particular Wembley and Greenwich, won arf important victory when management agreed to keep things as they were, and the workers' Installation engineers had been suspended, other workers were locked out, and others refused to cross the picket line forcing the whole place to shut down. Management caved in and has even agreed to pay them at least two days' wages lost during the dispute.
This Sunday, 8 June, shop stewards from the southern region are meeting to discuss both the closure threat at Hackney and the installation engineers' dispute. It is almost certain that they will support the Hackney workers' fight and take it up nationally throughout the whole BOC This would be a major first step towards ensuring that these redunFailure to stop the Hackney management's redundancy plans would not only mean a defeat for Hackney workers but it would allow management to impose its national 'streamlining' proposals with a vengeance.
Some of these proposals make interesting reading: it is normal for a company to dangle a carrot of redundancy pay to entice workers to go. but BOČ have gone a step further. They are proposing to give some of the money saved through sackings to those workers who would be doing the jobs of those made redundant — a one-off payment of £214 gross for selling your co-worker's job.
But Hackney workers will not be bought off. They intend to fighi all The site meeting Transport Union district official, was not general 'streamlining' pport them