Ambulance drivers fight 5%

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Ambulance crews in the W. Midlands have been suspended following the imposition of sanctions in pursuit of their claim for the solution of pay anomalies dating back to reorganisation of the service in 1974.

Before reorganisation Of Shall AT THE negotiations conducted at different stations had resulted in differing wage rates and conditions.

Now W. Midland ambulance crews are asking for a general rounding up of wages and conditions to the best obtaining in the area.

The Area Health Authority claim that this would break the government's pay limit.

In a direct move to step up HA! THIS BRANCH WANTS US TO FIGHT FOR ABORTION RIGHTS! WHATEVER NEXT?

CHRIST-ITS THEY'RE EVEN A BIRD !! TAKING OVER OUR JOBS NOW! confrontation the management has deprived the W. Midlands of ambulances. The crews demands have been rejected and without waiting for the dispute to reach the stage of strike action management told ambulancemen to drop their sanctions (which included refusal to report back to base by radio and fill in report sheets) or be suspended.

The TGWU made the NEXT THING YOU KNOW THESE WOMEN WILL WANT 24 HOUR NURSERIES -THE BLOODY LOT! PLEASED TO MEET YOU O'FISHALL- I'VE WORKED OUT AN IDEA TO GET US OFF THE HOOK ON THE LOW PAY FIGHT...

surr WHAT ARE THESE HUSBANDS UP TO, LETTING THEIR LIVES CARRY ON LIKE THIS? official but NUPE did not follow suit. In last week's Socialist Challenge former NUPE full-time official Chris Adamson explains that having failed to persuade NUPE to follow the TGWU he resigned his job.

Stark contrast

This principled action stands stark contrast to that of the CHELLO-THI OFFICIA

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SOCIALIST Results of IRA bomb campaign: 64 shops wrecked in Dungannon rches defend I Determined steps have been taken by the Bakers Union in a bid to force employers to concede to their £10 pay demand.

Last weekend, in an almost unprecedented move, a recall delegate conference voted unanimously to expel: 2,000 members who have been scabbing on the dispute.

This step has challenged head-on the threats by employers to tear up the closed shop agreement if strikebreakers were expelled.

And it spells out clearly that the union is determined to break from its history of right wing collaboration with management which has left bakers' wages and conditions as some of the lowest in the country.

This stand had the immed¡ate effect of pulling out an additional 400 workers on strike in Peterborough.

Flying pickets

At the same time the union leadership has freed resources for stepping up of flying pickets on flour miils in a bid to cut the supplies that have enabled scabs to continue substantial bread There • are signs that increasing numbers of smaller bakeries are settling for the union claim in order to revert to normal production.

Meanwhile last week Bakers Union president Terry O'Neill, speaking to reporters denounced the way in which other union leaders have left their struggle isolated.

"Too many national union officers are more interested in wining and dining, in trips to. Europe and America.

"They are more interested in fancy meals than they are in getting down to looking after the interests of their members.

... some union leaders are siding with the employers, hoping we will be smashed."

(Newsline)

O'Neill went on to call on other low paid sections of workers in the textile trade and in the hospitals to take action scroungers, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by scabs, bled by leeches and sold out by their leaders.

"But notwithstanding all this, it is today the most vital potential power this planet has ever known and its historic mission of emancipating wörkers, of the world from the thraldom of the ages, is as cértain of ultimate realisation as the setting of the sun. Yours fraternally, Sam Maddox: * Supporting action Bakers have already shown their readiness and capacity to withstand police and scab Now they must. intensify demands on other sections of workers for supporting actionparticularly blacking action in the docks, which could rapidly halt supplies of grain to the flour mills, and thus put a stop LAC C to the most profitable aspect of the employers' operation.

in every ared TGWU branches and stewards' committees in particular should be pressed to take up this fight and to demand their leadership and road transport and docks' stewards organise immediate and total blacking of grain and flour shipments until the £10 pay claim is conceded in full, without strings, to the satisfaction of the bakers' union.

The example of the bakers' struggle must also be taken into the fight in NUPE and other public sector unions on the supposed "Low Pay" campaign.

Fisher's hope

'Left' demagogue Alan Fisher and his less-left cronies are sitting on their hands on a pay claim for over 1 million st Maddo: local authority manual workers while a mere 25,000 Bakers carry forward the fight against Phase 4.

Fisher's hope is that he can postpone action until after the bakers' action is over-and thus take the steam out of the f60, 45-hour week claim for his own members.

Councils of action

Public sector workers must fight this sell-out and discuss ways of linking up alongside bakers and other sections in the struggle against wage control.

This should include the setting up of local councils of action, drawing delegates from all local labour movement organisations and bodies, with the aim of spreading and strengthening the struggle against government pay policy and the TUC bureaucrats whose actions now tacitly defend it. substantially bigger than the Plans to shut down the Times, Sunday Times and Literary and Education Supplements were well advanced as we went to press.

The NGA refused to enter into negotiations with the Times management 'under duress' but have left their members rudderless.

Other print unions have been talking hard and conceding ground fast. But nothing looked likely to stall off the management lock out of close on 4,000 workers-and no strategy for fighting this has been put forward by any of the chapels concerned.

If Times Newspapers do shut then it is likely to be a long time before they reopen.

Jake Ecclestone The employers are trying in one bound to jump over the top of the technology introduced into provincial newspapers-not by adopting more advanced technology, but by adopting a more complete destruction of jobs.

Times Newspapers demanding 'single stroke keyboarding' in which the journalists or advertising staff type their stories directly into the computer.

Although therefore the Times proposals for job cutting are : 10% overall, their effect in the NGA compositors would be to axe more than 50% of the workforce.

The NGA are slower to respond | to the management carrot of massive redundancy payments simply because for them this is the ultimate British troops from Ireland ing becomes widespread the composing room becomes small back-up service, dealing with copy which comes into the building from outside sources only. The NGA will have nothing left to sell.

Programme to defeat the lockout:

*Occupy Times buildings: throw out management. Produce a labour movement throughout Fleet Street. Strikes *Demand work sharing on full pay-no loss of jobs.

*Open the books of Times Newspapers to elected committees of trade unionists.

*Demand nationalisation of the Times under workers control with no compensation for Lord Thomson and other owners.

The unions are now divided and in retreat. Nowhere has a single call for principled opposition been raised.

This does not mean that the unions collapse at once. Journalists on the Times have declared themselves behind the NUJ's inadequate policy of not negotiating on direct input (another name for single keyboarding) until the NGA has agreed to sell out their own jobs.

But Jake Ecclestone, Times FoC and the nearest thing Fleet Street has to a militant in the NUJ, is contaminated with compromise and 'reasonable' deals.

At the union's annual conference this year, discussing new technology, it was Ecclestone who spoke for the National Executive, against a call for workers control of the means of production.

Now the unions are faced with precisely that choice. The only single weapon there is against a management lock-out is to occupy the plant and to print a labour movement paper under. the direct controi of the workforce.

Only an immediate occupation of the Times, with management excluded from the building, can begin to show the way forward for Times workers. The question is not so much new fangled technology as old fashioned attacks by the employers.

Once in occupation Times workers must put forward a programme challenging management's right to destroy their jobs and leading to the expropriation of the newspapers from Lord Thomson and his ilk.

----- pull-quotes -----

Once single stroke keyboard- Pows