Leicester lobby ASLEF leaders run from fight

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Get your Socialist Press delivered each week by pos Six months (25 issues).. £10.00 One year (50 issues) £18.00 Buckton Plans for the reorganisation of British Rail, published in the BR document "Into the Eighties", reveal a grim future for the country's 25,000 footplate workers.

BR management has submitted contract proposals for the forthcoming negotiations which include single man operation of all trains; flexible working and the abolition of mileage bonuses.

Redundancies

Single man operation, on its own would mean redundancies for guards and driver's assistants (firemen). But with the introduction of flexible working, tasks formerly the responsibility of shunters would be taken up by drivers themselves and would result in layoffs among maintenance staff as well as added responsibility for the driver.

Without mileage bonuses, money paid for longer train journeys, there will be a marked decline in present. wage levels.

BR are not even prepared to talk about wage increases until the rest of its contract demands are met.

Any increase would be conditional on improved productivity -i.e. redundancies.

Faced with these proposals from management, the executive of ASLEF felt compelled to call a mass meeting of London area members.

The meeting, attended by over two hundred, was addressed by the assistant general secretary of the union, Don Pullen.

Pullen, after a lengthy historical outline of the past restructuring of the railways declared that the executive would stand firm and that BR's proposals were totally unacceptable.

After 1½ hours of talk from Pullen, the chairman duly opened up the meeting for disSix issues..

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REST OF THE WORLD that Pullen's verbal condemnation of productivity deals was worthless as he had already agreed to one for ASLEF members on London Transport.

Another speaker referred to the need for "strong leadership in the eighties, which we have by no means had in the past"

There is certainly a willingness to fight BR's plans on the part of ASLEF members.

But what is also clear is that Ray Buckton and co. are incapable of providing the necessary The objectives of Sir Peter Parker and the BR Board, driven as they are by the Thatcher government, are so far-reaching that without hardline resistance, ASLEF is in danger of disappearing as a union.

Pullen, in his speech, declared that ASLEF were alone in the trade union movement in urging the TUC to "pull its finger out and support the action called by the Welsh TUC".

It is time for the ASLEF leadership to pull its finger out and mobilise strike action against BR and the Tories.

258 Boilermakers and 220 GMWU members building an oil rig at Hunterstoun Ayrshire have been suspended from work without pay by their employers, the Chicago Bridge Company.

The men are receiving no unemployment benefit, but a test case on this has now been taken up.

The immediate issue at stake is inadequate safety arrangements-particularly unsafe staging for men working at heights, which they are refusing to use.

The other issue raised by the stewards on the site is that shipSUBSCRIPTIC Angry parents and teachers responded with chants of Public In-Tories Out' and proceeded to block the underground car park entrance in an effort to stop councillors from sneaking into the building.

120 schools hit The bulk of the crowd made up of parents, who organised two large demor tions to County Hall : different parts of the City, WOMAN WORKER 5 A paper of the Workers Socialist League available, price 18p (inc postage) from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIV 6XX yard workers at Cammell Laird and Fairfield Govan are doing construction work for the same American company but are being paid a good deal less than the £ 2.90 an hour earned by the men on the site.

The stewards are also pressing for a further £1 per hour rise-they want at least parity with workers doing similar jobs on sites like Nigg Bay and Kishorn.

An important step forward in this struggle would be the formation of a Joint Shop Stewards Committee embracing stewards from all the rig-building sites with a common programme on wages and conditions.

£2.00 £4.00 £8.00 £14.00 £9.00 £16.00 was had itrarom and Having held a Conference on February 9 which laid down a programme to fight the cuts and launched an anti-cuts committee which could draw in exactly the sort of spontaneous movements which sprung up around the February 27 strike, the Trades Council appears to have been afflicted by some strange "paralysis".

No attempt was made to publicise either the programme or the committee on the day.

The immediate conclusion must be that the majority of the so-called 'left' executive of the Trades Council, having satisfied their taste for 'left' demagogy. from selected Labour MPs on 9 February, and having satisfied their consciences by the passing of a suitably left' programme, have now proceeded to do what all lefts' do when the struggle actually develops: left it!

Despite this retreat, WSL members continued to campaign for the Anti-Cuts Committee and in a special 'Public Sector' Bulletin issued for the day carried a detailed report of the programme and of how trade unions and action groups could join.

The Bulletin also argued out what the next steps in the struggle should be, advocating the occupation of teachers centres, the stepping up of strike action and the need for a labour movement enquiry into public spending. The Bulletin also carried an explanation of why rate rises are not the answer to the cuts.

Mass action

The task now for public sector militants in Leicester must be to build action around the Trades Council Programme, broaden the anti-cuts campaign, and demand that both the Trades Council and the Public Sector Action Group get off the fence and begin a fight to mobilise mass action to defeat the Tory government.

May 14 will be a major test for both.

For a PRESS striegle agamst lead in the wage control, cuts and redundancies Send your cheque/P.O. to Socialist Press, BM Box 5277 London WCIV 6XX.

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