Local wage deals threat to builders

BUILDING union leaders in Scotland have signed deals with three leading employers which fall far short of the claim and represent a real retreat.

Yesterday the Scottish region action committee bureaucratically, decided to send thousands back to work on the basis of only a £25 basic wage and no cut in berdeen opposec the deal though a packed meeting i allowed. The deal affects workers three firms Peter Cameron, Betts and Dey.

In fact Cameron workers were offered a similar deal at the beginning of the dispute and only came out on strike two weeks ago when a rapid escalation of strikes took place.

Aberdeen strike committee member Bill Johnstone said: 'The officials refused a vote because they knew it would have been lost. The fight must go on and a national strike called.' In Dundee it was the same story, yesterday, with the Communist Party leading the betrayal. over 1.500 workers were told Over 1,500 workers were told bp almost to a man, to accept the same deals.

CP speakers in Dundee manoeuvred hard to get the vote through. They claimed the rest of Scotland had accepted when in fact the meetings were still taking place.

Jacky Gordon, CP chairman of the action committee recommended acteolalce Many thought the vote went against but to cries of 'never' and out he closed the meeting.

The bulding workers' claim for £30 and a 35-hour week is now in great danger of betrayal. National leaders in London are also preparing to sign company agreements and send the men back to work.

From the tenor of the Scottish deals it is clear they • will fall far short of the claim.

Taken with the decision last week not to call an all-out national strike, the danger is now that the 150,000 building workers on strike could be further split up and confused.

When separate company agreements are signed, the men will undoubtedlv return to work, while at the same time others are coming out on strike.

This was the case in the recent Manchester engineering sit-ins for higher wages and a shorter working week. As result, little unity prevailed and 01-622 7029 no major concessions from the employers.

And in the end the engineering union leaders last week accepted a two-year wages deal without any move to a 35-hour As was seen yesterday Scotland, the betrayal is taking place only with the help of the The 'Morning Star' yesterday headlined the news of company deals as a "breakthrough'. At the same time they gave a fullpage interview to UCATT general secretary George Smith who has already tried once to sink the claim.

Smith made it clear he accepted company agreements, so long as they were 'reasonably related' to the claim, which is vague enough to be dangerous.

He spent several paragraphs trying to explain away UCATT's rejection of the recent national offer which at one stage they were prepared to recommend for acceptance.

Smith omits one vital meeting from his explanation, the meeting of the trade union side of the NJC on August 2 which discussed the deal worked out by the ad hoc committee of employers and union officials the week before.

At the end of it, leaders of all four unions unanimously agreed to recommend acceptance of the deal so that it could be ratified the following Tuesday at a full meeting with employers at the As is now known, immediate only proposed basic of £23 and also contained relation to guaranteed earnings.

Smith was unable to swing the deal because the rank and immediately escalated the strike throughout the country, demanding no sell-out.

On the Tuesday last the deal was to be ratified, 7,000 building workers marched through London to find that UCATT's government pledged to nationalize the building industrv under workers building industry under Postscript: In Glasgow, 5,000 building workers voted for an all-out national strike, after a massive demonstration through the city yesterday.

CP steward Eammon Monaghan tried to tell the meeting which followed: 'I think that the national leadership is now sincerely prepared to give leadership' But this convinced no one. The meeting had earlier howled down UCATT official Dan Crawford when he tried to tell local authority workers to go back.

And in the end the floor of the meeting forced the chairman to put the national strike motion and it received a unanimous and enthusiastic vote.

The threat of office staff doing the jobs of building workers is being vigorously countered by the Preston building workers' strike committee.

Mike Gallagher, one of the strike committee, told a mass meeting yesterday: 'If Preston Council let office staff do our jobs then Preston Council will stop forthwith.

'We will allow two stands for Preston Guild to go up, one for the children and one for the pensioners, if they want it, but otherwise there will be nothing else.' Edward Heath travels to Preston on Monday.

The building workers and as many dockers as possible are arranging a march and picket which will start at 10.30 a.m. at the underpass by Shepherd's Market Street site in the middle of Preston. AUGUST FUND £726.60 — 13 DAYS TO EN OF MONTH £57.60 arrived yesterday making our total now £726.60. It still Is a slow, uphill fight. This weekend we must all go into action with a big drive to push this figure right up.

At a time when the treachery of the union leaders seriously weakens and splits the dockers, our paper stands more firmly than ever behind those in the