One answer to rising_prices Union demands 96 p.c. wage rise

I.C.l. sparks and plumbers on strike ELECTRICIANS and plumbers at ICI's Wilton site were on strike yesterday against the management's breaking of an agreement not to employ non-members of the Electrical and Plumbing Trades Union on contracted plumbing work.

The management is supported by a recent TUC ruling that the job should be shared by members of the Sheet Metalworkers, Heating and Domestic Engineers' Union.

This ruling was given without any consultation with the EPTU at local level and the management's deviation from agreed practice is widely , seen as a provocation. GESTETNER'S TOTTENHAM Die-casters fight DIE-CASTERS at London's ner plant yesterday continu improved condition money, A mass meeting on Wednesday voted to continue the action, despite the advice of Mr Bert Thoroughgood, district secretary of the Amalgamated Engineers and Foundry.

The size of the majority in favour of going on with the strike was, however, reduced.

Return advice

Thoroughgood congratulated the die-casters on their action - which follows a failure to agree on their claim at York-but asked them to consider returning to work in view of the management's stance that it would not negotiate while the strike continued.

But other speakers pointed out that the management has tried all along to divide the shop.

The shift-workers, in fact, have been kept at work by an offer of 7td. an hour while day-workers have been offered only 3d.

No offer at all has been made to workers in the fettling shop although conditions there are at least as arduous as those suffered by the shift3d offer Gestetner's have offered to pay the day-workers the 3d. increase as an interim award, pending further negotiations, if the men agree to return to work.

But this would still leave the fettlers without any rise.

What is more, there is a considerable danger that the management would press in any 'further negotiations' for changes involving job-evaluaGestetner's fear that if the die-shop claim is conceded the rest of the factory will advance their own claims.

Job-evaluation is their second line of defence. SHARP INCREASES in prices, along with growing unemploy.

ers' living standards all over the capitalist world.

Last year, as reported in Press, saw a sharp increase in same situation faces workers Yesterday's 96.4 per cent wage claim on behalf of road haulage members of the Teamsters' Union is the latest indication that the trade unions are beginning to answer this threat in their own way.

Tottenham Gesti ed their strike f now in its secol Tenants THREE women and four men appeared at Clerkenwell court yesterday morning, charged with using threatening behaviour outside Camden Town Hall on Wednesday night.

Police were called in to clear the public gallery after a tenants' protest against rent increases during the council meeting.

The Tory-controlled Camden Council approved rent rises at the begining of December affecting three-quarters of the borough's tenants.

The increases for occupied flats-following the Housing Ministry's 'guidelines' on rent rises-—will average 7s. 6d. a But tenants moving into new flats will have to pay £2£3 more rent than 18 months Maintenance men strike over pay deal MAINTENANCE men Sheffield's Daniel Doncaster's engineering plant are on strike over management's refusal to pay a Is 6d an hour productivity payment.

The strike, which began on Tuesday, follows a period of work-to-rule provoked by the absorption of the bonus into the basic rate during the last stage of the national engineering package deal, signed at the end of 1968.

Now the employers are pressing each section individually to accept work-study schemes.

The maintenance men's strike follows refusals to work these schemes by the valve department and the 'radiac shop.

Wednesday's Workers prices in Britain. The in the United States.

Thus the Teamsters join the determined General Electric strikers who have now been out for 11 weeks in support of their demands for a new wage contract.

Union representatives made their claim as negotiations opened for a 1970-1973 wage contract with the 2,000 US haulage firms.

A spokesman for the industry announced that the claim could cost the industry some £3,740 million over the period covered by the contract.

Mr Ray Beagle, chief siren agon on the when wages including Major threat The present average of US lorry drivers is about £1 13s an hour, but the steep rise in the US cost of living now presents a major threat to this standard.

Thus the claim.

Meanwhile, it was announced in Detroit yesterday, the crisis - ridden Chrysler motor corporation has sacked 2,200 workers at five of its seven US plants.

The corporation has already planned to lay off 37,000 workers for one week during the next fortnight in addition to closing its factories over Christmas and the New Year.

Can't sell

NORKER PROFITS HIGH PRICES HIGHER TAXES cartoon from the union journal 'United Electric'.

Taxmen ban

35,000 Income Tax officers yesterday began an overtime ban which will seriously dis. rupt tax collection and refunding.

A spokesman for the Inland Revenue Staffs' Association said that union members had been asked to work a total of one million hours overtime in the next two months and that this rate would continue because of the severe staff shortages.

Mir Cyril Plant, the association's general secretary, added 'The work-load has become impossible. It is crucifying us and the time has come to say "enough"'.

the labour movement today. 'ock SUPER HON MORERSE FRED WRAHT UNICA CARICaNs to the United States.

Meanwhile, Washington ambassador Mr John Freeman flew into London to make the final arrangements for Wilson's visit to Nixon at the end of the month.

Nothing could make clear the relationship between the Labour leaders' support for the Vietnam slaughter and the attacks on workers in Britain better than Jenkins's Chicago assurance at the American Chamber of ComORDER THEDAILY ago under the Labour Council.

The rises will be implemented in February.

Even • higher increases can be confidently forecast for the future since the Tory GLC has made it quite plain that it does not intend to stick by the government's guidelines.

The Camden tenants' association has called upon Labour councillors to call a rent strike in protest against the rises-so far with no response. NOW (For any too daye You solact) 4 a year {1 for threo months Workers' Press for docks 'modernization' scheme directed and financed by the Labour government.

The PLA has spent virtually no money on modernizing the Surreys because their plan has all along been closure, probably followed by the lucrative sale of the land for developments similar to those proposed by the GLC on the St Katherine's dock site.

This is shown very clearly in this month's PLA magazine, which says:

'Pioneered' "The PLA themselves pioneered "mass production" in the discharge of bulk timber carriers at No 34 Berth [at Tilbury] :.. for the application of modern manning and handling methods to packaged timber.' The main work on the Surreys is also the handling of timber.

The magazine goes on to reveal why the employers want to close the Surreys and move their work elsewhere.

The crew of the Tilbury No 34 berth are 'all capable of interchanging in the operation of mechanical equipment •, small in numbers but highly-skilled and doing the work of the far greater number of men which would be required by conventional, loose timber'.

Unable to directly implement the Devlin scheme's Phase Two because of the strength of the organized dockers, the employers have embarked on a programme of closures and building of new - intensively worked — container ports.

Cannot pay

Against the development of Tilbury, which is proceeding apace (it already handles 100,000 containers a year) and the experiments with the LASH (lighter-aboard-ship) system at Sheerness, there can be no question of making the older, unmodernized', docks pay under capitalist account1ng• The employers' plans have to be fought as a whole, which means a principled struggle to throw out the whole Devlin scheme and for the nationalization of all ports and associated facilities under workers' control.

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