Ellen Monaghan (right) with one of the visiting Eiser women WISE In the beginning of October, two women from the Eiser factory Sweden visited the Lee Jeans occupation in Scotland. The women from Eiser and from Lee Jeans have been involved in similar struggles to defend their jobs.
fight, the visit to speak at a large solidarity meeting in Stockholm.
cupations was sparked off by Swedish tional Radio which women's visit.
in Sweden, similarities between the two campaigns and the situation at Lee Jeans today.
I HAVEN'T been in Sweden before, and I'm looking forward to coming to your country, I'm quite excited about it.
I've met two of the girls from the occupation occupation in northern Now the Lee Jeans women have won their ELLEN MONAGHAN will be returning The contact between the two factory oc Nasponsored the Eiser Ellen Monaghan spoke to our sister paper Internationalen about the who were over here, I had them at my home and we talked a lot about their oc. cuballull alla compared notes.
There are a lot of summanues two struggles. between We're both working multinationals, who took grants from the government and, once grants went finished, said there was no market for the goods.
Both of us felt very strongly that an injustice had been done.
At Lee Jeans, we felt that the goods and ine machinery belonged to us. All the Swedish women had was machinery and asked them whether they thought this was enough.
They said that it was. They felt that the machinery was rightfully theirs because the government had paid for it I felt we had a common suauon and a conmon struggle feel really marvellous going back to work. There's a great atrelationship mosonere. a zooo worki and we're all doing very well.
There were no problems during negotiations We have the same terms and conditions as we had They gave us the same union conditions we were used to I feel quite optimistic about the future. You know, I feel a real good bit of determination.
We feel its more of our company now.
At the end of the year the company is going to profits have been made -and, we will share the profits We'll get bonuses al the end of every six months, at Christmas time and at the end of next summer time. you're working something.
We have been given a contract for three years for as many jeans as we can make And then an exten sion for years. So we feel prețty secure about our JoDs.
all changing after the occupation. Girls who didn't know UNICES was about really understand a Thev've become more union conscious and even more politically aware.
There were girls who had never been to meetings before who got up at mass meetings.
Some girls can do this now, and we're still sending young girls away to speak.
It's made them all dif ferent people, more aware Before they took a lot of things for granted and now they are more active in the union.
I'm very optimistic for the future.
who would be responsible