PEARCE 'FENCE-SITTING'

servants back Bootle sparks FROM PHILIP WADE IN LIVERPOOL ELECTRICIANS on trike for more than a year a Bootle Inland Revenue site, Liverpool, have been promised support by a servants' union.

The Society of Civil Servants has told them that if the £20m site is completed without the 17 electricians then they will instruct their members not to work in the building.

The men, all members of the electricians' union, the EPTU, are demanding £l an hour as a minimum wage, the right to negotiate at site level, an end to da point of the penal clauses contained in blacklisting and the withdrawal the Joint Industry Board agreeIn fact in March strike leader John Byrne was disciplined under JIB rule No. 21. The penalty was suspension of all JIB benefits for six months on his return to work.

The strike began in • February 1971 and initially lasted for 25 weeks, the men returning in July on the basis of talks on the pay claim.

In the following September they were all sacked. But after a three-week total stoppage on the site they were reinstated.

The men struck again on October 25 last year after their employers, contractors James Scott Lee Beesley, refused to listen to their claim.

"The TIB is a wage-freezing body' Mr Byrne told me. 'But they'll never complete this site without us.

'There are no scabs working there and the site is blacked by electricians throughout Merseyside.

'We insist on our rights to negotiate at plant level like the 'At the moment their [building workers] bonus often amounts to more than our basic wage," he added.

Although the government is backing the employers in trying to intimidate us with the penal clauses it hasn't worked.' The strike committee has called a demonstration in Bootle in support of the struggle on June 9. It is being backed by Liverpool Trades Council.

COLIN WELLAND, the awardZ Cars actor, is to host a new aclor. Is to rost a new BBC 2 weekly sports programme -'Sport Two'.

The programme will go out every Friday from June 2 and will aim at a reflective and in-depth approach to major sport topics, film profiles on sports events and personalities and bigname interviews.

Welland (37), is a former rugby league professional and Lancashire league cricketer.

LAITENIEWIS CORRESPONDENT BY OUR OWN LORD PEARCE'S report on the acceptability of the Toty terms for a settlement in Rhodesia is described as a 'fence-sitter' Although he finds that settlement terms are not Containers row: Dockers give 28 days' strike notice Docks officer Tim O'Leary announcing yesterday's strike decision Hogarth warns against strikes DELEGATES at the National Union of Seamen's conference in Folkestone yesterday accepted a new pay offer by 54 votes to 23.

The new rates give foreignextra £8.70 a monse bringing average monthly "earnings WEATHER EASTERN England and South East Scotland will be nostly cloudy with thundery show ers or periods of rain. North anc Scotland will be dry with sunny spells. The remainder of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and West England will have thundery showers and sunny spells.

Outlook for Saturday and Sunav: Some rain at times. sunny eriods. Dry in North Scotland. Temperatures normal or rather above.

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Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU). 180b Clapham High Street, London, SWS 7UG. acceptable leaves the sell-out b 'intimidatic It will to the people of as a whole, he door open for a references to in' of the African be for Foreign Homer ta decide Doesber Sir Alec Douglas whether £93.90, including overtime a 66-hour week.

The basic weekly wage, after five years' service will now be £21.98 for a seven-day week, without overtime.

Recommending acceptance of the increase, NUS general secretary William Hogarth warned against strike action:

'Do we want to bring ourselves down, as I say the miners did, to the gutter to hold the whole country to ransom? I will be the last to want to take that action. I would rather resign first.' Seamen's wage demands for 1973-1974 ranged from 'substantial increases' to a demand for a minimum of £120 a month. More annual leave and a shorter working week were also demanded.

Key debate today will be on the union's decision to register under the Industrial Relations Opening the conference on Wednesday, NUS chairman Bill Brankley asked delegates not to allow the argument 'to sink' to a level where shallow prejudice replaces considered and sober opinion.

MANY customers of the British Steel Corporation are likely to pay more when BSC adopts Common Market pricing system from January 1 next year, the Corporation stated yesterday.

From January 1, 1973,, BSC adopts the European Coal and Steel Community system, which differs substantially from the this qualification enables him to recommend to parliament that Rhodesia should be given legal independence.

The report was handed to Home yesterday and a statement in parliament is expected before the Whitsun recess. means strike action—to the ployers in 28 days' time.' Although they need only give seven days' notice of strike action, they wanted to make sure that they would not be accused of irregular practice, and so were giving 28 days' notice.

The strike decision referred to all dock workers, both inside and outside the 1947 dock labour scheme.

The employers had offered to raise fall-back pay—the minimum a man can receive when he reports for work when none is available-from £20 a week to £22.

But the men wanted it raised to average earnings. This could be in the region of £40, O'Leary claimed.

At the moment some 1,000 dockers depend on fall-back, but the figures would be on the way to 2,000 shortly.

The employers had said they were unable to take any decision on the containerization issue because it was not within their competence.

O'Leary said he had told delegates to work in accordance with agreements in normal operation until the strike.

Union leaders would 'talk to anyone', he said, in an attempt to get a settlement before the strike. 'We will bring moral persuasion to bear'.