The Storytellers Read Online Free PDF Page B

hope and the room immediately exploded into a starburst of questions, statements and accusations. Members did not come to institute meetings to remain silent.
    â€œSome order, please. One at a time and through the chair.” His repeated pleas were quickly lost in the raucous noise from the room which only died down when the pressure vessel had released its steam and the membership grew tired of hearing its own conflated sound.
    â€œRay, yes, you have a question?” The chairman repeated his invitation several times before the room fell quiet and Ray Gosling, a twenty-nine-year-old machinist with a wife and three small children, felt able to speak.
    â€œYes, this is for Derek, I guess,” the young man said nervously.
    Derek Robinson, a large man with an open, kind face, butcombustible temper, looked benignly at his questioner from the end of the hall, eager to put him at ease. These last months had been a trial for him. His members were hurting. Inflation was eroding every pay increase they secured. Militancy was growing. The national union had effectively told the plants and every department in every plant that they were on their own. It was up to the shop stewards to strike whatever deal they could. Anarchy was the only word for it. With rumours of cuts and closures swirling through the ranks, the mood was fissile. Stewards were being driven into taking action and making demands by a competitive frenzy. Over the last twelve months there had been over two hundred stoppages in his plant alone. He wasn’t sleeping well.
    â€œDon’t hold back, son,” urged Mark Grass, a spray painter of thirty years whose function would soon be taken over by a robot. “We are all family here.”
    â€œWell, it’s about family really,” the young man advanced. “These stoppages are making it hard to keep up with the payments. The young ’uns need feeding and clothing. The wife’s struggling. She keeps asking me what all these stoppages are for.”
    â€œSacrifices must be made,” proffered Harry Blodget. “The women need to know that.”
    â€œThat’s grand coming from you, Harry,” his neighbour chided. “You haven’t got one!”
    A ripple of laughter spread around the room. There couldn’t have been a married man amongst them who hadn’t been on the wrong end of his wife’s tongue at one time or another.
    â€œYou surely have a hardship fund?” Jack Pugh asked, looking sternly across at the shop steward. Everyone was supposed to put a small amount each week into a kitty, which was matched from central union funds, for the use of members in serious trouble.
    â€œOf course we do,” the steward retorted. “But it doesn’t amount ter much and besides, I’ve only had one request for assistance intwelve month and that from a widow needing help to cover her man’s funeral expenses.”
    â€œThat’s the sum of it,” exclaimed the young man, anxious to get back into his own conversation. “Apart from the rent, the food and the clothing, I have furniture to pay off and there’s the car. But how can I claim hardship? All that’s just life, isn’t it? Oh, and there’s the gas and the electricity,” he added. It was his wife who kept the accounts.
    The murmur of sympathy which the machinist’s comments attracted was only too audible, especially from the younger members.
    â€œBourgeois trinkets,” muttered Jack Pugh. But luckily for him, his aside was drowned out by a rising chatter inside the room as people compared notes about their overstretched finances.
    Derek Robinson rose to his feet, anxious to reassert his authority.
    â€œFriends!” he called out and the room gradually fell silent. “Of course this is hard – for all of us, and for you with young families most of all. But it is them or us. They would pay us nothing if they thought they could get away with it.