DOCKERS CALL FOR STRIKE AGAINST TORY PAY LAW

Workers Press no. 928, 23 November 1972 · scan page 2

Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.

Abour CELEBRATE OF WORKERS PRESS BUILD THE REVOLUTIO SUNDAY DECEMBER Everyman TI LIVERPOOL Speakers:

(SLL Central JOHN HOWE (Deputy AUEW convenor, CONNIE FAHEY (Wilmslow tenants' leader) ALAN PEERS (Young Socialists' national committi (Union and tenant speakers in a pe Details of other provincial meetings her provincial meetings p.12 :NEW:

:FILM:

THREE PRESS Showing the developments and gains since the issue • September 25.1969 sor see BRITAIN'S bij ¡gest union faces a call for official strike the Tories' pay control law this mornaction against docks stewards will urge Jack Jones, ing. Liverpool General Workers' Union secretary, to Transport and strike of dockers and all the union's call a national other members hit by the law Liverpool's 10,000 dockers have already been told by their employers that a pay and hours deal, due to come in at the end of this week, is to be at least held up.

Tomorrow port employers in London's enclosed docks will tell their 15,000 men that there is no question of their annual pay review being implemented in time on January 1 (see p. 11).

London riverside dockers will get the same message next week, as will lightermen and tallyclerks at a meeting yet to be fixed.

The call for official action came from a meeting of the Merseyside port shop stewards' committee yesterday morning, which decided to call a mass meeting of all dockers on Sunday to discuss the outcome of today's meeting with Jones.

Some stewards wanted to reimpose from next Monday a black on the Seaforth container and bulk cargo terminal, operated in May this year in support of their pay and hours demands.

A majority feeling, however, was in support of the successful stewards' executive recommendation.

The black went on a : Seaforth after a shop stewards meeting on May 3. All new containers were turned away terminal.

A mass meeting of dockers the following Sunday endorsed demands which, it was understood, would have to be met before the black could be lifted.

The demands were: • An increase in the basic rate. • A 35-hour week. • A week's extra holiday. • Better sick-pay. • Fall-back pay at average ings for the whole port. • Stuffing and stripping of containers to be dockers' work.

A few days later the stewards lifted the black in return for an agreement in principle that the 35-hour week would be introduced in the last quarter of 1972.

But last week shop stewards and union officials were told that implementation of a firm agreement from November 25 was out of the question because of the Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill.

And the employers also made clear that even at the end of the present law, they would be guided in negotiations by whatTories untroduced legislation the TER THAT HE DISARM?

ION 1 PE!

ON.

Old people and trade led a three-pronged demonstration in Londo day. • See p.12. unionists pensions n yester-