7 D ays 8 M arch 1972

JUST BEFORE 7 a.m., every weekday, they gather outside the traditional pick-up points.

It was a typical, wet, grey Tuesday when we drove down Birming­ham’s Coventry Road, and saw them huddled in clusters outside Camp Hill Cafe, the Bear, the Antelope, and the College Arms. There were droves of them in front of the Mermaid, hanging around in tired lines, like dole queues, waiting for work. The subbies’ vans kept swooping, pick­ing up groups, then driving off.

Understandably, they did not want to talk and often shuffled angrily out of range of the camera. These were the men on the Lump, the notorious third force of freelance labour, which is manipulated by employers in the con­struction industry as a wedge to crush the bargaining power of the unions.

But, now radical shop stewards in the Birmingham region are running a campaign to lance the Lump, and wipe it out for ever. Peter Carter, a former Young Communist League organiser, and present Communist shop steward, is prominent in this struggle.

He explained why he saw it as a priority in the intensive programme currently underway in the area of organise site labour and boost union membership.

“The only people who benefit from the Lump”, he said, “are the employers. They don’t have to do anything for the men who are on it. They just fix a rate with a subbie for a gang of Lumpies, and they can forget about insurance cards, SET, holiday pay, sickness pay, guaranteed time in bad weather, and travel money, and everything else, too. The Lump is about cheap labour. I reckon that the average employer saves at least £7 per man, per week, when he takes on men under the Lump system.

In bad weather, of course, he is saving up to £30 per man, per week” .

Carter pin-points other disadvantages of the Lump, too. Because subcontrac­tors are unscrupulous and mercenary, men get taken on for jobs for which they have no training. Lump jobs are often shoddy. We were taken to see houses on Birmingham’s Woodgate Valley Site, where 2,000 council houses are being built. Some homes had been completed and knocked down again in the space of three months. The brick­laying had just been too bad the first time round. “The ultimate twist” , Carter commented, “is that we are going to have to live in these things in the end” .

Linked to this, the scandal of the fall in apprenticeships. Rather than go to the trouble of training young brick­layers, employers dip straight into the untrained, cheap labour pool. In 1969, there were 237 apprentices in Birming­ham, in 1970, 175, and last year the total crashed to 150.

The Lump forces the men who are on it to become criminals. Because of their low rates of pay, and the casualness of their contract, they do not often pay taxes or national insurance. By the time they realise what is happening, and want to get out, they can easily owe £5,000 in tax alone, and the only alternative is staying on the Lump is to pay up.

But the employers love the Lump, because as long as it exists, they feel that they will be able to break every strike, and twist the hands of the unions to keep wages down throughout the industry. That is why Birmingham’s battle against the Lump has been such a bitter and difficult one.

But things are happening fast now, and the bosses have given ground far quicker than even the most militant union members could have anticipated.

Last year a new union was formed, UCATT, the Union of Construction,

Allied Trades and Technicians, the result of a merger between ASWP&D and AUBTW. There are 800,000 workers in the industry, under the National Federation of Building Employers’ Working Rule Agreement. About 300,000 of them are unionised, and 300,000 are on the Lump.

Last year, in Birmingham, a group of shop stewards, including Peter Carter, Gerald Kelly, Mike Shivlack and Phil Beyer, began to get things organised in earnest. Their two main demands were for £1 per hour, 35 hour minimum per week, and an immediate end to the Lump system.

The claim for a 50 per cent wage increase, paralleled the demand for an end to freelance labour. With a reason­able basic take home pay for those in direct employment, the Lump would have no enticements left.

These demands were soon put to the test in Woodgate Valley, where Christopher Bryant’s Ltd. are building2,000 council homes for the corpor­ation.

Gerald Kelly has said that Bryants “must be the most reactionary firm in the Midlands” . Certainly if you ring them up to ask about their labour relations, all you get is angry abuse — a far cry from the soft-sell of Wimpeys or Laings.

Last September, Woodgate Valley Site В put in their claim for parity with other sites in the city. A modest enough demand, but one which led to the sacking of two shop stewards, “for taking a minute too long over lunch” , and a refusal to recognise the site committee.

Though Bryants climbed down and reinstated the men, they still, stub­bornly refused to negotiate. “They always used the big stick tactics” , commented Peter Carter, “and they did not see why they should change” . But, on October 6 last year, there was a mass

march through Birmingham, with slogans “Kill the Lump” , and “£1 per hour” .

The next day, Bryants came up with a derisory offer. The stewards called a strike on the site. The management promptly sacked all the men. The men refused to accept this, held a picket of the site and advanced their demands to the £1 an hour claim, and no Lump labour on the site.

They used the weeks of the strike well, to propagandise and organise, to hold meetings and explain to the men what Bryants was trying to do, and what the union programme was to oppose them.

And they scored a major victory against the Lump when Bryants eventu­ally agreed to remove all the men who were on it off the site.

But Bryants were not the kind of firm to take this action lying down. A harrowing period followed for Carter and his colleagues. There was a bomb attempt at Christopher Bryants home, and police harassment of known militants followed immediately. The Press got in on the act. The Birmingham Mail ran pictures of Peter Carter next to stories about the bombing, and appeared to be doing everything it could to suggest that there was an association between the two. Representation from the lads in UCATT to the Birmingham Mail put an end to that. But then came the fiasco by which Bryants banned Carter through legal injunction from “trespassing” on the site where he was shop-steward.

When we went to Birmingham, last month, we saw the struggle in action. Phil Beyer, 22, a bricklayer and a former shop steward on a Mowlem site, had just applied for a job on Woodgate Valley Site A. This was a particulary difficult and unorganised site, because Bryants had shunted all the blacklegs there after October’s victory on site B.

Even though bricklayers were needed, Beyer was refused work. We went to a noisy shop Stewards meeting at UCATT’s Gough Street headquarters when the news came through.

Immediately, a contingent drove down to the site. Phil Beyer was standing on a bank, opposite calling the men to come out to a meeting. He was anxious to make contact as the con­struction workers were planning another big march through the town in support of their claims, with the added demand that Peter Carter should be reinstated, and all further legal action against him dropped.

A dumper driver made the thumbs up sign to Beyer and Carter as he drove by. He was stopped by a gaffer, and told that if he did that again, he would be sacked.

The men’s lunch hour had been split, specifically to stop them attending the meeting which Beyer had called. Arthur Reilly, contract manager, stood watch­ing, ominously, to see who would respond to Beyer’s call for a meeting.

Even so, about 30 men came out. “Any man who speaks out here gets sacked. You know that.” Beyer told them, “Bryants earn millions, in interest and profit. We build the bloody houses for them, and look at our wages. We have to put up with brute force and the big-stick when we try to stand up for what is ours. Aren’t you fed up with ten shillings an hour? Then, take the lead. Join us in the fight for similar wages to those in the factories. March with us through the City on Wednesday, and help win this battle” . 30 hands went up in support. Later, we heard that the men had elected their own shop steward, and despite the site’s inau­spicious history, 70 per cent had decided to join the march. When I rung Bryants to ask them if Beyer had been put on the blacklist, an angry Mr. Summers said, “What is this? I’m not continued on page 14 11

Special Feature Written by Peter Fuller and John Mathews

How they are trying to kill the lump

There was a time when Woodgate Valley, Site A, produced problems for militant union organisers in Birmingham. (see story) Not any more! When employers, C. Bryants, refused Phil Beyer work because he was a known activist, the lads who attended a lunch time meeting voted unanimously to march through the city in protest against the Lump, and promptly elected their own shop steward to hit back at the employers.

PETER CHARTER: ‘The Lump is about cheap labour. . . in this town, certain employers have tried to make full use of it as a fifth column in their fight against the growth of unionisation on the sites. But the lads here have shown them that they can’t go on using the big-stick tactics for ever. We have made a start here; I would say an important start. I hope that the struggle against the Lump will spread from Birmingham right across the country.”

PHIL BEYER: “We must not allow ourselves to become complacent because of the new legislation against the Lump which will be introduced in April. Labour did have legisla­tion which was going to make all Lump labour illegal, and do so effectively. But it was thrown out of office. The new legisla­tion just won’t work. Because it’s cheap and prevents organisation, employers have their best legal minds exploring every way in which they can continue with a modified Lump. We must keep fighting to lance it completely.”

Hurts the unionised workersTheir collective bargaining power is undermined by the Lump. Kill the Lump and the building workers’ union will be stronger — and a strong union means higher wages for all. The long hours put in by Lump workers cuts down the work available for everyone — so unemployment on the sites goes up.

GERRY KELLY: “Traditionally, the con­struction industry has not been well organ­ised. But this campaign in Birmingham, has shown what can be done if the lads get organised, and fight together. It is important to get over to the lads on the sites the effec­tiveness of united action. That is why some­thing like “Solidarity” is important. It gives the men information about their immediate circumstances. It shows them what their own employers are doing, in a way which a nationally-based paper cannot.”

He gets higher pay than union­ised building workers only because he doesn’t pay his tax and National Insurance con­tributions. He’s forced to become a criminal. He works long hours without overtime rates, and gets no sickness, holiday or pension benefits. When it snows, he starves.

UnionDemands• 35 hour week

• £30 a week basic

• 3 weeks summer holiday on average wagesBuilding Workers Charter Conference: Birmingham

3rd Annual Conference o f the Charter: Saturday, April 29, 1972. Delegates to be wel­comed by Ken Barlow, regional secretary o f UCATT. All building workers welcome.

Support the national rank-and- file paper Building Workers Charter and Birmingham’s Building Worker’s Solidarity as well as the national union paper Viewpoint.

WagesLeagueTable

average gross weekly wages —male adults — as at April 1971

£ per week1. Vehicles 34.02. Petroleum and Coal

Products 33.43. Paper Printing and

Publishing 33.24. Shipbuilding 32.15. Transport 30.86. Chemicals 30.57. Bricks, Pottery,

Glass and Cement 30.48. All Manufacturing 30.29. Mechanical 29.8

10. Food, Drink andTobacco 29.6

11. Electrical 29.112. Gas, Electricity,

Water 29.113. All Industries and

Services 28.814. Mining and Quarry-

ing 28.215. Instrument Engineering28.116. BUILDING AND

CONSTRUCTION 27.817. Textiles 26.518. Clothing and Footwear25.619. Miscellaneous Services 23.6(figures from the New EarningSurvey, Department of the Employ-ment Gazette, December 1971)

What It DoesHurts the lumpworker

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Keeps the bosses happy

The Mafia-like organisation of the Lump means that a lot of middlemen have to get their cut before the worker is paid — they all grow fat on his labour. And the big contrac­tors like the Lump — they can use it as a “third force” to break a strike. No building worker’s job is safe until the Lump is destroyed.

MIKE SHIVLACK: “Our struggle here on Woodgate Valley is starting to capture the imagination of all the lads, everywhere. We are determined to spread this thing out right across the country if necessary. The degree of our success depend on our power to influence opinion in the city and our soli­darity with the lads on other Bryants sites. We all know what’s involved. We have to fight together.”

Behind the union claimKen Barlow, regional secretary of UCATT, Birmingham, on the background to the union claim:

I N JUNE 1971 a Declaration of I n t e n t was signed by the employers and unions to outlaw lump labour. All references to “labour-only sub-contracting” were removed from the working rule agreement. This would have been OK if it had worked — but the only effect it had on the employers was that they sought to avoid their responsibilities. This attitude, coupled with the unsatisfactory wages position, so incensed the operatives that in Birmingham at least they decided to take action. After months o f campaigning a big demonstration was held in the City Centre in October last year.

This coincided with two things which had taken place in the union: first, the woodworkers and painters had merged, adopting a regional structure in place of the area and district organisations; and in June 1971 the bricklayers joined us to form one union covering the three major crafts in the building industry as well as incorporating general operatives.

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE CON­STRUCTION UNIONS THERE WAS A SINGLE BODY REPRE­SENTING EVERYONE DOWN FROM THE ARCHITECT TO THE GENERAL LABOURER.

At the same time, we were recruiting more members into every section of the new union. It became clear to us that if given firm and militant leadership, the building workers- in Birmingham — who had been notorious for their lack of militancy — were beginning to learn how to fight."

13

AM

photographs by O

liver Strew

e

7 DaysPin this broadsheet up

KILL THE LUMP!7 Days 8 March 1972

Stop the Lump!I want to get off

continued from page 11 going to talk to you” . But later added, “Of course there’s no blacklist, we couldn’t do it. Well, I mean, once a man hit a foreman over the head with a lead bar, and another man stole material. We wouldn’t employ them again” .

Birmingham City Council has out­lawed labour-only sub-contracting on its sites. That is, it will not allow subbies to supply lump labour unless those subbies are also bona-fide suppliers of goods and materials. Bryants have built far more for Birmingham corporation than any other building firm, and still land the plum jobs. Bryants, however, continue to use labour-only sub-contractors.

We spoke to Mr. Maudsley the CityArchitect, about this, and he admitted that the construction industry in the region was “going through a difficult time” . “We are taking a closer look at things now. We have appointed an inspector, and we hope to get our house in order soon. But it is difficut to discover all the ingenious ways which contractors use to get round this ruling.”

Clive Wilkinson, a city Councillor, himself a member of UCATT was more forthcoming. He explained how con­tractors sometimes supplied materials to subbies, so that the subbie could resupply them with the goods, plus men, thus wriggling out of the ban on labour-only sub-contracting.

Clive Wilkinson has also suggested that the amazing delays on the Wood- gate Valley Site, only 12 houses out of the 2,000 have been handed over, are part of a plot by Bryants to crush the unions. He recently asked questions in the council about this. He feels that, having tried every other method of suppressing organisation on the sites, they deliberately wanted to hold back work so that they could blame lack of new housing on UCATT.

But such tactics have- not disheartened the men. We visited Site-A canteen, the day before last month’s big march, and found the men solid, except for one black-leg. Mike Shivlack, shop steward, told the enthusiastic crowd, “If anyone doesn’t come out tomorrow, we’ll demand that his union card be withdrawn, so he couldn’t get a job on this site again and he couldn’t get a job on any other Bryants site that is organised” .

The next day, the men marched through Birmingham again. They went straight to Bryant’s headquarters, and heard rousing speeches by all the militant shop stewards. They put their demands to Bryants once more: Kill the Lump, £35 minimum for a 35 hour week. In the face of this unprecedented militancy, the bosses caved in: 2,000 workers were to get their 50 per cent wage increase, the blacklist and victim­isation were to end, the final victory was that the legal injunctions against Pete Carter and John Shortland were to be dropped.

Ironically, the National Federation of Building Trades Employers was last week considering expelling Bryants for this capitulation. Their 50 per cent wage concession compared unfavourably to the 7 per cent offered by the Federation to the unions’ national pay claim for a £30 guaranteed wage and a 35 hour week.

A Federation spokesman said: “We cannot associate ourselves in any way with the terms settled by the member firm in Birmingham” .

This week talks continue over the national pay claim — and the Birming­ham victory will set a very sore precedent. The struggle will now spread around the country, and by the time the current agreement expires in June, the employers could have a national strike on their hands. As the Birmingham workers were shouting outside Bryants’ headquarters: “If we come out on strike, we’ll make the miners look like a load of pink liberals”

LUMP is monopolised by the Irish, and my parents are Irish. My father worked on

the Lump before becoming a subbie. That was how I got into it.

When I left school six years ago, it was hard to get a suitable job. I drifted on and off the Lump, moving around all over the place. When the job got unbearable, I got out.

I tried to become a stonemason, but couldn’t get taken on as apprentice. They said I was too old at 17. Too old after being on the Lump!

So I went back on the Lump, on and off. Normally, I stayed on it right through the winter. There’s often a shortage of men in the winter. Sometimes I drifted down to the coast in the summer and found a casual job.

I must say, I realised when I was at school what kind of mess I’d get into on the Lump. I knew about it from family connections. But, up to 17, you could get a lot more money on the Lump. I got much more than my friends. When I was 15, I was picking up £20 a week. The friends I had who were 18 were getting £9 or £10, or £15, if they were labouring directly.

Of course, I paid no National Insurance when I was on the Lump, but I had picked up a few stamps on bona-fide jobs. I approached them when I was 18, and told them I wanted a bona

Problems for theUnion

BIRMINGHAM building sites were certainly living in the

past until Pete Carter started stirring things up — on most sites, the unions were taboo, and where they had made inroads, shop stewards were never elected and full-time officials were “too busy” to ever make an appearance. Nationally the situation was little better — of the country’s 800,000 building trade workers covered by the National Joint Council for the Building Industry, no more than 300,000 were in any of the unions, and now the streamlined UCATT, despite its membership drive can claim no more than a 40% national rate o f unionisation. The best areas have traditionally been Liverpool and Scotland, where sites were virtually closed shops.

Apart from a protracted squabble with the TGWU for new recruits, UCATT faces enormous objective problems. The building industry is labour intensive - wages can account for as much as 40% of total costs - but this labour has a very high turnover rate - twice that for any other industry.

fide job from then on. They asked what I had been doing, and I said that I couldn’t find “suitable employment” , so they exempted me from what I owed.

That was 3 years ago, but since then I have only paid ten contributions. That was when I worked for a few weeks in a national industry. But I soon left that, and went to the coast. There wasn’t any employment there, so I came back. Yes, I went on the Lump again.

Over the six years, I’ve picked up at least £4,000. I owe at least £1,000 in tax. If there was an amnesty, I would certainly take advantage of it. I’m married now. I suppose that makes a difference. The majority of people who want to stay in the country would, I’m sure of that. But not the Irish. They like to use the Lump — to come and go as they please.

If there was an amnesty I, and a lot of other people would be prepared to give details of our work — but it would have to be a complete amnesty. National Insurance as well as Inland Revenue.

My wife knows it’s a difficult situation, but she leaves it to me. Marriage is a pressure to get you off the Lump, but in a way, it made me more entrenched. I couldn’t afford to risk getting a direct job. It would take four weeks to find one, then another week before I got paid. That would be before

One obvious result of this turnover is the Lump; another is a high rate of unemployment. In December last year,147,000 building trade operatives were registered unemployed — a massive 16% of the total unemployed in Great Britain (as against a ratio of employ­ment in construction to employment in all production industries of 12%).

Current wages are low, and steadily slipping down the wages league table. The latest survey, carried out by the Department of Employment in April last year, and published in November, showed that building trade operatives were getting average gross weekly earnings of £26.30 for 46.4 hours. Craftsmen were on a basic rate of £18.60 for a 40 hour week, and labourers on £15.80. The difference is accounted for by the overtime, and

getting into National Insurance and all that.

The site I’m on is a small one. There are eleven men altogether. Four are on the Lump proper, four are hired by the main contractor, and three come from a bona-fide sub-contractor.

On the particular firm for which I work, the men just are not interested in whether you are on the Lump or not. But hostility from direct employees to Lump workers is a sad thing. Hostility is always directed at the worker — and what can he do about it? It should be against the sub-contractor or the main contractor.

The Lump itself is just a cattle market. You know the places: the Mermaid, Spark Hill, the Ship, Camp Hill Cafe. When there’s a shortage of work, there’s a surplus of men. They take reduced rates. Conditions are often unbearable; work is in no way predictable. You can start the week with good money, and end with a dreadful rate.

On April 6, when the laws change, I’m going to be forced to get off, or take the consequences of being on. There are half a million in my position, so I don’t think it would be in the interests of the state to prosecute — the prisons wouldn’t hold all these people.

After April 6, everyone must have a certificate to work on the Lump; sub-contractors will have to be

locally agreed bonus payments. In June, the final stage of a three year wages agreement was paid — £1.40 to craftsmen and £1.20 to labourers. This represented a 13.8% increase on the wage rates as at the last negotiated change, in February 1970; over the same period, the cost of living rose by 13.2%.

Last year the building trade unions, headed by UCATT, put together a claim for a 50% increase in the basic rate, taking it up to £30 a week for craftsmen. At the same time they resolved to push the hourly rate up by demanding a 35 hour standard week. Of course the increase in real earnings would be nowhere near 50% — the claim simply attempts to incorporate locally- agreed bonus payment in the national rate.

registered. Firms will be legally obliged to stop 30% of the money they pay to sub-contractors as tax.

At the moment, it is not unusual for a subbie to take £1 per man, per day. If a subbie is hiring out 400 men, paying them £5 a day, and getting £6 a day for them, he is collecting £400 a day. There is booking in dead men, too. That’s employees who don’t exist. The subbie does that through an arrangement with the site agent or foreman, then they split the £6.

I wanted to join a union, but I can’t do so. I support the campaign to “Kill the Lump” , but I can’t go on the march for it, because I need to work.

But there is this thing that union members are against the person on the Lump because they think that he is taking something from them. They don’t realise that it is the contractor and the sub-contractor who are exploiting the Lump worker. UCATT’s not as powerful as it would be if it had the backing of workers on the Lump. There’s no real solidarity yet.

Lump workers are frightened men. They are used as a third force, but they don’t realise it. The Lump worker is going to be made a scapegoat now. If he was offered a fair wage in the first place, and allowed to pay tax and insurance, we wouldn’t be criminals. The present rates don’t let us do that.

Direct labour men work for a low wage, but they have a low output. We get an extra £5 to £10 for three times as much work, and in order to gain this extra money, we have to evade taxation.

It’s a risk that you take, because in direct employment, the extra money for extra output just is not available. The question I ask myself is that the high output is being paid for somewhere along the line, presumably through the price that people pay for homes. So where does this money go?

7 Days 8 March 1972

The unions suggested that this increase could be paid in instalments until the current agreement expires in June, to minimise any “client in­tolerance” the employers might suffer as a result of paying so “radical” an increase.

But the employers side of the National Joint Council would have none of this. They wrote to the regions to ask for suggestions as to what they should offer — some firms are reputed to have suggested as much as £5, while other hard-liners pressed for the same £1.40/£1.20 increase the workers had won in June last year. The hard-liners won. Their paltry 7.6% offer was rejected on February 9 this year by the union negotiators. This week, national talks continue

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