Parry spoke to the Militant in August as the workers, who are members of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), discussed a new challenge in their fight against their sacking. That month tthe bosses filed for bankruptcy, sold the assets, and established a “new” company, Dynamex Friction, on the same site.

The battle was joined in April 2001 when the workers struck for one week over pay and conditions. Eight weeks later the Friction Dynamics bosses sacked them. Since then they have maintained pickets, linked up with other union fights, held rallies in Caernarfon, and travelled the country seeking support.

Production at the new plant got under way August 19. The new owner of the business is Mark Jones, a former factory manager with Friction Dynamics. When the company went into bankruptcy it sacked the 93 workers who had been crossing the picket line.

“What has happened is still sinking in,” said Parry. “Jones will probably get an injunction to prevent us from picketing.” On August 18, he said, Dynamex Friction called the cops to remove the union members, but at the time this article was written the picket line was still up. Passing motorists hoot their horns to show support to the workers, who have made signs in English and Welsh.

“Since Dynamex Friction started up, it has said it will rehire over 60 of the 90 scabs that were working there before the bankruptcy, but that they will take up to a 30 percent wage cut, have no pension, have their holiday entitlement reduced to 16 days a year, and get no overtime pay until they’ve worked 48 hours,” said Parry. “Some of these scabs won’t go back for that.”

Last November the TGWU members won an employment tribunal decision for unfair dismissal. The court awarded compensation. The company appealed both rulings.

TGWU national secretary Bill Morris said the administration of the company and the sale of its assets must be investigated. “We believe it is a tactical maneuver designed to avoid making the compensation payments to the 86 unfairly dismissed workers and to put the financial burden onto the taxpayers of this country,” he said. The union’s call for a public inquiry has been joined by local politicians, Welsh Assembly Member Alun Ffred Jones, and Hywel Williams, a member of the UK parliament in London. “With the new company opening no one can claim against the old company for asbestosis, and a lot of us spent years working with asbestos,” said TGWU member Searle Owen.

Despite their anger over these company maneuvers the workers who spoke to this reporter view their fight with pride and pay tribute to the solidarity they have received.

A feature of the fight has been the high level of local support, Parry said. Solidarity rallies in the Caernarfon town center have been the largest labor actions in the region for decades. Area farmers who spent time working in the plant have extended assistance, while strikers’ wives successfully pressured a local supermarket to stop supplying the company canteen in 2001. In June of this year the locked-out workers were applauded by thousands at a rock concert featuring Welsh band Super Furry Animals and singer Cerys Matthews, organized to mark the centenary of a three-year-long quarry workers’ strike.

The TGWU members have also reached out more widely to extend and receive solidarity, joining firefighters in their national strikes last year, workers at Manchester airport fighting job and wage cuts, and steelworkers at William Cooks in Sheffield, who have been locked out.

In early August the workers visited a picket line at nearby Ifor Williams Trailers. The members of the General Municipal and Boiler Makers Union (GMB) there had taken one day’s strike action. “They are fighting for a paid shift allowance and to prevent compulsory overtime. When we stopped to show our support we told them, ‘If you’re going to get serious we are the people to talk to,’” said Parry.

“What is the outcome of our dispute?” Parry asked. “You can’t answer this in financial terms; you have to face what the boss was doing—reorganizing the company to chip away at our rights and try to break the union. We had to try to stop him and you can’t do that by sitting on the fence. If we had done nothing some of us might be working for him now, but with no dignity—and if we had had no union the company would have buried us within a month.”

Pointing to the role of the courts and the government in backing the company, he noted “the length of time that the laws of this country have allowed [former owner Craig] Smith to keep us out and not to compensate us. He owes us something like £2 million in compensation after the industrial tribunal found him guilty (£1 = US$1.58).” The Daily Post reported, “It is expected that the workers will get statutory redundancy [severance] payouts funded by the government, but less than they would have received from Mr. Smith.”

“We’re all disappointed,” said David John Roberts. “We won a tribunal ruling against him but he has not lost anything. The bankruptcy administrators should have frozen his assets instead of selling them and as soon as we had won we should have been reinstated. The government and the Welsh Development Agency, who gave a grant to Friction Dynamics, don’t care about us. Many of us are in our early 60s and won’t get other jobs. But the best thing about what we have done in this dispute has been the unity—only one person out of the original 87 ever went back.”

“It would be easy to be pessimistic with what has happened,” added Searle Owen. “We have been here for two years and four months including in temperatures of minus 11 degrees—we have had all the elements against us. But I’m happy; I can say that I have done something worthwhile with my life, and that we have fought for our rights and the rights of future generations.”  
 
 
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