Defeat at Ink Firm

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Wing plant bargaining, attempts are being made to transfer all negotiations to national level.

A meeting of the BL Cars Joint Negotiating Committee (LCJNC) was held last Thursday. -at which all participants were sworn to secrecy.

Full advantage

At it, the company took full advantage of the willingness of the right wing and Communist Party to accept a deal at any price, and made a modified offer.

This includes an offer to pay the nationally agreed premium rates (for overtime and night shift) from February 1, 1979.

Yet the company are obligated to pay these rates from November 1, 1978 quite irrespective of the pay review!

They also say they will pay 5% increase on the basic rate, The new grading structure involves the acceptance of a rigid corporate wage set-up which would hamstring individual plants in the future, and put negotiations into the hands of national officials.

But the LCJNC voted 26-1 to meet again this Wednesday and receive the same proposals in written form.

This decision flatly contradicts existing Combine Committee policy, and has effectively ended plant-level negotiations.

are clear This will please the Longbridge convenor, Stalinist Derek Robinson, who , has long advocated corporate bargaining.

The right wing and the CP clearly determined to avoid The pattern suggests that those chapels which argued most strongly for strike action are now the chapels further endorsement.

The whole miserable sell-out will then be put to a ballot of the entire BL cars workforce.

This plot must be fought. Plant bargaining must be defended.

Strike The plant claims now submitted must be answered by the company-and separated from the "parity" plan and premium rate increases.

If there is no improvement on the 5% action must be taken. The company's common offer to all BL car plants must be answered by common strike action to defeat Phase 4 and defend jobs and conditions. pay rises have not been shifted by the sanctions.

Only an all out strike with a call to printers for support is likely to shift one London ended last Tuesday.

And the sell-out arranged by NATSOPA bureaucrats ensured that two days later the entire union chapel leadership was sacked from their jobs.

Reinstatement

The strike began as a fight against threatened redundancies and for money the company is withholding after a previous dispute.

But it soon turned into a fight for reinstatement into NATSOPA after the union byreaucracy i expelled 27 strikers; and a fight for the jobs of eight men who were then These demands appeared to have been won when, last Monday, union bureaucrat, Dave Hutchinson, told the strikers that the union had reinstated every man both to NATSOPA and to their jobs.

Probationary

Although the original demands of the strike had not been won, the strikers agreed to return to work, with a number demoralised.

But when the men returned to work they found that what had actuary been • • agreed between Usher Walker and NATSOPA was re employment, re-instatement.

This meant that certain benefits such as sick pay and holiday pay were lost because the 8 men, now "new" employees, had to enter a six month probationary period of employment.

The chapel decided to fight for re-instatement and asked for individuals not to do any overtime.

An official overtime ban, without the Executive Committee's approval, breaks Rule 32 in the NATSOPA rule book!

On Wednesday trouble flared again when the firm's three truck. drivers refused to work without NATSOPA supervision.

Usher Walker threatened instant dismissal despite the fact that the three men were desperately trying to find a solution to the problem.

On Thursday the company carried out the threat and sacked all three men.

This situation was made doubly serious by virtue of the fact the three men-Burton, Barratt and Durham-were the FoC, Deputy FoC and chapel secretary!

To have confronted management in this way so soon affer a six week. strike and shortly before Christmas was a grave tactical mistake.

Many of the workers chapel were demoralised and a motion for strike action. was defeated by 34 votes to 26. Disciplinary action The three sacked men have since said that they do not wish to return to work after a vote which effectively endorses their sackings.

Nevertheless, when a temporarily elected FoC met scab NATSOPA official Hutchinson, the following day, he pressed for official backing for their reinstatement.

Hutchinson replied by saying that the three men had both legally and morally *sacked themselves"' He also said that any strike action on their behalf would bring disciplinary action by the union.

More expulsions of the remaining militants would give Usher Walker the chance to totally destroy union organisation on the site.

The task of the remaining militants in the factory is to continue to pressure the NATSOPA bureaucracy to support the three sacked men and to begin to re-organise the union in the factory.

'The last week has seen an enormous defeat for the workers at Usher Walker. It is the job of militants the factory to ensure that it only a temporary defeat. Secretary of the B irmingham Trades Council who a is chairman of the AHA was resp onsible for suspending the ambulance crews!

The crews have stuck firm for over a week now in the face of this intimidation. It is important that this fight be linked to that of other workers in the W. Midlands area-especially the bakery workers.

, MUST BE THE NEW FULL-TIME ....COME IN BROTHER! AND GIVE 'EM A ROUSING SPEECH ON ABORTION RIGHTS - THEN EVEN THE LEFT WILL BE EATING OUT OF YOUR HAND!

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KNOCK! ...YOU COULD GO TO SATURDAYS CONFERENCE'