Bus crews operate overtime ban in North-east

ALL 14 depots of the Northern General Transpor lepots of the Northern General Transport Company and Associated Companies are operating ar Associated Companies are operating an overtime ban. This is the latest action of North-east busmen is the latest action of North-east busmen in support of their wage claim. - The discontent of the bus crews at the delay over their wage claim has resulted in the overtime ban being completely solid.

But with the help of trade union leaders the private bus companies continue to hod back the wage increase. The latest sell-out by busmen's leaders resulted in them calling off the national strike and agreeing to a court of enquiry.

It is now announced that the court of enquiry will begin its sitting on April 5.

In the meantime, while the companies make their profits, the busmen are getting nothing extra in their wage packets. And soon there will be a Dockers refuse to scab in bus dispute THE Saturday strike which for the fourth week running was again solidly supported by the majority of bus crews employed by private companies in Central, South-west Scotland, the Borders and Lothians, was extended to three days in Gourock, Greenock and Port Glasgow.

Five hundred drivers and conductors at the Western SMT depot at Inchgreen, Greenock, decided to extend their strike in protest against the operation of five private hire buses manned by inspectors during the Saturday stoppage.

On Monday, 70 dockers expressed their solidarity with the striking busmen. The dockers were being transferred from Greenock to Glasgow for the day.

When a bus arrived at the Dock Labour Board offices to take the dockers to Glasgow they refused to board the bus because it was being driven by a traffic regulator.

Three hundred drivers and conductors at the Scottish Omnibus depot at Bathgate also extended their strike. They refused to take the buses on the road because one man scabbed during the stoppage on Saturday.

At the Milngavie depot of W. Alexander and Sons four scab buses operated on Saturday, but only after the police had been called to the depot to intervene between the pickets and the scabs. Linwood sackings to be referred to works conference of the Amalgamated Engineering Union at Pressed Steel, Linwood, is to be referred to a works' conference.

By Monday all car workers were back in the factories, except the 327 who have been sacked.

They spent the day looking for jobs and reporting to the Labour Exchange where they were offered work as far afield as Vauxhall Motors, England.

The militant struggle begun by AEU members against the right claimed by the management to sack workers at will has temporarily ended with a typical Emerson Plan deal. The 327 men are sacked and discussions will proceed, as far as the management and trade union leaders are concerned, only to arrive at a formula for keeping those sacked outside the factory.

During the strike the managements of Pressed Steel, Rontes and BMC laid off a total of 6,675 men.

This was an obvious attempt to intimidate the strikers and was backed up by the full treatment of abuse from the press and Budget which will push the cost of living up a good deal higher.

Of course, even when the Court sits, busmen will get nothing except what they can force by militant action-and that will mean far less sacrifice if the rank and file busmen, now taking different types of action in each area, were to organise general united action.

Union officials try to avert strike FOLLOWING the stoppage on Monday of London booking clerks, over a wage claim, union officials of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association are desperately trying to avert a repeat of the stoppage next Monday.

Some clerks also came out on Saturday after Gerry Manzi, a union member, was sacked when he refused to withdraw a notice urging the men to strike on Mondays.

He was re-instated on Wednesday. - At a meeting between the leaders of both the National Union of Railwaymen and the TSSA and the Railways Board, a pay offer for white collar workers was rejected as 'unacceptable' EXTRA The Board offered to lower the age at which maximum rates are paid (29). It proposed that extra payment should be made to those halfway up the scale.

A claim for an increase had been put in after an award was given last year of 4 per cent for clerks and 5 per cent for supervisory staffs.

This increase was considered inadequate because operating staffs had been awarded a 9 per cent increase.

But whilst the union leadership refuses to accept pay offers during negotiations, which look as if they are getting nowhere, they refuse to support a militant fight for better rates of pay.

Obviously the Board is being very wary about giving any kind of increase at all. They are afraid that this may spark off a whole struggle for higher wages amongst other sections of railway workers.

From BOB SHAW television.

Pressed Steel Company itself used television time to call on the AEU men to return to work.

A return to work was recommended by the men's shop stewards with Ian McAngus, the factory AEU convenor, saying that the works conference would only deal with the sacking of 63 AEU men. Other unions had already accepted the redundancies.

No exchange But the question of the sackings cannot be left to an exchange of views between management and men.

Pressed Steel have made it clear that their policy is to operate with a pool of labour made up of workers who will be available for jobs when production is booming, only to be sacked when sales of the firm's products drop.

There are at present 100 men in the labour pool at Linwood who may be sacked if output does not increase.

There must be a continued struggle to defeat the employers' plans to make workers into little more than travelling machines, taking their homes on their backs when work is scarce. Lancashire miners fight against Manchester, on Monday, following a dispute which involved the whole pit for a week.

The strike began when 140 piece-workers on the 58's face stopped work over an alleged difference with the management on wages.

In fact much more was involved than merely the Very little can be expected from the usual channels of works conferences and negotiation procedure.

Nor can it be accepted that workers who are forced out of their jobs are sufficiently compensated by 'severance pay.

This is a scheme which is supported by the employers and right-wing trade union leaders alike and is an evasion of the real issue.

For workers over the age of 40 severance pay is to be one and half times as much as other workers.

Every car worker knows what this means. Too old at 40. With the aid of the labour pools and similar schemes it could be the older worker, the unskilled and the militants who will be the chief target of sackings.

Any appeals against this procedure will be dealt with by the setting up of labour courts.

The AEU members at Linwood have begun an important fight against the right of management to sack as they please.

Every effort should now be made to carry on the struggle to unite the factory for the reinstatement of the sacked men. A shorter working week with no loss of pay should be operated.

Airways

strikers support IN support of the strike by foremen and enginéers, 150 British United Airways loaders staged a 48-hour token strike this week.

•A decision whether Esso tanker drivers should join the strike was to be taken later in the week.

Foremen and engineers came out on strike over the firm's refusal to withdraw dismissal notices to technicians, who are demanding the same rate as men working for the British Overseas Air Corporation. 'agreement' question of wages. The miners claim that for months there has been friction with the management over broken agreements. For this reason the strike was not waged on any single clear-cut demand.

REFUSED

The following day the management refused to allow the afternoon shift day-wage men down the pit on the grounds that, according to the national agreement they had the right lock other miners out once unofficial dispute had been progress for 24 hours.

This lock-out led to a spontaneous movement of solidarity throughout the pit.

The union committee fought on the principle, 'if one daywage man is locked out, then we are all out.

At this stage in the dispute the colliery management was asked what national agreement or clause they were using to give themselves authority for locking out the day-wage men. They were forced to confess they did not know.

Since then the dispute centred around the fight to find this so-called national agreement, which has for some time been cited by both the National Coal Board and the National Union of Mineworkers officials in a number of disputes.

So far neither officials of the NCB or the NUM have been able to produce this agreement -and it is clear that if it does not exist then it is a secret one having been made behind the backs of the workers.

On Thursday morning a mass meeting outside the NUM Newsletter Reporter branch was held to try and pull out other pits in the district.

Nearly 20 pits in the Manchester, Wigan, St. Helens, and Leigh panels were visited and greement was generally reached that support would be given to rescind the 24-hour lock-out agreement (if it exists) and to strike in support of the Bradford men if moves through the District Council and at national level failed to ensure the scrubbing of the agreement.

The 58's piece-workers who had originally come out on strike felt themselves to be in complete solidarity with the locked-out day workers.

The question for the whole pit had become one of support for the locked-out men.

On Sunday, however, a mass meeting voted to return to work on the, recommendation of the branch committee.

CONTINUE

The meeting felt that the best way to continue the dispute was to fight on the district council (which meets in two weeks' time) and at national level, rather than to continue the struggle without the active support of other pits in the coalfield.

A resolution was passed at the meeting declaring that if the management were to take similar action in the future under the alleged '24-hour agreement' then the whole pit would strike once again.

Such united action in the future will come to depend more and more on the ability of leading rank and file miners This bureaucracy is represented in the Lancashire area by one official, who tried unsuccessfully, at a meeting during the dispute, to re-create the divisions between day-wage and piece workers, which had existed prior to the dispute.

The new leadership will come from the youth who came forward in the course of the dispute and led the hauliers and day-wage men.

Before a mass meeting during the dispute, a young haulier called a meeting of all haulage workers, where he insisted that if the day-wage men were to return to work before the piece-workers claim had been settled then the hauliers should stay out.

PETITION

He presented a petition which insisted that as long as the piece-workers were out the hauliers would stay out and that the strikers should demand payment of wages and the scrubbing of the 24-hour agreement.

The petition further demanded that the hauliers, who are predominantly youth, should be represented on the NUM branch committee.

The important point is that of the 54 miners who signed the petition roughly half were day-wage men. The petition was then presented not to the NCB but to Jack Glover the Bradford NUM branch secretary.

As in the case of the Young Socialists, young people in the labour movement are coming to the fore and taking on the leadership in struggles against the trade union bureaucrats and the employers. apprentice conference.

The Stalinists mustered some 20 supporters from Manchester and Belfast with the sole intention of wrecking the conference and defeating the strike call.

They tried, unsuccessfully, to take over the microphone and platform from the national officers elected at the previous conference. They then settled down to argue for a postponement of the strike ... on the grounds of inadequate preparation!

But their guns were spiked.

The apprentices themselves, taking into account the growing militancy in the adult movement around the package deal and the approaching National Committee, suggested precisely a postponement!

Did this lead to unity, as one might think? By no means.

The apprentices were arguing for a postponement in order to strengthen their strike, and to allow extra time to repair the damage done by the abortive strike of November last year. The Stalinists only argued for postponement in order to split the conference.

When asked directly if they had any objections to the plans put forward they had no answers, resorting only to slanders about last year's strike. They were challenged to stay until the vote, instead of walking out, as they did last year, but they walked out once again before the vote was taken.

These Stalinists are only a tiny minority. They must not be allowed to weaken the determination of the young engineers to fight for their demands.

All workers should support the apprentices' lobby of the National Committee in April, and above all learn the lesson from the anfi-working class tactics of the Stalinists. They have gone from adventure to sabotage.

All members of the Communist Party should break from this decaying leadership, whose support for the Soviet bureaucracy and the Labour government prevents it from carrying forward any of the traditions of Marxism and militant class struggle.

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