NUPE militants under attack

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Ice se Health and social service managements throughout the country are waging an offensive against militant NUPE stewards and branch officers.

They clearly hope that a preemptive strike against leading union members will stifle the growing threat of action by manual workers in support of their much delayed £60/35 hour week claim, and resistance to the closures and attacks on manning levels now gathering pace as a result of spending cuts.

Recent weeks have therefore seen a string of victimisations nationally:

In the West London Hospitai, management sacked the chairman, secretary, and one other member of the left-wing led NUPE branch.

This has been followed by the sacking of two militant stewards at Hammersmith Hospital.

In Birmingham, too, a NUPE social services branch secretary has been sacked.

And in Oxford the NUPE convenor at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Jimmy, Koudoua, has also been sacked.

Last week also sar ~ the sacking of NUPE member: s and withdrawal of union reco ignition by management at the Liverpool Cheshire Home:

While. North-West Divisional Organiser Colin Barnett has made grand verbal statements about defeating this reactionary employer, NUPE members must take warning from the pathetic line taken by NUPE officials elsewhere.

Rather than mobilising the membership in all-out strike action to force reinstatement of victimised stewards, officials have insisted on delaying action and diverting the struggles into the diversionary and dangerous blind alley of industrial tribunals and "independent inquiries"..

Without defence of their own elected representatives NUPE members stand no chance of defeating the government and the employers on cuts or on the 5% pay limit.

They must take up the fight now:

* No victimisations!

* Immediate reinstatement!

*Action now on the £60/ hour week claim!