[Last week's backdated 8.2% interim pay increase will…]

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Last week's backdated 8.2% interim pay increase will do little to appease teachers angry at the endless delays in their 1979 pay claim.

Since the agreement last April to submit their claim to a comparabiilty study by the Clegg Commission, teachers had been led to believe that a substantial payment (around 13%) would be made this January.

No amount of double talk will convince them that they have not been misled and betrayed.

The seeds of the present situation were sown in the abortive campaign for the 1979 salaries claim.

Half-hearted efforts by the leadership of thé NUT and the Scottish teaching union, the EIS led, at that point, to a settlement which secured a mere Clegg 9.2% plus £6 . a month account in anticipation of Clegg findings.

Members, initially keyed up for an increase of 42.5% were disillusioned by weak action culminating in capitulation and an agreement to the comparability study.

Since then, members have been kept in suspense, tied to an agreement to accept the findings of the Commission.

At first they were promised half of the award in January and the second half in September.

Now they have received a mere 8.2%-from which the nine payments of £6 will be deducted.

The Commission will not publish its findings until at least April, and no substantial sums of money will be forthcoming until after then.

Instead of a straightforward claim based on the rise in the rate of inflation and the changes in the salaries scale for non-manual workers since the Houghton Report of 1974, the teaching union leaderships have become embroiled in a complicated comparability study involving the selection of comparators in terms of jobs outside teaching.

Having found the original 40 comparators chosen to be unsatisfactory, the Commission is now researching into another 30 non-teaching jobs.

the union leaders to be aimed at achieving an "objective" assessment of the true value of a teacher's job.

Going by average award given by Clegg to the nurses; many teachers no doubt now wish that they had never become entangled in the comparability study, but had pursued their claim with more vigour when they had the opportunity last April.

Only an award of 30% at least could bring teachers back to the standards they were at after the Houghton settlement in 1974.

But Keir Bloomer, the EIS chief negotiator, has already let slip the figure of 15%.

To mobilise the frustration of the membership, 18 representatives from schools in Glasgow met the week before last and launched a campaign for a Special General Meeting of Glasgow Local Association.

The motions on the petition for the SGM call for an immed. iate interim increase of £20 per week plus a campaign, including if necessary, industrial action for a wage claim in April 1980 such as will compensate for the rise in inflation since April 1979.

(Many members are increasingly concerned that, as the Clegg Report is now due in April, it will prejudice their annual salary negotiations).

The representatives see this SGM as a launching pad for a sep-auo •Beddoss uoos possible in protest against. the contemptuous fashion in which teachers have been treated.

They also regard it as the beginning of the campaign to secure an award of at least 20% in this year's negotiations.

Only by purposeful action now will teachers demonstrate to the authorities that they will not be pushed around on the questions of wages and jobs.

Leyland management, who have been quoting ballots at their workforce, say they will not accept the result of the ballot on their 5%-with-strings offer.

Despite this the union leadership have played further into their hands than we reported last week.

They have agreed that there will be no statement from either side in the envelope that the ballot paper goes out in.

But the company is posting out the papers, and it is understood that they will put a statement of theirs in a separate envelope on the same day!

The ballot papers will be posted on Friday 1 Februarytimed to arrive at people's homes on a Saturday. In this way it gets the ballot as far away from work as possible.

Vate 'yes'

Similarly the wording of the question is such that in order to oppose the company's offer you have to vote 'Yes'.

Despite all this confusion sown by the union leadership, the likely result is still a rejection of the company's offer.

In order to make sure of this and to prepare the next step the best move would be to hold mass meetings on the Friday.

Workers still do not know what the LCJNC proposes to do if the offer is rejected.

These leaders must stop avoiding uniting with the steel strikers. Leyland workers should join steelworkers on all-out strike.

ORKERS SOCIALIS LEAGUE Public meeting Victory to the SteelWorkers!

Bring down the Tories Speakers include Teeside steel worker Thursday 7 February OCCR, Princes St off Cowley Road 8.00 p.m. a month, freeing pickets for duties elsewhere and leaving two ISTC members to make sure the stockholder sticks to the agreement.

However, these men are only at the gates during the day and rumour has it that the steel in fact goes out as normal at night!

One case in point was the first of these agreements, made by steel stockholders Wishaw, with Tom Brennan, chairman of the Action Committee, Ravenscraig on Wednesday 9 January without any consultation with the strike committee.

This agreement allowed the stockholder to remain open for two days without pickets.

That night 38 lorries laden with steel left the stockholder at less than six hours notice!

SOCIALIST PRESS PUBLIC MEETING The Fight for Trotskyism in the Labour Party Friends Meeting House Euston Road, London NW1 Wednesday 6 February 7.30 p.m.

MOTHERWELL

Victory to the Steel Workers!

Bring down the Tories! Wednesday 6 February 8.00 p.m.

YMCA, Brandon Street Motherwell

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SOCIALIST LIST PRESS 2,000 Sa Uniformed gunman opposing the march kharov

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an interim report in December, to be followed by payment of

This kind of pseudo-scien- tific mumbo-jumbo is said by

Speaker: Ted Heslin Socialist Press supporter