DUSTMEN FIGHT

TrOOpS allowance Italian strikes mobilize poorest

Mersey

dockers may boycott containers LIVERPOOL dockers are to boycott a new container service to the United States today unless agreement is reached on the port wages deal.

Shop stewards announced this decision on Sunday after considering the employers' latest pay offer.

They are demanding an increase in their basic rate from £l1 Is. 8d. to £16.

So far the employers have only offered £16 provided a number of bonus items are consolidated into the flat rate.

The threatened container service is run by Sealand Incorporated, and was due to use the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board Terminal berth in Liverpool.

London dockers are also refusing to work new container schemes without agreement on wages.

The £2 million container berth of Overseas Containers and Associated Container Transportation, at Tilbury, remains closed. IF THE STINK from rotting refuse is beginning to get up the noses of people in high places, including some trade union leaders, then they are at least getting a hint of the conditions some workers are having to put up with every working hour.

They may also be getting an insight into just how important these so-called TAGWU really are. ENO TOTS DUSTMENY ' non - essential ' workers 'Non-essential' because this is the term often used * MEANS- TABASIC to excuse the low wages of ~11 amnlarad her all wurkers empivyeu local authorities, the implication being that they are second-rate employees, For carrying out really essential services in local communities, council workers have been fobbed off time after time with a pittance which, they are told, is all that can be allowed under the government's incomes policy.

"The only way you can get more is to accept a productivity deal, bleat the employers.

On this basis large numbers of very well-paid consultants have been wandering round local authorities timing road sweepers, cleaners, electricians, gravediggers, office workers, sewermen-and dustmen.

Effort

Men and women on the boroughs have been told they can earn a 335 per cent bonus, 'with no extra effort'.

But practice, the workers involved are finding what a fraud these schemes are. While output goes up two, three and tourtold, the incentive - bonus swindle keeps wages down to a minimum.

At the same time, departments are being cut down under 'natural wastage' systems.

But put the responsibility for these schemes sauarelv where it belongs.

All managers in local authorities did not just happen on the same scheme at the same time.

It was the Prices and Incomes Board, set up and operated by the Labour government, which in 1967 produced its report — 'The Pay and Conditions of Manual Workers in Local Authorities, the National Health Service, Gas and Water Supply' Scene It was this document that set the scene for 1,100,000 manual workers in the four industries concerned (gas Zional Health 250,000, National local authorities 749,000 — 600,000 of the total are women).

The 80-page report recommended work-study for everyone, incentive payment through bonus schemes; but on page 48 it The systems of payment to be considered should include not only incentive bonus schemes THE ITALIAN strike wave has now roused the most oppressed sections of the working class to The 100,000 inhabitants of Rome's 'shanty town' have organized themselves into a single movement to fight against their appalling housing conditions.

Many of Rome's three million population live in huts and sheds improvized out of packing cases, corrugated scrap iron, rough blocks of stone and the remains of classical Roman ruins.

While many slum • and shanty dwellers are already occupying empty blocks in the centre of Rome, a petltion signed by 20,000 has been sent to the presiding officer of the Chamber of Deputies.

The first sentence makes its aim clear:

'We who are living in huts, in caves, under the arches of the aqueducts, intend with this petition to NAMPAY RATE FLASHBACK TO FEBRUARY: Lambeth dustmen's fight to defend 'totting' was a fight against productivity.

in which payment varies directly with performance but also Measured-Day Work and productivity agreements in which increased pay is related to an acceptance of different working methods' Measured-Day Work is the vicious speed-up system over which struggles are taking place daily throughout the car industry.

Proposals

Also recommended was the use of job-evaluation-to end demarcation between levels of skill and to secure *... greater flexibility of movement between the present occupational groupings.

It is now becoming clear that when this "short-term" report talked of and longterm' schemes that the short-term proposals mean a few advantages to the workers involved to get them to accept the new methods, while the long-term schemes mean speed-up, and running down the departments along with an absolute freeze on wages, leading to full operation of MDW eventually.

Since this agreement came out, any aspiring work-study lowing council workmen round with a stopwatch.

While these people knock huge salaries for their 'study work', while contractors queue up for more lucrative work, always available from the councils, and while investors can collect 7,8 and per cent rake-off from council borrowing, the workers on the job are given 101 reasons why their work draw the attention of public opinion to the situation in which we live and protest against the Rome politicians who have systematically avoided taking our problems into consideration, limiting themselves to empty promises.' Miracle This is the grim reality Italy's 'economic miracle'.

Italian capitalism's cheap exports and low imports rest on conditions such as theseright in the heart of Rome.

The 100,000 shanty dwellers of Rome now begin to speak politically for the first time, adding their voice the millions of industrial, agricultural and clerical workers already in action against the employers and the governThis newly forged unity will be frustrated without revolutionary leadership. The most urgent task is now the fight for such a leadership on the basis of the programme of the Fourth International. MADE RATANHY TORE 40.1 does not warrant an increase.

On top of this, the government recently announced that:

"The building industry will be allowed in the £100 million a year market for work awarded at present without competition by local authorities to their direct labour departments' ('The Times' Business News. July 29,1969)

Che report added:

'The freedom of the departments from competition and often from adelines has been ta source of accounting discipconstant criticism by building contractors and the Conservatives!

Private

In other words, the Labour government is paving the way the Tories all services and amenities back to private tender and capitalist 'enterprise'.

union leaders, too, have been playing their part . promoting productivity The National Union Public Employees, in particular, been selling workstudy to its members.

Plan Future' and 'NUPE Sets the Trend', headlined NUPE's journal in two-ince high letters whences examined original Prices and Incomes Board Report.

recent months London's firemen, GLC electricians and Lambeth dustmen action against productivity schemes and for a basic increase wages. (How we increase productivity?' asked one poster 'Light our own fires?'.)

Labour government's attacks on all workers in the service industry must be fought.

dustmen's recognition fought for. all lower-paid this is a battle to be workers against the incomes policy is 100 per cent correct.

All workers must unite to: • Smash the government's Throw out the PIB and its productivity swindle.

Oppose any attempts to put services into the hands of Tory profiteers.

Fight for a £20 minimum wage. • Campaign for a proper council service to tenants and ratepayers run by well-paid Demand direct workers' control of local authorities. • Prepare for a fight in the unions to remove officials who have sold out time after time.

Replace leaders with others dedicated to revolutionary socialist policies.

Such a leadership is provided in the development of the All Trades Unions Alliance.

TWENTY-FIVE electricians sacked by contractors Matthew Hall at the Watney Mann brewery site, Isleworth, Middlesex, on Friday for alleged industrial misconduct, called on Monday for union support to oppose the sackings.

The sackings follow the electricians' rejection of bonus scheme under which they claim to have been underpaid by some £200 a head.

The electricians were still Sco C.W.S. breaks fire rules THE SCOTTISH Co-operative Wholesale Society was fined the maximum penalty of £300 at Glasgow Sherriff Court on October 1 for contravening the fire protection clause of the Factories Act.

A factory inspector said that on visiting premises occupied by the SCWS on August 14 he found that one of the fire exit doors would not open.

He reported that it took two joiners 15 minutes to release the door fastening, which appeared to have jammed due to lack of maintenance.

The building was a sevenstorey furniture warehouse in Glasgow which also housed a radio and television repair workshop and a watch and clock repair workshop.

About 350 people were employed on the premises.

Exit

The watch and clock repair employees and 50 other workers would have needed to use the jammed emergency exit in case of fire.

In his annual report, published on the same day as the court prosecution of the SCWS, HM Inspector of Factories stated that the courts have not always supported efforts by the factory inspectorate to ensure that tragedies like Glasgow's James Watt Street fire did not occur elseThis fire broke out last November in a furniture warehouse where fire exit doors were locked and windows shielded with iron bars.

22 people were burned alive.

The jury found that the deaths were due to the fault and negligence of the firm.

Register

Arising from the inquiry several recommendations were made, including the compilation of a register of factories found to be in serious breach of statutory fire regulations.

Other points made were: bars on the windows of tactories be prohibited; there should be control of the storWorkers' Press correspondent on the site on Monday morning, but were expecting to be ejected by police.

As well as sacking the electricians, the company also made four shop stewards redundant, leaving only the plumbers' steward on the site.

The workers claim that & pipe-fitter's mate, made redundant on Friday, has already been replaced by Airport retreats THE DECISION made last week by 10,000 Transport and General Workers' Union (T&GWU) members to hold a one-day strike today has forced the British Airports Authority to delay the start of work by the ground handling company. General Aviation Services.

The men fear that the new company's operations will lead to redundancies.

tish Mickle Shaw age and use of foam plastics and other inflammable materials.

There have been meetings and discussions in various local and national government departments, but the recommendations do not appear to have been put into effect.

Iron bars remain at many warehouse windows, insufficient precautions are taken in the storing and handling of inflammable materials and the lack of adequate factory inspection remains. Workers' Press reporter The Authority said work by the company would not begin while negotiations are in progress.

Meeting

The ground handling, staff are meeting today to decide on future action.

The Department of Employment and Productivity nas already intervened to see how serious the situation Its intervention to aid the introduction of contract work must be seen as part of the Labour government's strategy to de union organizati do in trade union organization every industry.