Trades Council Leads Fight Against Unemployment

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And NHS At the initiative of the T&GWU branch at Export Packing Services - a factory which packs cars for export -Banbury and District Trades Council passed a resolution to take action on unemployment and organise a public meeting in the town on September 18th.

To begin the campaign a leaflet was distributed which called for the fight against sackings and instead for work sharing on full pay:

"To answer the situation a programme must be put forward, the starting point must be a demand that sackings are abolished and instead a policy of work sharing on full pay fought for where jobs are threatened. Where the employers refuse this demand, the threatened factory must be occupied and committee elected to demand access to the company's books and report back to the workers the state of the company's finances. This is the only way that a company's bankruptcy or otherwise be revealed"

sti "Private practice must go" was the decision of the NALGO Executive last weekend, and splashed across the papers last Monday.

It was announced that the union would at last campaign for the abolition of private practice both inside and outside the National Health Service.

These militant words were of course backed by no proposals for action to carry them out. Instead the NALGO Executive decided to support a conference to be held by the Medical Committee Against Private Practice - a 'rank and file' organisation of health workers hitherto dominated by the IMG.

Why then the sudden decision? Because the NALGO leaders, having voted to support the £6 state imposed limit on wage increases, still want to present a 'militant' stance as conditions of work in the NHS go rapidly downhill.

When they correctly say to Minister Barbara Castle that the total abolition of private practice is "essential to the continuance of a system of state care and the ending of abuses by the private sector" , they are diverting from the equally vital fight to defend the NHS against spending cuts carried out by this Labour government.

NHS workers will remember how the nurses' struggle for wages throughout the summer of 1974 provoked all manner of 'left' statements by the union leaders against private practice while they TV Review continued from page 5 the Foreign Office. Ironicauy, the programme was broadcast scarcely a week after sanctimonious protests in the capitalist press against Libyan intrusions into the northern territory of Chad!

Among many real aspects which the programme reflected was the involvement of Stalinism. Omnipol, the . Czechoslovak arms-dealing agency, cheerfully provided $50,000 worth of automatic guns, ammunition and explosives, delivered through a Yugoslav port within a week - for purposes which were obviously fraudulent.

But in the event the boat in which the invasion was planned was arrested by the Italian police in Trieste. - the most likely explanation being the CIA thought the escapade too liable to backfire, and decided to scotch it.

The programme's finale was thus pure fiction - underlining the moral that the BBC's job is to tell only so much of the trut! 1 as The importance of the unity of employed and unemployed workers was stressed, and the issues on which unity must be fought for were set out:

... there are other key issues or which unity must be fought for between employed and unemployed workers - while workers must fight for a sliding scale of wages to provide increases linked to the cost of living as assessed by trade union committees, these committees must also include unemployed workers and pensioners to lead the fight to ensure that state benefits keep pace with inflation...

In addition specialist committees should be set up from the trades council to . organise the unemployed on this programme, represent them on their problems, and to campaign for the trade unions to provide facilities: for the recruitment of unemployed workeIs.

WELL ATTENDED

The public meeting was attended by 70 trade unionists. The speakers included a member of the Labour Party Young Socialists and a Labour 'left', both members of the Militant group, an unemike t consciously prevented united action to win either demand. The same double talk is again coming forward. It can be predicted that NUPE and COHSE will soon make similar blood-curdling statements, while studiously avoiding any action.

Indeed if forms of words were sufficient to abolish private practice, it would have gone long ago. The problem is that even when a correct policy is forced through a union, the bureaucracy uses every loophole to avoid action to carry it out.

ASTMS

ASTMS, for example passed at its last conference a composite resolution stating opposition to all forms of private practice. It called for a campaign led by the Parliamentary Committee "to urge the government to end all private practice inside and outside the VHS with the minimum of delay" ployed worker, Charlie Boyd, and the convenor of EPS, Colin Carty.

The entire meeting revolved around a discussion of the transitional demands put forward in the leaflet, and the importance of this discussion by 70 trade unionists must not be underestimated. All the speakers talked about the importance of the transitional demands but both the Militant speakers - who had anyway opportunistically taken their programme straight from the leaflet, having none of their own to put - spoke of these wrongly as "defensive' demands. They claimed that the only solution lay in the "nationalisation of the top 250 monopolies under workers control and management"!

FUTURE

The Militant speakers conception seemed to be that a sliding scale of hours wasta correct demand to defend workers jobs now, but socialism was something in the misty future - they had no method by which this would be achieved. This point was emphasised in the discussion which followed the speeches, and the importance of the fight for transitional demands by workers in providing the bridge o defe and went on to demand the incorporation of all private facilities into the NHS and an immediate injection of £1,000m for NHS spending to rise on a sliding scale to keep pace with infiation.

These motions won an enthusiastic response from the conference, but the NEC, consciously blocking any action, simply "referred them to the Parlaimentary Committee" and washed its hands of any fight. When it is seen that Harold Wilson and David Owen, minister responsible for the NHS, are both ASTMS members and actually directing the programme of cuts in the service, we can see what effect the "Parliamentary Committee" will have if no trade union action is taken. So and for thi Perhaps more blatant still, the composite ASTMS resolution on private practice (passed against the recommendations of the NEC) called for the union to fight to establish a measure of workers control of the health service: "call for elected committees of between today's striggles on 1 rages and jobs and the overthro V of capitalism by the working class was clearly brought out.

UNAVAILABLE

Colin Carty, EPS convenor (speaking in a personal capacity) described the present situation in his factory, where the jobs of over 200 workers were being axed by management the following day. He emphasised the complete absence of any leadership from the T&GWU in the struggle to defend the jobs -he had tried to phone the T&G Regional Officers and every fulltime official in the Midlands area and not one was available to visit the factory.

Charlie Boyd, an unemployed trade unionist, after speaking on the points of programme outlined in the leaflet, moved that the meeting call upon the Banbury and District Trades Council to set up a subcommittee to look into the problems of the unemployed, with..a view to recruiting them into the unions and in this way fighting to unite employed and unemployed workers in defence of jobs and living standards.

After a strong discussion the. motion was put to the meeting, trade unionists composed of NHS workers and consumers to examine the day to day running of Health Service Authorities and to supervise, control and deploy resources to satisfy the health requirements of all"

The ASTMS Executive did not even refer this policy to a trade union body, but to management in the form of the DHSS!

The WSL has fought since its foundation for the complete abolition of private practice, defence of the NHS, and for the defence of the living standards of NHS workers. If NALGO seriously begins to carry out such a fight we will support them at every prog ressive step.

But until such action does begin we can only question how the fight for private practice to be abolished can be carried out by a union leadership which has allowed Wilson to smash free collective carried unanimously.

The fight must now be 1 the Banbury and District Trad Council to adopt this resolution a act on it, challenging in practi the trade union leaders who in ac epting the state pay laws a accepting unemployment. * This resolution was passi by the 10/76A T&GWU bran in Hull and circulated by Hi Trades Council as part of d discussion on unemployme policy:

"That this 10/76A T&GW branch calls on Trades Council : wherever possible request th affiliated trade union branch recruit anemployed workers ai that any member of a trade unic either made redundant or sacke in any way be allowed to rema a full branch member with ft trade union rights.

We consider this important 1 pecially as unemployment is rapid increasing and workers who ma well become demoralised throug being unemployed may become pr to fascist and anti-trade unic organisations and their propagand Unemployment, as can be seen Northern Ireland, can be used 1 split and divide the working class"

bargaining, and which has lifti not a finger to fight spending cu and the onset of mass unemplo ment.

The time for talking is ore The NHS is in danger of collap if the unions do not act. All NF workers wishing to defend the st vice must now demand their unic leaders act by calling national stril action demanding the Labo: government carry out these polici Abolish all private practic Nationalise private health fac ities without compensation Ea er workers managment.

Immediate injection of £1,000 restoration of all cuts, slidin scale of expenditure to rise wil inflation.

Programme of hospital buildi under workers managemen create jobs and expand t] NHS.