Garners: New Moves Needed

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Sharp and immediate initiatives are now necessary to win the Garners recognition strike.

That was the message coming out of a WL public meeting held in London last Wednesday night on the subject 'Victory to the Garners Strike!' Manuel Blanco-a member of the Garners Strike Committee-detailed the Garners supporter catalogue of bureaucratic sabotage over finance, picketing and blacking by the TGWU Region 1 bureaucracy.

This was the prime factor in allowing a viciously anti-union employer to carry on for 14 months.

He explained his experiences in the strike and now, through the lead and perspective offered to him by WSL members he became convinced of the need to struggle for a new, revolutionary leadership in the working class movement.

Mark Hyde, speaking for the London WSL, outlined the basic aims of the WSL, its understanding of the importance of the Garners strike, and pointed out the connections between the dispute and the sharp political crisis of British capitalism.

Discussion

A lively discussion followed from the floor.

Partieular attention was drawn to the need for a national TGWU delegate conference to discuss the strike-which poses enormous questions before the whole working class about union rights and the role of the union leaders.

Such an extraordinary step is vital if the strike is to be won and a repetition of a Grunwick-style betrayal averted.

If the union tops refuse to organise such an eventand there is no doubt that Ron Todd and other well-heeled fakers live in deathly fear of such initiatives following the beating they took at two previous conferences-it should be built for and called by the strikers themselves through their rank and file organisations.

Also vital is a further mass mobilisation in May in support of the strike, following the successful Day of Action on March 24, in order to keep building up the necessary support on the picket lines and a regular flow of finance:

The fact that a response is there was clearly shown this week when a £30 donation came in from TGWU members in Coleraine. Ireland, in support of the strike. one hospital at the another.

When the time came • last week for the AHA to try to make a decision again, they were forced to openly admit the Another group of public sector workers are in danger of being sold out by the leadership of the "Low Pay Campaign"

Nurses and midwives, perhaps the most exploited group in the National Health Service, have been informed by the NUPE leadership that they have accepted a derisory pay offer which falls well below their claim for a £60/35 hour week.

They have been offered a 9% pay increase and an extra £2.50 which is to be included in the award from the comparability study in August..

As well as the offer itself being a downright insult to nurses and the vital role they play in the Health Service, there is no reduction in hours; no incréase in holidays and the whole comparability • study is likely to be a complete sham.

The NUPE bureaucracy have handled the nurses pay claim in the most bureaucratic and high handed way from the very start.

First they encouraged nurses to support the ancillary workers pay claim with industrial action and several sections in London at least answered this call with strike action.

Then the leadership did a complete about-turn and instructed nurses not to strike for their own pay claim without consulting a single nursing section or shop steward. country must take up the fight against this seil out by demand= ing a national stewards' conference which will reverse the decision of the National Council and plan a determined course of strike action for the full claim with emergency cover to be organised and maintained by elected strike committees.

DESPITE THE desperate efforts of the leadership to kill off action by ambulance drivers on pay prior to the election, A massive pay sellout has been lined up in the Post Office by Jackson and his cronies on the National Executive of the UPW.

At its meeting last week, the Executive voted to recommend acceptance of managemént's latest pay offer on the 1979 pay claim (due to be paid from 1 January).

The main points of the UPW's claim were: 8% increase on the basic rate; full consolidation; shorter working week; ambulance drivers throughout the country are determined to carry on fighting for the full claim and in some areas are still taking industrial action.

Resolutions must be passed demanding that the union leadership call for all out strike action in support of these ambulance drivers who are still out and link this to rebuilding strike action for the full claim throughout the whole of the public sector.

In exchange for this puny offer management have obtained agreement for the introduction of part-time workers throughout the industry, and the union executive has given them a special bonus with the go-ahead to 'work study' schemes.

Both these attacks on working conditions. directly flaunt conference policy.

A week before the executive's meeting, workers in some of the London sorting offices started to impose overtime bans and working-to-rule, with man-