Aftermath

It was a triumphant return to the office, yet the atmosphere had changed and we all felt the cold wind in the office. It was one thing to have won an agreement that rates would change, it was another altogether to endure the wait and see game that was about to happen.

In addition, I believe that the mandate from above was that the gloves were off and TASS were the bad boys in the affair, after all, we had been quite successful in stopping most things from moving in the factory for over a month and it wasn't only the membership that had lost money.

Senior members of TASS had been allowed to continue working while we were on strike and there was a definite divide there as well, they had not "let the side down" while it appeared that the younger members had, and we were easy to victimise.

I was lucky, in the next six months, to be moved away from the office for training and a few of my workmates would move on, to greener pastures, in that time.