GOVERNMENT WORKERS IN REVOLT

Union leaders representing government industrial workers will meet today to plan their next moves in achieving the 'substantial' pay increases demanded by their members.

The 194,000 workers involved have been locked in struggle with the Tories over the claim since the beginning of june.

Workers in dockyards, ordnance factories, research centres, government departments and the Houses of Parliament itself, are often extremely low paid - having to work long hours of overtime to earn a decent living wage.

The Civil Service Department's latest offer of £1.75 a week, in fact, would not even bring the lower-paid within the TUC's £20 minimum wage target.

And of late dissatisfaction has been growing amongst the rank and file with the camROYAL NAVAL YARD paign of overtime bans, working to rule and selective strike action to which their union thiefs have tried to confine them. A recent meeting of shop stewards from all over the country called unanimously for escalation of the campaign.

One demonstration of this mood came in Scotland on Monday,_when 1,200 workers at the Faslane nuclear submarine base walked out on indefinite strike with 300 other workers from armaments depots at Arrochar and Coulport.

Some 4,000 men at Rosyth dockyard have been out for the past six weeks in support of the claim.

This turn in the situation could mean a major change in the Tories' front-line defence strategy, since the only three yards servicing the key Polaris submarine are Rosyth, Faslane and Chatham, Kent.

Strikers from the Deptford naval storage establishment are picketing Chatham in an attempt to bring it out, too. li this happens the Ministry of Defence could be forced to bring the old V-bomber force back out of mothballs to cover the primary nuclear strike role at present filled by the four Polaris vessels.

On Tuesday the dispute had even more immediately embarrassing, if slightly less tactically serious, effects in London.

There maintenance workers stopped the Palace of Westminster for a day in support of the claim.

Blackleg clerical workers couldn't raise the usual-sized flag over St Stephen's lobby. So an item approximately the size of a postage stamp went The Civil Service Department, which negotiates pay with the government industrial workers' leaders, claims that average earnings in the service range from £20.87 at the lower end of the scale to over £36 a week.

But basic rates range from a mere £17.30 for unskilled workers up to only £23.35 for craftsmen. And many, many men end up taking much, much less than this to their families.

Here are just two examples collected by. Workers Press reporters of the real-life situations those fighting the claim face:

A semi-skilled worker in the middle pay range at Portsmouth dockyard, married with two children, takes home £16.50 a week for 40 hours.

His rent is £8.15 and is to rise even further when the Housing Finance Act comes into operation on October 1. Which will immediately axe to £7.35 the sum on which he is expected to feed and clothe himself and his family and get to and from work.

2 A storekeeper at Deptford one child. With an hour a day overtime he can earn £17.50, but without the extra five hours his take-home pay dropped to £12.

On the day the government's last offer-estimated to be worth about 85 per cent -came through he received notice that his rent was to rise 99p.

This is why the government industrial workers are fighting;

THE SOUTH WALES GLASCOED ROI ceN GOYT INPUSTRIAL WORKER PAY CLAII -=11 LORD PRIVY SEAL OFFERS PEANUTS ARE WE THE MONKE 6: 45.0099 Top left: workers at Deptford Royal Naval Yard on strike. Top right: Rosyth Dockyard workers lobbying parliament on July 13.