Firemen's pay fight 'Strings' main issue before conference

GIANT By Charles spinners and process workers from Lansil's, the Lancaster man-made fibre firm, tomorrow enter the second week of their strike for higher wages, 100 per cent trade unionism and equal pay for women.

A mass meeting last Thursday voted to continue the strike. The strikers have called for official backing from the Transport and General Workers' Union, to which the vast majority of them belong.

Mr Stanley Henig, Labour MP for Lancaster, last week attempted to act as a gobetween by calling management and trade union representatives to a Town Hall meeting.

But the management refused to negotiate directly with the trade unionists, who then decided there was no point in staying.

Watched

Lansil's is owned by the giant American monopoly, Monsanto.

In their struggle for a living wage against this giant the strikers are being watched by many other Lancaster workers, who are thoroughly fed up with the generally low pay rates in the area.

The fibre firm's wages are 6s. Id. an workers, 6s. 7d. an hour for those on double shifts and 6s. Ild. an hour for those on the three-shift system.

Spinners earn 6s. ld. to 6s. 3d. an hour and women workers 4s. 5td.

The spinners may earn up to £4 a week bonus-if they are lucky. For other workers the bonus earnings are much less.

Before the strike started, some workers were having to work seven-day week to take home a £14-wage packet.

Small wonder that strikers are demanding basic wages be raised to 9s. 6d. an hour.

Refused

The management has refused to enter into negotiations for a change in the bonus system until it has got a team of work-study consultants to devise a scheme.

Since the strike began, there has been a 24-hour picket on the factory and lorry drivers have ceased delivering.

Dockers in North - West ports are believed to have 'blacked' Monsanto goods and equipment.

Student support

Students from Lancaster university last week made contact with the strike committee and have been joining the pickets, day and night.

hey have also assisted wit osters and duplicating tacıl ties.

Financial support has come from students, university refectory staff and building workers at Lancaster's Bailrigg site. Bakers reject back-to-work' THE 7,000 bakery workers on strike in the NorthWest have rejected their union's instructions to return to work and are continuing to press their £20 minimum wage claim.

Strike committee chairman Mr Jim Byrne said:

'No fresh offers have been made and we are sticking out for a £20 a week basic wage.

'We passed a vote of no confidence in the union executive and its negotiating committee.

Bakers' Union officials recently negotiated a new basic rate for men of £15 10s.

Rejected

This has been contemptuously rejected by the strikers who are asking for the same £20 basic wage demand as the London dustThe 19-man strike committee in Liverpool turned down appeals by union district secretary Mr Jim Court to call off the strike at the beginning of the week. sent to a Manchester bakers mass meeting to persuade CALLS FOR the issuing of seven day's strike notice to the Greater London Council, which would bring the men out on November 5, will be considered by a firemen's delegate conference in London today.

Attempts are being made to suggest that these calls are motivated solely by the firemen's desire to win their claim for a £5 10s. accommodation allowance. This is a lie.

Every fireman knows that the forces which have pushed them to work 'emergency calls only' since Monday morning, and which are driving them towards strike action, run far deeper. In opening negotiation on last June's Webber report on the London Fire Brigade-on the basis of its accommodation allowance proposals — the union leadership is treading a most dangerous path.

These are by no means the report's central considerations.

Slogan

The basic questions before firemen are reflected in their long standing 'undermanned, underpaid!' slogan.

The Webber report does not propose to alleviate this situation.

Instead, it suggests that pay concessions should be tied to further productivity 'strings'. A productivity payment of £l a week, the inquiry team concluded, should be paid to uniformed members of the brigade.

This would be 'subject to all parties agreeing that this contribution is related to the present strength of the brigade — 4,950 — to the present workload of the brigade and the acceptance by all parties of the need for flexibility to overcome the restrictions which the deficiency in the establishment imposes in the matters of manning appliances, the taking of leave and the arrangements for training'.

It also recommends that any further increase in earnings be negotiated in terms of "further productivity contributions, the better use of existmanpower and on the matters recommended for special consideration by the National Board for Prices and Incomes.

'In this respect an evaluation of the total present commitment of the brigade by a broad work-study approach might be helpful to all parties'.

No doubt the Tory press will this morning be screamcall them to stay out in support of the Liverpool men.

Bread is being rationed in Liverpool because of the strike by 1,400 men from six multiple bakeries.

Managerial staffs have been attempting to break the strike by maintaining limited production.

A flour lorry, which was delivering to a bakery in wythenshawe, near. Manchester, had its windscreen broken on Saturday after being stopped by a bakers' picket line. Birmingham teachers' campaign goes FOLLOWING the demon- FOLLOWING the demonstration on Saturdav Octo- stration on Saturday October 18 through the city on the teachers' pay claim, Birmingham young teachers are now planning leafletting of the Austin, Lucas and Tractor and Transmissions factories.

Young teachers • especially feel their problems have much in common with other Maximum The basic question for both is one of leadership. All teachers should be on their petitions, signed by focusands of Condolers fi suppore od helen, ate anhindedeinat they ay fil mestmi Ster ing that the firemen will be endangering life and property -especially property-if they strike.

But the firemen have been pushed as far as they can go on these questions by • the Tory councils and the Labour government's Prices and Incomes Board.

This is why there is strong support for the idea of strike acaen.

If the Greater London Council really wants to maintain a service it must immediately settle the men's demands —without "strings'.

Rolls

guerrillas INSPECTORS at Rolls Royce's Anstey plant, Coventry, are taking guerrilla strike action in support of demands for a higher basic rate of pay.

The 180 men want their present rate plus bonus totalling l6s. an hour to be consolidated into a new hourly basic of 17s.

The management has offered 6d. an hour on the present bonus in return for MeasuredDay work, Job-evaluation and mobility ot labour.

This is totally unacceptable', commented one striker.

Earlier this week, 200 storekeepers from the plant decided at a mass meeting to continue their strike for 1s. 6d. an hour straight increase and the abrogation of the present 'productivity' setBONN guard against the new style 'militant' talk coming from people like Max Morris, an NUT executive and Communist Party member.

On Wednesday October 22 he spoke to teachers in Birmingham.

He claimed that the NUT leaders accepted the previous settlement in April 'because we were told 6.1 per cent was the maximum permissible'.

But after big increases to top civil servants and airline pilots 'the executive realized they were lied to by the South Wales sackings:

Confed. heads capitulate on THE Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions has given an important concession to the employers over sackings procedure in South Local Confederation officials and South Wales Engineering Employers' representatives last week signed procedure agreement covering 50,000 workers.

Under the new terms a sacked worker may appeal against sacking but the final decision will be made by an 'impartial' management representative!

Suspended

During his appeal the dismissed man will remain suspended and the employers are not obliged to pay him for that time.

He is placed at the mercy of the employers for an unspecified period!

Only after the employers' tribunal is over can a works conference be called.

No wonder Mr Glyn Morris, director of the South Wales Engineering Employers' Association, describes these as the principles observed in the best industrial relations.

Appeals against dismissal under existing procedure are taken through the lengthy York disputes machinery.

Capitulated

This question, on which the South Wales Confederation officials have capitulated, is currently being discussed at national level.

The status quo issue is a stumbling block in the TUC Confederation of British • Industry collaboration talks on industrial relations.

Union leaders are demanding that management actions such as sackings and manning changes should not be impleThis is mere deception.

He was challenged by All Trades Unions Alliance supporters to say where he and the NUT leadership stood on the sell-out of the sacked Coventry teachers, on all-out strike action and opposition to productivity deals.

In answer Morris gave niy evasions.

reachers must and will reject these.

The truth is that the NUT leadership opposed the interim pay claim at the conference. procedure By our industrial reporter mented until agreement reached.

The employers are refusing to concede this.

If the union leadership allows a capitulation on the status quo issue in South places in them to cht the employers at national level?

All Trade Alliance SOUTH-WEST LONDON Tuesday, November 4, Horse and Groom Mitcham Road S. African ultraTHE ultra-right wing dissidents within the ruling South African Nationalist Party have formed their own party, to defend the apartheid system from what they consider to be the 'liberal' racial policies of Prime Minister Vorster.

The move followed a congress of about 1,000 Atrikaners at Pretoria on Saturday.

The new party is led by Dr Albert Hertzog, a former cabinet minister.

In his speech to the congress, he made it clear that Afrikaner unrest went much deeper than opposition to the inclusion of Maoris in the New Zealand rugby team due to tour South Africa next year :

'We have reached the position where a powerful political machine is lending itself to the destruction of the Afrikaner. That we cannot tolerate.' The name chosen for the new party is significant—the Reconstituted National Party of South Africa.

Its programme will be based But, realizing the feeling But, realizing the feeling building uD in the schools. building up in the schools, they are riding the tide with militant noises and protest actions.

Respectable

As the chairman said at the start of the meeting, *militancy is now respectable'.

The way to • reject this leadership is unite the wages struggle with that against cuts and attacks on education from Wilson and the Tories, and fight for support in the working class through the All Trades Unions Alliance.

racist formed on the Bible and the teachings of the Calvinist church, which has as its main theme the concept of pre-destinaThe Afrikaners clearly believe they are God's chosen elite.

The regime in South Africa has always rested on the highly privileged white workers, farmers and middle class, whose high living standard is based directly on the sweated labour of the country's 14 million or SO 'non-white' Separation The monopolies are opposed to the total separation of the coloured workers, as they depend upon low-paid African labour for their high profit rates in mining and other industries.

Total apartheid will confine all Africans to regions outside the zones where these companies operate.

Vorster, like his predecessors, attempted to steer a middle course between the big monopolies, who face the alternatives of opposing apartheid or employing only highly expensive white labour their concerns, and the mainly Afrikaner middle class and workers, who see the continued employment of the African working class a in 'white' regions as a threat to their own security.

These contradictions in the apartheid system are now coming to a head, and can create conditions under which the workers of South Africa and Rhodesia can fight jointly against their divided oppressors.