Briant print jobs disappear as deal

Registered union wins court appeal THE APPEAL COURT yesterday handed the tiny, but on union activities on Post Office premises. tered Telecommunications Staff Association the right to Judges overturned a decision of the National Industrial Court earlier this year, which upheld the Post Office's refusal to recognize the TSA and to grant it facilities.

Court's Hodement LOrd sisted that it was "implicit' in the Industrial Relations Act that an employer should allow a registered union to carry. on on his premises 'such activities as are reasonable in the circumstances of the case' It was also implicit, Denning said, that every worker should have the right to take part in those activities.

The judgement, which if confirmed by the House of Lords will open the door to a big expansion of TSA activities, constitutes a major challenge to the unregistered Union of Post Office At present the UPW organizes 40,000 telephonists. The TSA claim a membership of 10,000, but the real figure is thought to be far lower.

At the UPW special conference in February, general secretary Tom Jackson hailed the NIRC decision as 'complete victory' for his union. He will have to make a rather different report to the UPW annual conference next week.

The action • on which the Appeal Court gave judgement was brought by Walter Crouch (62), a night telephonist and TSA official in London.

While the judgement does not give the non-TUC union negotiating rights, it places it on equal legal footing with the UPW as far as organizational work inside the exchanges is concerned.

PUBLIC MEETINGS Transfonning the Socialist Labour League into the Reyplutionary Party Sunday May 20, 7 p.m.

The London Film School, 24 Shelton Street (corner Langley Street)

London WC2 Speaker: Roger Smith Showing the Pageant Film:

The Road lo Workers' Power' Greeks lobby embassy over junta visit LABOUR CORRESPONDENT LOWN WITH ANIS NITH ABOUT 40 Greeks demonstrated outside their embassy in London yesterday against the visit to Britain of two members of the ruling military junta. A spokesman for the Greek Committee Against Dictatorship said the men were not elected representatives of the Greek people and they condemned the Tory government for inviting them.

Hull ednesday May 'Windmill Hote Witham Goole lursday May 24 Cape of Good this week when contracts are exchanged.

But as Workers Press has warned repeatedly, the deal means that only about 40 men and women will be employed.

When the work-in began on June 21 last year, 120 men and 30 women were said to be working at the Old Kent Road, London, plant.

In the last two months alone, as news has emerged that Bentley will employ only about 40, coupled with the drying up of the workin's fighting fund, there has been a dramatic exodus from the labour force.

Work-in leader and Communist Party member Mr Bill Freeman told me on Tuesday that there were now only 85 occupying the factory.

He said the strain of living on dispute pay had forced a number of men to find other jobs.

Mr Freeman's Piecework dispute could close Reyrolles plant REYROLLES, the Tyneside engineering combine, is facing closure this weekend over a piecework dispute involving production workers.

The Hebburn firm have already locked out their pieceworkers after they decided to operate the national consolidated time rate which drastically cut output. Yesterday management began to lay off ancillary workers and staff.

The dispute is over a claim by the production workers for higher minimum earnings and a better dispute rate.

Minimum earnings in the plant are fixed at £25, but most men get £ll to £l2 a week more. Shop stewards argue that an increase in the minimum level would cost the firm almost nothing, but give more security to the employees.

The disputed rate is an agreed level of payment made when management and unions are in disagreement over new piecework prices.

The workers maintain that their claim is well within the government's Phase Two limit of £l plus 4 per cent. They also Bill Freeman Briant's is threatened by the deal expected to be concluded this week.

We understand that he and the father of the SOGAT chapel Mr Norman Pennington are to be transferred to other jobs in the print industry as part of the agreement between Bentley and the unions.

Mr Freeman and Mr Pennington have been the major say that any increase in piecework earnings has been the result of higher productivity and is therefore covered by the Tory wage laws.

The firm disagrees. It says that piecework 'drift' has been caused by pressure from the shop floor and that the poor order situation makes it unable to give more money.

Stewards believe there are deeper causes to the clash.

'We have noticed a definite change in the atmosphere in negotiations,' one told me yesterday. 'There are strong indications that the management is preparing to clamp down on earnings next year because of the order situation. We think the current resistance is very much part of this new policy.' Reyrolles is one of the few remaining north east employers which still operates a 'simple' piecework system without other more complicated forms of boosting productivity, like MeasuredDay Work.

The get-tough attitude may be the opening shots in a war to get rid of piecework in favour of a works method that guarantees more output and 1 more intensive pace of work. Bentley has been worried about the impact on potential customers of the continued presence of militant work-in leaders at the plant.

He has given an undertaking to re-employ all those who cannot be given jobs immediately as he builds up the business.

Mr Freeman said negotiations on manning were still going on and we understand that at least one union has drawn up a precedence list for workers who may want to return to Briant's if and when expands.

Liquidator's spokesman Mr H. B. Blandford Baker said yesterday he could not see what the work-in had achieved.

He said: 'Half of them have lost their jobs has cost me £75,000, and it Asked how he thought negotiations between Mr Bentley and the print unions were proceeding, Mr Freeman commented: I just don't know what to say to you.' MAY FUND