Members of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) at Friction Dynamics, an auto parts maker in Caernarfon, North Wales, held a one-week strike April 30 to protest company demands for a 15 percent wage cut, the end of shift pay, the introduction of longer working days with no overtime, and a range of restrictions on union meetings and the number of shop stewards at the plant. Union members rejected the concessions and approved a walkout by a 93 percent margin.

Friction Dynamics is owned by Craig Smith, an American who bought the factory in 1997. Smith also owns plants in the United States. A Welsh-language TV program claimed Smith used a compensation fund set up for workers who had contracted the incurable lung disease asbestosis at his plants in the United States to purchase Friction Dynamics. Smith told the program this was "merely an investment" on behalf of any future claimant.

Upon returning to work after the one-week strike, workers were handed an unscheduled holiday, effectively locking them out. In response they set up picket lines to continue their fight. Smith then carried out a previously announced redundancy (layoff) of 24 workers and sacked 87 others. The company has hired a number of scabs and is using management personnel to keep some production going.

The locked out workers won support at the Biennial Delegate Conference of their union and TGWU general secretary Bill Morris backed the workers in an address at a conference of the Wales Trades Union Congress. Donations are beginning to come in from union branches around the country, the largest so far being £2,500 (US$3,562) from workers at the Ford factory in Southampton. Financial support has come in from student organizations and the Students' Union in Bangor, North Wales, is organizing a benefit concert.

On July 7 a solidarity march and rally in Caernarfon drew 1,000 people and up to 2,000 more lined the march route, the largest labor action in the area for years. Gerald Parry told the rally that the unionists "have a just cause and, from what we have seen today, we are clearly not alone. There is truth in the saying that in unity there is strength."

Solidarity has come in from many residents in the area, including local farmers. "We used to have farmers who also worked in the plant. So they have been one of us and now they give us their support," explained Parry.

Another worker who was part of the delegation to the London rally told the Militant that a local supermarket has supplied the canteen at Friction Dynamics. "Two wives of strikers went in there and told them to stop or they'd lose customers," he said. "They stopped the deliveries because they know the situation in the community. Even the barber who cuts Craig Smith's hair is refusing to do it and he has to go outside Caernarfon! People keep coming by the picket line and bringing us fish and chips and cakes."

Smith "thought we were easy pickings," said Parry. "He was wrong. He didn't realize we were well organized and that the media would pick up on it. Our local community and union support has strengthened. Now morale is fantastic, we're getting stronger every day. When someone puts a gun to your head you've got to fight. We're not talking about money here, but principles."

Workers at Friction Dynamics were the first to be dismissed since passage of a new employment law, touted by the Labour Party leadership as protection for workers' right to strike. Under the 1999 Employment Relations Act strikers are supposedly not to be sacked for eight weeks in a dispute. But union officials said the situation at Friction Dynamics proved the act had afforded "no protection" for workers.

Union lawyers are preparing to take the cases of each sacked worker to an industrial tribunal where they will claim the company failed to enter into meaningful negotiations over the strike during the eight-week time period.

Paul Davies is a member of the Transport and General Workers' Union and works at IBC Vehicles in Luton.  
 
 
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