CANS AS munrkers nress T&GWU STILL FACED WITH €5,000 TO PAY TUC RETREATS ON ANTI-UNION FINE

'WE DIDN'T know it was going to be like this, moans Jack Jones as the machinery of the Industrial Relations Act legally proceeds to rob €5,000 from union funds to pay a fine for contempt of court.

The 1,600,000 members of Jones' Transport and General Workers' Union should immediately demand to know WHY? How is it that Jones, the chief administrator of Britain's largest union, didn't know that the Industrial Relations Act was empowered to fine unions and imprison individual members?

After all, the batteries of lawyers and researchers at Transport House have had more than 12 months to examine Act word by word.

Now Jones is to ask TUC general secretary Victor Feather what to do. But does Feather know anything more than What will the luminaries of the TUC's general council be able to advise? How much do they know about the Act?

When the Act came into force six weeks ago, other major unions, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, issued a circular to all members advising them to 'ignore' the Act. Authorized by AUEW general secretary Jim Conway, the document stated:

'Wherever possible we must encourage employers to ignore the Act and treat the whole thing as one large party politicai irrelevancy. Best advice-know about the Act, but ignore it and continue to operate trade union activities as before.' It is in the language of this circular that we see the treacherous politics of reformism. Ignore' the Act, 'operate as before'-when the Act represents a body of law, capitalist law, legislated in both houses of parliament by the Tory government to smash trade union organization and pick off militants.

Didn't Feather, Jones and Scanlon know the true meaning of the Act?

Of course they did.

But because they are utterly unwilling to fight the Tory government, they allowed the Tories to inch the Act onto the statute books throughout the whole of last year.

Now the Act is law, the open collaboration by the trade union leaders commences. Three examples: • Alex Kitson, T&GWU executive officer and one time candidate for the general secretaryship of the Labour Party, has secretly visited the offices of the Commission on Industrial Relations to hold talks with the director of industrial relations, Alan Scoular. • Clive Jenkins of ASTMS is co-operating with the CIR and Sir John Donaldson's National Industrial Court into the union recognition row at .. the Newcastle engineering firm, C. A. Parsons. • The Bakers' Union: has agreed an agency shop with the bakery employers, thus permitting the possibility of nonunionists to operate in the industry. The informal collaboration is occurring on a much broader scale. On May 17 at the Café Royal in Regent St, Hugh Scanlon and Alan Fisher, general secretary of the National. Union of Public Employees, will discuss the Act at a business seminar along with Professor John Wood of the CIR and Eddie Robertson, , director of research at the Engineering Employers' Federation.

The one-day seminar costs f25 a head. The fee to Scanlon and Fisher is not revealed. (Full report on this conference will appear in tomorrow's Workers Press.) We have no confidence whatsoever in the present trade union leadership to fight the Act. The alarm must be sounded throughout the trade union movement warning of a dangerous retreat before the Pay strike picket at GEC-Elliott ALL manual workers at the GEC-Elliott factory in Lewisham, London, struck work for half a day yesterday and mounted a strong picket on all the gates. It was the first in a series of half-day stoppages in support of a f4 pay claim.

Thirty skilled men in the plant's NCD machine • shop have been out on strike for 1l weeks for a £6 increase and a 35-hour week. Shop steward John Short said yesterday that the men would stay out 'indefinitely if necessary' meeting fac-: The Financial Times' said yesterday: 'On balance it seems likely that the TUC general council will recommend that the T&GWU should pay the £5,000 fine and will claim that this does not upset the union's overall policy of non-cooperation with the Act in general and the NIRC in particular.

The union leaders may well also decide that unions should not in the future fall foul of Sir John Donaldson, the NIRC president, and be held in contempt just because they are upholding IC policy. If, for example, the T&GWU had attended at the NIRC when Heatons ¡nuarea the lega acuon, the course of the case may well have been different.' With this treacherous shift of policy on the cards, what are the dangers for rank-and-file members?

With the leadership now preparing to make appearances in the, courts and before the CIR, reactionary employers can get on with their plans to prosecute militants.

The Journal of Commerce', the newspaper of the port employers, said yesterday in an editorial: tory last week rejected motion from the NCD machine. men for all-out action in favour of half-day strikes.

RAIL PAY DEADLOCK THERE was still no solution to the railwaymen's demand when talks broke ap between the new Employment Secretary Maurice Macmillan and,. the unions yesterday afternoon: See p. 12, ..' are now following a course in the container haulage blacking issue which will bring them intó direct conflict with the law of this country. The outcome is certain-defiance of the courts can only lead to fines and imprisonment for those best of the trade unionists, attempt to defend their jobs, they will be taken to court. no protection at all now the anti-union law is activated. While they are being picked off by the courts, the right wing will be strengthening its hold in the unions. Alliance with workers from all trade unions can the present leadership be stopped from staging a retreat; only in the ATUA are socialist policies for the working class fought for within the trade unions. Eire TUC agrees to power 'scabbing' IN A bid to end the Eire ower strike, g unions with nembers employed by the Electricity Supply Board yesterday told their members that they should be prepared to take over strikers' jobs.

After a meeting between their representatives and offcials of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the unions announced their 'take-over' plan should the strikers not ine snop stewaras in our major ports who for too long have felt that they can act outside of the law.' The meaning is clear. If militants, the If workers protest about speed-up, they'll be taken off too.

In plain words; shop stewards have Only by building the All Trades Unions return to work terday.

As Congress officials left to meet Premier Jack Lynch a statement was issued saying: 'Wherever shift workers are not at work prior to 4 p.m. other workers must be prepared to undertake work which the absent shift workers would have undertaken?

See sdooii threat p. 10,