New technology, once the friend, is fast becoming the foe.
In the second of three programmes, The Right to Work looks at the impact of technological change on one industry in one town. The town is St Helens; the industry, glassmaking. St Helens is dominated by one company - Pilkington Brothers, a highly-successful multinational giant acknowledged as the world's leading glassmaker. But that success brings problems in its wake. To keep ahead, Pilkington wishes to introduce new machinery that will cost 1,400 jobs over the next three years. Glass process workers, members of the million-strong General and Municipal Workers Union, will bear the brunt of that loss of jobs. And this time, they've decided to fight.
Their answer to the company's plans has been a demand for a shorter working week to share out what work there is. But the company are adamant. Peter Williams reports on a long summer of confrontation as the company - conscious that this is a test case - stands firm, while the union struggles to convince the company, and its own members, that a shorter working week is the only way to safeguard the future of a community at risk from the machines.