HEALTH WORKERS HEAD LOW PAY No confidence votes FIGHI passed against Fisher

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IPE LOW -LOW Workers PAY 3 Public sector workers lobby London Rerion Labour Parti conference As we go to press it is hard to assess the final outcome of the ballot by NUPE and COHSE on the offer of 9% and an inquiry made in response to their £60/35 hour week claim.

Press reports have concentrated on those areas-particularly among some sections of local authority: workers-that have voted to accept the sellout offer, and scarcely mentioned the cases of heavy rejection of the offer, partieularly amongst health service workers.

All-out strike Indeed the area health committee of! NUPE's London Divisional Council voted 5-1 to mject the offer and to recommend all-out strike action in pursuit of the claim.

A similar majority for rejection was registered among Sheffield health workers, and the signs are that NUPE's area health committees all over the country will vote for rejection.

A mesting of NUPE's National Executive on Wednesday will have before it a number of demands for all-out strike action. Since the NEC has already itself voted to recommend rejection of the offer, the obvious next step is to take up this policy in order to press the full claim.

Accepted

NUPE, has the strength to give a lead even to those sections of workers in the GMWU and TGWU, whose supposed 'represontatives, have accepted the 9% sell-out on their behalf.

Meanwhile in London efforts to extend the pay victory in Camden (where council workers won a £60 minimum for a 35 hour week) led last, wook to a meeting of an all-London strike committee, bringing togather 28 delegates from nine London boroughs.

Days: Paid £60 says: NEED NUPE •NOW 'esutts Wage elow All-out strikes are due to • begin this week in Hackney, and in Barnet, where the only section still at work-the parks department-were due to stoo work from Monday.

The strike committee voted to lobby the next meeting of NUPE's London Divisional Council to press the demand for all-out action to win the full claim.

Ambulance crews-who are also currently voting on the 9% offer-last week staged a further unofficial one-day stoppage.

Blocked Though the strike was more partial than ever before, there is little doubt that the efforts of union officials to block the strike and the token nature of a one day action played the key role in minimising support.

The ambulance convenors and 'action committees' have backed down at each confrontation with management.

Now is the time for each area to elect new action committaas to snasrhaad all.nnt "you strikes and emergency cover under strike committee control.

But if many self-styled rank and file leaders and local officials have failed miserably in this struggle against low pay, their betrayal is nothing to that of NUPE leader Alan Fisher, who regarded the NEC rejecEND " u..un. tion of the 9% sell-out as "personal tragedy"

Branches; including the 2,500 strong Camden General Duannh have alea motions of no confidence in Fisher.

The task in NUPE and ail the public sector unions is now to construct a principled leadership to replace Fisher and his gang of right wingers and 'left' windbags and lead the defence of jobs and wages in the public sector.

Having offered the working class nothing in the way of socialist policies, and staked its survival on buying off the reactionaries of the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties through the Devolution proposals, the right wing Labour government faces an acute crisis.

With every indicator suggesting a dramatic Labour defeat if a General Election were held now, the failure of the Devolution referendum on the Scottish Assembly to achieve the arbitrary 40% figure set by right wing English Labourites now questions whether Callaghan's government can survive to the autumn.

Withdrawal threat

The Scottish Nationalist Party are threatening to with. draw Parliamentary support for Callaghan unless the Assembly plan goes ahead.

But the Tories and; many Labour members wiil clearly vote against any attempt to resuscitate the Assembly after the referendum setback-thus making it virtually impossible for Callaghan to get it through Parliament.

But while the capitalist press speculates on the outcome of this dilemma-generally underestimating the opportunism of both the SNP and the Parliamentary Labour Party-workers must be puzzled as to how these events have any relevance to their problems:

Devolution would not have created or saved a single job; it would not affect inflation one iota or increase wages; it would do nothing to preserve the socíal services, still crumbling under the sledgehammer of Labour's spending cuts.

In favour But this is the very reason that ' this anti-working class Labour government which rejects any element of socialist policy felt able to argue SO strongly in favour. of devolution! PHOTO: Andrew Ward, Report Callaghan Now workers in England, Scotland and Wales face the threat of a General Election in which the Callaghan leadership will campaign on the platform of their wage-cutting policiespaving the way for a return of the Tories.

This is why it is a matter of urgency that the Callaghan-Healey clique is, removed from the Labour leadership at an emergency Labour Party conference.

The weekend's announcement by Labour's coordinating, committee, of a half-hearted 'left wing' document of proposals for an alternative election, manifesto speaks volumes for the inability of the 'lefts' to offer a way forward.

Nationalistic

Their package of nationalistic, utopian and pro-capitalist measures is itself inadequate. But not one of its policies will be even considered for the manifesto unless Callaghan is removed.

Callaghan publicly favours watering down even the existing right wing draft manifesto drawn up by the NEC.

Yet there is not so much as a whisper from the 'lefts' about the need for a new leadership:

Workers must not wait vainly for a lead from these cowardly lefts'. They must move instead through union branches and Labour Party wards the demand for an emergency recall Labour Party conference and call on the 'lefts' to support such a campaign or stand revealed as the true allies of Callaghan and Healey: