BASILDON, England — “This is the best turnout yet,” Unite union shop steward Nick Brown commented as some 200 workers picketed the Case New Holland tractor plant here June 4. Over 500 workers at the factory have been on strike three days a week since May 14. Joining the picket were a couple of other Unite members from the nearby Thurrock refuse center and the Ford plant in Dagenham, as well as Pamela Holmes, the Communist League parliamentary candidate for Tottenham in London.
“The company has reneged on the agreement they signed two years ago,” union convener Pat Gough told Holmes. “We were on the verge of striking, locked in dispute with the local management, when the Italian owners stepped in. They offered wage rises based on averaged inflation over the previous year which we accepted.” The company’s two plants in the U.S., in Wisconsin and Iowa, were already involved in strike action by the United Auto Workers union. The owners didn’t want strike action on two continents. The U.S. strike lasted eight months, through January 2023.
“Now they’re offering a raise based on the Consumer Price Index in the month of last December alone. If they can rip up a signed agreement, what does that mean for having a union?”
The strike vote was 95% in favor, Gough said, “and in the lead-up to the strikes, we’ve recruited 60 new members. Almost all the shop floor are now in the union.”
“We’ve had some form of inflation-protection for years. But, like many conditions here, it’s been eroded,” added shop steward and maintenance worker Tania Powell. She has worked for Case for 36 years, the first woman to get an engineering apprenticeship.
Driven by competition, bosses have been going after wages and conditions won by unions, Holmes said. “We need to be building and strengthening unions — to win pay and conditions to prevent families in the working class from being torn apart, and to allow young workers to start a family. That’s what is so important about the fight at Case.”