Yorks. pay battle mounts Cadeby men can win

Ford men sceptical of parity claim THE PROBLEM of leadership for the Ford workers in their fight for the current £8 to fIO-a-week claim is now the big question being discussed in the factories.

The claim, which is for parity with the Rootes, Ryton, factory, has received an enthusiastic response.

There is a general feeling that the claim is justified by the rising cost of living.

One worker said he was prepared to stay out three months, even if the kids starved - with no overtime, £l6 a week was impossible to live on.

The claim was put to the management on Friday by the trade union side of the National Joint Negotiating Committee (NJNC).

No confidence But Ford workers have no confidence in the present leadership on the shop floor or in the unions.

Workers cannot see why the union leaders will put up any more fight than they did last March when the notorious penal clauses were accepted.

Workers say, if we had to accept penalty clauses for 35s., what would we have to accept for £10? • As one worker pointed out:

the in bot ade la ne Prom chains to a skein ed wool" and the "Morning Star" called the deal a partial vicConspiracy Another alleged it was a conspiracy from top to bottom.

The derision with which the Ford management treated the claim showed how confident they were that the union leaders would hold the men back and connive with the Labour government in helping the employers hold down wages. ONE THOUSAN by Main colliery!

now entering its wages.

Market men are skilled men without regular jobs who can be assigned to fill vacancies caused by absenteeism or illness. The Cadeby workers claim that market men are being sent to low-paid jobs when face work is available.

On face-work men at Cadeby get 85s. 2d a shift plus 20 per cent bonus, but some are being sent to jobs paying only 77s. with a 16 per cent bonus. This can make a difference of over £3 a week.

The government's pit closures programme and concentration of faces is aimed at maintaining productivity with fewer men.

As production is concentrated on fewer faces, more BARNSLEY • area panel of the National Union of Mineworkers voted 13-7 on Saturday night against supporting the Cadeby strike.

Despite this, the strike continues.

and more men are being thrown on the market.

The Coal Board is trying to save money while intensifying the work of a smaller number of men.

The Cadeby struggle is a continuation of last year's Wheldale strike and the stoppage at Cortonwood earlier this year.

The NCB is anxious, above all, to keep these disputes localized and at times may make concessions to ensure Industrial Reporter Certainly at Friday's meeting of the NJNC the management would only treat what the unions had said as an 'expression of their aspirations rather than a claim'.

The developing situation at Ford shows ever more clearly the need for a leadership able to match up to the coming struggles.

More and more workers are coming to realize that this means not only a struggle with the management, but their old leadership and the government as well.

The demand for parity can only be seriously pressed home on the basis of a revolutionary perspective. STEEL CLERKS RESUME WORK THREE hundred clerks at the Lincoln brake factory of Clayton Dewandre who have been blacking steel from the British Steel Corporation (BSC) agreed to resume normal working from yesterday.

This was the condition laid Message › SIX HUNDREI ave voted to conti third week-over this. So, the Cortonwood strike made real gains for some increasing pay from 52s. to 71s.

Uniform

steade what a refused ed Board the National Minewc preserve and another.

In fact, the highest rates, such as Brodsworth (85s. 2d.) and Bentley (83s. 6d.), are a result of local board militancy rather than negotiations.

The NCB relies on the union leadership to preserve these divisions. The real issue is the need for a united fight for a unified rate throughout the coalfield.

Agreement

We say: every qualified face worker who is willing to work on the face should have the National Power Loading Agreement (85s. 2d), no matter what job he does.

Yet the union leadership keeps the miners ignorant of the varying wages and conditions in different pits.

For example, compare conditions between Cadeby Main in the Barnsley area and Wheldale in north Yorkshire.

On the Wheldale powered support-power loading faces there are two men on the tail gate stable and five on the shearing machine cutting the face.

Cadeby has two men on the tail gate and seven on the face.

Harder

Moreover, Wheldale cuts coal on three shifts, involving harder work for the loader gate stable men.

Cadeby cuts on two shifts and the loader gate stable machine advances on the third shift.

The union leaders must be forced to check on conditions and pay at all pits and get the highest conditions introduced in every pit.

At Cadeby the NUM's Barnsley area panel urged the branch committee to take the men back to work, promising to bring the area out if no satisfaction was reached within a week.

It is understood this position was accepted by a small majority on the committee, but was rejected by strikers' mass meeting on Saturday, September 27.

Lesson

The Cadeby men must learn the lesson of last year's Wheldale strike where panel leaders persuaded the men to go back, promising to bring the area out if nothing was gained in 14 days.

Nothing was gained, the panel was not brought out and the strike was broken.

The Cadeby men must not let this happen to them.

Up to now they have stood firm. Now they must fight to extend their strike.

A united fight on wages, closures and rents can defeat the NCB. down by TUC general secretary Vic Feather, who has promised to intervene in the The action taken by members of the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union (CAWU) at Lincoln was in support of a claim for recognition of the union at three Scunthorpe steelworks and had affected production • in sections of the motor industry.

Cancelled

The union's general secretary, Roy Grantham, said on Monday that other action by clerks, planned for factories in the East Midlands this week, had now been cancelled and that talks would soon take place between the TUC and the Steel Trades Confederation to try to reach a settlement.

The clerks employed by BSC and all workers should examine the TUC's role in the Port Talbot dispute.

In line with its agreement to do the dirty work for the niners at Cadeue their strike market mens' With new container berths like the one at Tilbury above, the only 'collaboration' the employers are interested in is working al government and the employers in the unions, the TUC has swung its weight behind the productivity offensive against all steelworkers igreen book' knowing full well that the manpower productivity plan, put forward by Port Talbot's private enterprise management two years ago, involves reduction of some 5,200 of its employees'.

Context

The fight for the defence of the unions, including the question of trade union recognition, must be taken in this context.

The TUC's acceptance of the need for capitalist rationalization and all that goes with it means that it cannot mobilize the working class to fight the employers.

The All Trades • Unions Alliance says that all compénsation payments must be ended and the 'green book' rejected.

Fr Jack equipment to the maximum with the minimum of men. Stalinists join forces with Orange Lodge THE Communist Party friends with its 'left unit The Orange Lodge, complete with Union Jacks and portraits of the Queen, were allowed to head the march to Liverpool Pier Head called by the Irish civil rights campaign on Saturday.

The old faithfuls from ' International Socialism' were also present, of course.

Any workers who read leaflets inviting them to 'come and see what is really happenStrikes hit beer deliveries STRIKES at two breweries hit beer deliveries to London public houses on . Monday.

Three hundred transport employees at the Charrington depot in Mile End Road refused to work because they oppose the introduction of new delivery sheets.

At the Watney Mann bottling depot in Stepney, 50 'van boys' came out over a wage dispute.

Later they decided at a meeting to return to work while talks between union officials and management continued.

The struggle to resolve the economic crisis at the expense of the employers will only take place against the TUC and all its 'settlements'. AN ESSENTIAL part of the port employers' plans to rationalize the docks has found r' policy.

ing in Northern Ireland' can only have been confused at this display of political and class compromise.

HOSTILE

By refuting the principled Marxist programme of the Socialist Labour League for the immediate withdrawal of troops and for a workers' and farmers' government based on nationalized industries, the Stalinists attempt to divert the Irish workers' struggle behind the reformism of the civil rights campaign.

Stalinism is hostile to the building of revolutionary parties for the expropriation of the employers.

Their slogans for British standards of parliamentary democracy were at one with the Orange Lodge chants of •Ulster is British, Ulster is British'.

It is no accident that the red banners of the Communist Party and International Socialism' should be disgraced in this way.

It is merely the logic of popular front politics-following directly in the paths of Stalinist betrayal in Spain and France in the late 1930s.

READINESS

One leading Merseyside Young Communist League member explained: "They just turned up and joined in, what could we do?' In fact the Union jacks were at the head of the march. This attitude contrasts vividly with the Communist Party's readiness to use the police against the Young Socialists on previous demonstrations.

gave no support to the whole which Stalinism will sink.