Over 400 construction workers met at Conway Halls last Saturday to hold a mass assembly to decide how to fight back against the 8 major construction companies who are tearing up the national agreement for electrical construction workers. They propose to slash rates, de-skill the industry and pave the way to smash the organised workforce. The rest of the national and smaller regional employers are set to follow. If they succeed they will move on the remaining national construction agreements and finish off the hard won conditions fought for by construction workers over the past 40 years. See here for information.

The workers ware members of various unions and many were members of no union. They passed a resolution calling for the organisation of both official strikes and wildcat stoppages of major jobs. A rank and file committee was elected to coordinate the campaign.

At a report back meeting last night it was reported that the national Unite officers are not willing to support the motion passed by the mass assembly, are not prepared to ballot their members at the present time and recommend recruiting more members to Unite and to sit tight for 6 months before deciding about balloting!

The dispute will be won or lost by then.??The truth is that since the merger with Amicus and T&G, the majority of electricians are not members of any union and union organisation is weak which is why the employers are moving to tear up the agreements.??It was agreed to commence the campaign to hit the major contractors who are threatening to pull out of the JIB agreement and to coordinate mass, national wildcat strikes and stoppages across the industry.

The amount of anger and motivation of many electricians means this could turn into a bigger dispute than we saw at the Lindsey Oil Refinery. Some of the workers involved in this current campaign are veterans of many disputes from Lindsey to the Jubilee Line to Wembley.

The first action will be a mass picket at the Balfour Beatty job at Blackfriars station and to close the site down.

This will take place at 7am, Wednesday 24 August. Assemble 6.30am.

As this is an external picket to close the job, mass numbers of bodies are needed to help hold the pickets. Please spread the word and also spread the word that the leadership will come from the electricians on the day so leave the flags, banners and political leaflets at the door and instead come and support workers in struggle by shutting the job down.