On the back of pickets at the Glasgow velodrome and before planned action at the Govan shipyards this week, around 100 electricians turned out at the Glasgow Radisson to come face to face with the bosses who are threatening to rip up the JIB national agreement.
The JIB agreement in place since the 1960s is an agreement between employers and Unite the Union which protects pay, pensions, dispute procedures and the grading of employees. Under proposals electricians face a 35% pay cut, the end of the JIB pension and the end of a right to a dispute hearing from day one of employment, giving the employers the right to unilaterally downgrade workers and their apprentices.
In Glasgow electricians picketed an awards ceremony at the Radisson hotel which celebrated employers apprentice schemes, ironic given they propose to downgrade the status of apprenticeship schemes, seen by many to be essential to the future of any economic growth in the current economic climate.
Electricians and Supporters Outside the Radisson
The end of the JIB agreement spells disaster for workers rights and their future. The deskilling of an extremely skilled trade spells potential disaster for health and safety on construction sites. Protests against the proposals have been seen up and down the country, with workers occupying their construction site and shutting down Oxford Street in London on two separate occasions.
The electricians’ dispute shows that the economic crisis is being used to make all workers, private or public pay for the crisis they did not cause. The crisis is being used as a pretext to smash already frail rights in the construction industry, notorious for its blacklisting activities which have stopped unions organising in some sectors, preventing those who do from working again.
This dispute puts paid to the claims of a public/private sector divide with regards to the Condem cuts and the fight against them. This is an economic crisis of the bosses caused by the elite. It is a result of the government’s overly harsh austerity programme, and it is them, and not ordinary working people, who need to pay for it.
Wednesday’s demonstration starts at 7am, assembling on Govan Road by the middle gate. More details here.
The Working Class has been Exploited and Oppressed For a Long Time
The Working Class Deserves Better Treatment and Living Standards such
as Living Wages
Away with Capitalist Slavery
Oppressed Victims of Capitalism Need to be Both Despondent and Defiant
Despondent about the Effects of Capitalism upon Society and Defiant in
Not Accepting this Evil Economic System
Rather than Arrogant and Out of Touch Bosses Bullying Workers and
Exploiting Them as Slave Labour it would be Better for the Shipyards
to be Nationalised and Put under the Administration of Worker’s
Representation Committee’s which would Take into Consideration the
Welfare and Interests of Ordinary Shipyard Workers instead of just
Treating Them like Slave Labour
EnPowerment to the Working Class Not Enslavement of the Working Class