Civil servants' chiefs to decide next action

JANUARY

FIGURE AT £564.47 -14 DAYS LEFT WE NOW have just 14 days to raise £1,185.53 to complete our target for January-this gives us approximately £85 to collect each day between now and the end of the month. We know you will do everything possible to help us reach our finat total.

Everywhere sections of workers, foom civil servants to gasmen and carworkers, are joining the fight for wages. More and more a head-on clash is Inevitable against the government's slate pay laws.

preparing this stage of the battle. Our paper will continue to be in the forefront of the struggle against the Tories.

Let's therefore make a great effort for our Fund this month. Try and raise over our target of £1,750. Push ahead and see if we can reach a record amount. Post your donations immediately January Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London, sw4 70G Spate of new gas THOUSANDS of Scottish gasworkers yesterday answered Phase II of the Tories' state pay laws with a 24-hour strike in support of their wage claim.

Gas pressure was reduced throughout central Scotland as a reported 3,000 men staged a walk-out. strikers a spokesman at the Glasgow headquarters: 'We have had reports in from all over Scotland and we believe it an almost 100-per-cent stoppage?

An overtime ban is expected to follow yesterday's strike which took place despite warnings from official union leaders.

More than 100 of the Scottish strikers also demonstrated outside the Glasgow headquarters of the Scottish Gas Board.

They were joined by 500 gas workers in Hull, Yorkshire, who also struck for the day, halting conversion work on North Sea Gas as a result.

In the London area, 500 gasworkers at East Greenwich and another 250 at Croydon have decided to continue their overtime ban and work-to-rule.

On Tuesday the leadership of the General and Municipal Workers' Union called threatened ban on overtime and co-operation on the basis of resumed pay talks yesterday with the Gas Council.

The 47,000 gasworkers' basic rates range from just £19.10 for a labourer to £22.87 for a craftsman.

Many men point out that these figures compared with a guaranteed £4.31 more for an electricity labourer and £6.51 for an electricity craftsman.

The official claim is for rises The official claim is for of between £2.65 and £3. between £2.65 and £3. Hosiery workers hear jobs decision

PHILIP

ASIAN WORKERS Loughborough mills Mansfield Hosiery company will know today if ley have been given jobs trainee Knitters.

The national executive of the association began a two-day meeting in London yesterday.

Members have already demanded that the association consider action, including stoppages, to force higher wages.

On Tuesday night about 4,000 civil servants marched to Downing Street chanting anti-Tory slogans. They called for selective strike action.

At a rally at Central Halls, the association's president, Mr Ken Lever, said:

'We are fed up with members moonlighting at dog tracks and washing up at Lyons. We are fed up with snide remarks by newspaper editors and like of a tea-drinking bureaucracy. We have had enough now. We want a proper pay rise The cheering meeting passed a resolution "condemning the present government freeze on earnings, imposed without restraint being effectively applied to prices, rents, dividends and unearned income'.

In particular it took 'the gravest view of any intererence with agreed principles of pay determination within i the public sector implicit in the freeze legislation?

At Downing Street a deputation was allowed through the barricades to present the resolution to one of Heath's aides.

Angry civil servants crowded the barricades calling 'Heath Out' and "More Pay'.

Municipal Work ers' Union yesterday agreed to recommend that Gerry Caughey, victimized leader of the 1970 Pilkington strike, be admitted to its general branch in Liverpool.

Agreement was reached following a 20-minute hearing in the National Industrial Relations Court to which Caughey had complained of an unfair industrial practice by Although working, elsewhere, Caughey is to apply for reemployment at Pilkington's Triplex Glass works where' he was once convenor.

He described the agreement reached with the G&MWU as 'a step forward' yesterday afternoon.

It's a gain for a number of men sacked by Pilkington's who are still without jobs,' he claimed.

The agreement reached after more than two hours' private discussion out of court is that Walter Aldritt, G&MWU Liverpool, North Wales and Irish regional secretary, will recomA selection panel set up at the end of a ten-week strike by Asian workers sent its report to management yesterday.

During the strike, over 40 non-Asian workers were taken on as trainee knitters, positions which Asian workers had found impossible to obtain over a ten-year period.

The panel was set up to decide on applications for the jobs EPSA-PROTESTRALLYI mend that his regional committee accept Caughey as a member of the No 100 branch.

It is conditional on Caughey being a member of no more than one other union and on that union's acceptance of the dual membership situation.

Reference is also made in the agreement to the acceptance by both parties of rule 43 of the G&MWU which states that members shall assist their fellow unionists in obtaining suitable employment.

Caughey's complaint of unfair industrial practice by the union excluding him has been adjourned indefinitely, but David including A Department of Employment training officer observed the selection process, which lasted ten days.

Since their return the Asian have had to contend with a handful of organized racialists in the mill-part of the -FARIS CDURT MOD THE Turner Samuel, ỌC, yesterday reserved on his behalf the right to go back to the court at a later date.

In welcoming the settlement, Sir John Donaldson, NIRC President, took the opportunity to boost the court's stance as a conciliator.

It had helped to 'crystallize the parties' minds', in this case, he said.

It is believed that the G&MWU has dropped previous insistance that Caughey should never hold any position in the union again if readmitted as a member.

But the union is also understood to have backtracked on a tentative offer that it fight directly for Caughey's re-employment at Triplex.

Yesterday's proceedings were heard before Sir John Donaldson and lay judges H. Briggs, CBE and F. J. Fielding, a tormer director of the Engineering Employers' Federation.

Caughey made his complaint under Section 65 of the Industrial Relations Act. This lays down guidelines for the conduct of organizations of workers' into which category G&MWU falls as an unregistered union.

To make out his case, Caughey vould have had to prove 'arbitrary and unreasonable discrimination' by the union.

giant Nottingham Manufacturing Extreme right-wing groups from the Leicester area have tried to ensure that no unity was established between Asian and English workers.

But strikers' leaders say the racialists have been reduced to a small minority and that the vast proportion of English workers are willing to unite with them.

CIVIL & PUBLIC

SERVICES ASSOCIATION Above: Some of the civil servants who demonstratı on Tuesday night at their Central Halls meeting. Left: the union leaders the platform.