At 5.30am on Tuesday 24 November, striking Superdrug workers in South Elmsall marched back to work after accepting a deal thrashed out after eight hours of talks. Twenty days before, the workers walked out on indefinite strike after months of futile talks with management. Management wanted to change shift and overtime payments which would have cost some workers more than £2000. They wanted the power to change shifts with only seven days notice, and the workforce to opt out of the 48-hour Working Time Directive. They also wanted to cut sick pay and change pension entitlements.
Superdrug is owned by Hutchison Whampoa of Hong Kong, which has an annual turnover of more than £10 billion. The changes may have seemed small beer to top management, but for the workers in South Elmsall, a former pit village, it was the difference between a living wage and living on benefits.
What happened next was inspirational. Teams of strikers fanned out all over the country giving out 110,000 leaflets outside 150 Superdrug. Outside their depot the strikers mounted a lively 24/7 picket. A local butcher, Voddens, supplied meat for the barbecue, and workers from the other depots on the industrial estate supplied wood for the picket line fires. Support for the strikers poured in from other areas of the trade union movement, including large donations from the NUJ.
The workforce included 30 Polish workers who also were out on strike, and 20 former miners from the 1984-85 strike. The senior steward, Stephen Benn, was previously at Frickley Colliery. He commented, ‘We’ve done well. We got them to the table in three weeks. I thought it would take longer.’ Another former miner said to me on the picket line, ‘I didn’t think we would be out again twenty-five years later.’ But he also said they had put into practice lessons learned during the strike - regular mass meetings, and the active involvement of strikers so that people did not sit at home moping.
The return to work was also a poignant reminder of the different end to the 1984-85 miners’ strike when the Frickley miners marched back behind their banner. But even after a year on strike, when the Kent miners in a desperate last action mounted a picket outside the colliery, the miners refused to cross
it and turned back. This time as the strikers marched through the gate into the depot celebratory rockets were fired off.
