NGA: call a out strike!

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1,274 firms, employing 20% of the membership of the National Graphical Association, have now signed interim agreements on the current pay and hours claim.

The NGA claim is for an £80 minimum earnings level and In the wake of the sellout on wages, steel workers are coming face to face with the BSC offensive on jobs.

. Management in Scotland are demanding immediate increase in production with a 1,900 reduction in the labour force.

One of the groups to be eliminated at Ravenscraig is that of craftsmen's mates. There is also pressure being exerted to end demarcation between different types of craftsmen.

The increased production is not to meet new orders-but to take up work that has hitherto been done at Llanwern and Port Talbot in South Wales.

Feelings still run high in the plants over the issue of continuing the blacking of transport firms which broke the picket lines during the strike.

Militants hold to the position that the blacking decision should stand. this position.

Some Militant supporters have tried to claim that it was pointless to continue the stand that had been defeated the previous week, that they had made their protest and further resistance was pointless.

Tribunites

This is the mentality of the Tribunites in Parliament who make token gestures to certain policies and then obediently troop into the opposite lobbies afterwards.

Such manoeuvres serve only to register opposition and create "left' appearance of oppositional resistance. It is an utterly fraudulent and deceptive symptom of political cowardice.

A question mark must therefore be placed over the future leadership of resistance' to Tory attacks on the Merseyside working class by the Liverpool 'nine' and the Militant tendency. a 37½ hour week by April of next year, starting with a 1½ hour reduction in the working week this month, as a first step towards a 35 hour week.

The employers' "final" offer is a minimum earnings level of £75 and a 37½ hour week by July 1982 with the first reduction of one hour not being implemented until January of next year.

The employers are also demanding new agreements on manning levels and flexibility.

SOGAT and NATSOPA, who submitted the same claim as the NGA, have recommended acceptance of the employers' offer. The NGA National Council, however, rejected the offer and the union has now embarked on a series of selective strikes which have caused 160 editions of various newspapers to fail to appear and led to 1,000 workers taking indefinite strike action and occupying their plants.

The firms signing the interim agreement are exempt from industrial action in return for agreeing to the union claim on wages and hours.

The interim agreement will, says the NGA, be replaced by whatever final agreement is reached between the employers, the BPIF and Newspaper Society, and the union.

Long battle

But the employers are preparing for a long battle and the Newspaper Society are meeting to discuss their tactics in relation to the industrial action.

While the NGA has not yet endorsed any of the productivity proposals that were discussed before negotiations finally broke down, it is clear that if the employers are prepared to offer more money, NGA officials will soon be round the table negotiating away their members' jobs.

NGA members should demand all-out strike action for £80 and 37½ hours now-and no strings!

OUR NURSERI CAMPAIGN ional Conference Nottingham Now to Defend Nurseries against Closures"

Region covered includes Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Birmingham.

For details contact: Ann McKinley, 33 Norreys Avenue, Oxford, • Or Nottingham.

----- pull-quotes -----

-BSC war on jobs

Coventry, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Oxfordshire,

•Margaret Lee, 28 Bramble ¡Drive, Portchester Lodge,