[Deliberate delaying tactics by the right wing on…]

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Deliberate delaying tactics by the right wing on the Leyland Cars National Joint Negotiating Committee have put BL workers' wage claim in real danger.

The claim, for f24 per week plus a full cost of living clause, has been outstanding since last year's contract expired on 1 November.

BL management, :in package very similar to that offered by BSC to steelworkers, proposed only a miserable 5% increase:

No concessions But in return they demanded a new agreement abolishing the éxisting 80% lay off pay for disputes within BL; abolishing the principle of mutual agreement on manning standards; and abolishing seniority in job entitlement, Since October 31 there have been 13 meetings at. LCJNC level.

No concessions have been made by management during those 2½ months. In fact their original 85 pages of "strings" have been expanded to 92 The last meeting with management took place on 17 January. It was management who broke off negotiations.

Preconditions

..They made a statement saying that negotiations should terminate and that they wanted the package "implemented" at once.

The trade union negotiating committee met and decided to Thin BL workers-saddled with the ballot the members and recom-. mend rejection of the package.

By a small majority it was agreed that this would be a trade union-organised ballot.

Despite the fact that they declared in advance that they would not accept the outcome of. the ballot, management immediately put down a series of arrogant preconditions for providing facilities for the ballot to take place.

They said that BL would finance a ballot-providing it. was conducted by the Electoral Reform Society: and was a postal ballot.

They demanded that they be allowed to insert a Company statement into the envelope if -the trade unions ULU VASE *==- enclosed à world's worst negotiators? statement.

And they even insisted that the Electoral Reform Society liave the power to veto the question which goes on the ballot paper.

Faced with this management stance, the right wing on the LCJNC at once put forward a proposal that the Electoral Reform Society run the ballot. This was carried by a small majority and became policy.

Damaging decision

The Negotiating Committee then decided that the question to be asked on the ballot paper would be "Do you support your Negotiating Committee's rejection, of the Company's offer?"

But even with this succession of wretched capitulations to taken place this week. Management would have been faced with a choice: provide facilities for a ballot, or mass meetings will be held at once.

Mass meetings

*. Now the delays, diversions and capitulations mean that no decision on action will be forthcoming until the middle or end of February by which time the steelworkers cowd nave Deel out for nearly eight weeks. If the steelworkers are sold out or defeated in that time, BL workers will face extremely difficult conditions in defending their living standards and hard-won agreements.

But a strike alongside the steelworkers would be a major blow against the employers and the Tory government.

•*Reject the offer! Hold mass meetings in every plant!

*Strike alongside the workers!

USSR sa As attempts to cobble together a concerted imperialist response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan crumble ignominiously, the media have carefully averted our gaze towards the side-issue of the Moscow Olympic games.

While a string of capitalist governments have spoken with one voice in denouncing the invasion, the question of economic and military measures to answer it has fallen victim to the various conflicting vested interests of the capitalist class in different nation states.

The Argentinian dictatorship for instance, which had been proudly boasted as a supporter of the US grain embargo on the Soviet Union, hastened 10 explain that it has no intention of cutting back its trade on grain-and indeed stressed that future trade would test on arket conditions.* Since those conditions will be influenced by the large influx of US grain formerly destined for the USSR onto the world market, it seams likely that the Argentinian junta might seek to sell additional quantities to the USSR.

Certainly the Brazilian dictatorship has made clear its refusal to participate in the US moves to restrict exports of soya beans to the Soviet Union, and expressed the hope that its own trade would increase following the American boycott.

And in the Common Market a prolonged debate amongst Ministers failed to produce any common line of action against the USSR, despite the urgings of Brezhner hugs Olympic bear the British Tory government.

The French government has even denounced the Cartar/ Thatcher call to boycott the Olympics!

Meanwhile, the attempts by US and British imperialists to buy new friends in the Middle East and Asia in the wake of the Afghan invasion have met a mixed response.

Pakistan's dictator Zia has described a $400m aid offer as "peanuts"- looking for more: India's Gandhi sits resolutely on the fence; Saudi Arabia wants nothing. less than to become identified as a frontline base for US imperialist operations; and even the right wing Turkish government is reluc. tant to lose its grain trade with the USSR.

Even the scare stories of a possible Russian: invasion of Yugoslavia are falling flat, as investigation shows no Russ troops within striking di. stance of the Yugoslav border, and the now one lasses Stalinist Tito and his regime apparently far from dead.

But Cart ection chance plainly bing Lantaining the momentum of the new Gold War, come what may it in the duty of socialists in the imperialist countrios to oppose such chauvinism and anti-communism.

We fight' in unconditional defence of the historic gains of the USSR, while simultaneously fighting for the political over." throw of the Stalinist bureaucracies.

We in no way defend the reactionary foreign policy of the Stalinists, but rather fight for the defeat of our own ruling class, and for Trotskyist parties internationally to lead the struggle against imperialism.

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nctions fiasco