Asking Heath to freeze increases Scottish rent rebels make pleas to the Tories

Casual labour taken on at Sheerness meat port The move with fears labour due men taking scheme.

If definite THE CENTRAL London branch of the National Union of Journalists yesterday passed a resolution which 'totally rejects the principle of wage freezing and wage restraint.

It declares its specific opposition to both the £2 wage increase limit proposed by Edward Heath and the £3.38 alternative proposed by the TUC Economic Committee. We therefore call for the immediate breaking-off of the talks between the TUC, the CBI and the government • .• 'We further endorse the stand taken by Ray Buckton, leader of the locomen's union ASLEF at last week's Labour Party conference, where he called for the talks to be broken off and said the job of the TUC was not to talk with the Tory government but to campaign for its removal.? LONDON DOCKERS yesterday acted swiftly over plans to take on casual labour at the Medway port of Sheerness. Sheerness has been granted provisional authority to recruit 50 casuals — 'supplementary' dockers under the National Dock Labour Scheme —following the transfer of part of London's meat traffic to the port.

is also connected of a shortage of to the number of voluntary severance Jones - Aldington authority for the MERSEYSIDE dockers meet today to decide whether to lift the blacking on Heatons Transport.

The St Helens haulage firm has threatened National Industrial Relations Court action if the dockers' action continues.

It was Heatons who first took the Transport and General Workers' Union to the NIRC over the blacking in Liverpool. The union was eventually fined . €55,000 and held responsible for the actions of its shop stewards.

On Monday Heatons attempted a test run to Liverpool docks to see if the blacking was still in force. And despite prolonged negotiations with stewards on the question, dockers turned the lorry away.

The company has •several options open to them under the Industrial Relations Act and could, if they want, be in London at the NIRC as early as Thursday morning.

186a Sa Clapham High Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), 180b Clapham High Street, London, ALTHOUGH have reaffirme the rises. In 1 Heath or the BY AN INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT recruitment is granted by the Dock Labour Board, dockers fear not only that it will be the thin end of the wedge for a further loss of jobs from London, but that the new men's casual status could undermine their existing rights and conditions.

The first effects of this would be felt by the 320 registered dockers at Sheerness. London's solidarity would also soon be hit, however.

Men on the supplementary register are paid the same as permanent dockers, but they have no security of employThey can be given seven days' notice of the sack at any time by the Board.

Their individual himself get rid of same terms.

However long they remain in their jobs they build up no right to redundancy payments.

The threat by the New Zealand Meat Producers' Board to pull its 170,000-ton-a-year traffic out of London altogether has already been used as a direct spur to productivity on London docks.

Last week the employers were able to announce an increase from 44 to 55 tons per gang shift in the rate of throughput at the meat berths.

But Richard Gardiner - Hill, managing director of stevedores Scruttons Maltby and a member of the Jones-Aldington committee, made clear that the employers are still not satisfied. It was essential the upward trend continued, he said.

The Producers' Board threat is carefully calculated to help the employers' strategy here.

They have not said they to shift out of London pletely, which could either voke showdown with employer can them on the want comprothe 23 Scottish Labour-co ntroll id councils defying rent increases ¡ can persuade the Tories to 'freeze' d their position, they still fe el the with Tory Prime Minister Edward act they plan to seek a me eting land, Gordon Campbell to say just that. Secretary of State for Scot dockers or force down the of throughput.

No set tonnages will go to any port, the producers say. Meat will be sent where the best and most economical service is offered.

In the background lurks the threat that London may lose the lot and with it about 2,000 jobs.

Meanwhile the powerful Vestey family, which holds a powerful position in the New Zealand Meat Producers' Board, is again on the attack on another front.

It has threatened that unless dockers lift their picket of its Midland Cold Storage subsidiary by Friday it will sack 30 handlers and staft.

Jack Jones, T&GWU secretary, has said the picketing is unauthorized by the union. The existing staff at the depot are T&GWU members.

At the same time the 23 are seeking support from the national leadership of the Labour Party, the Scottish TUC and the TUC.

Cll Richard Dynes, leader of the Labour-controlled Glasgow Corporation, said after a meeting on Monday that the councils were most concerned about the effect of the rent increases.

This was even more the case, he added, when the Prime Minister had said there had to be a £2 limit on wage and salary increases and that price rises should be restricted to 5 per cent.

'Yet, said Cilr Dynes, 'at one stroke, rents in Glasgow would under the Act go up by somewhere in the region of 40 per cent. It doesn't tie up with government policy!

But the leadership of the 23 councils who between them represent over 400,000 council tenants, left the door open for eventual capitulation by disclosing they would not offer the Tories any real resistance if things came to a head.

Said Cllr Dynes: "There is a very strong demand that this legislation should be frozen until the outcome of talks between the government and the TUC are finished' Then he revealed that none of the Labour leaders contemplated an all-out fight against the Tories when he said: If the Secretary of State wants the Act implemented he can do it himAs far as he could see it, the Tories would eventually send in government officials who would force town hall staff to put up the rents. And that would be the end of that.

In that case, the opposition by the 23 councils is nothing more than a mere token gesture. The question is not to let the Tories 'do their own dirty work', but to make sure the Tories are not in a position to do any work at all.

The central question facing Scottish and all other tenants is the task of forcing the Tories to resign through the mobilization of the whole working class and electing a Labour government pledged to socialist policies and the repeal of the Act.

Camden council in north London meets tonight to decide whether to continue its non-implementation policy following concessions from the g overnment on the operation of the 'fair rents'