Tories duck fight on rai

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Union officials and British Rail management both emerged exultani last week from pay talks in which a 20% deal emerged.

Leaders of the three rail unions-NUR, : ASLEF : and TSSA were delighted at getting so close to their initial target figure without even a hint of strike action or confrontation with the Tory government. •They hope that the size of the settlement will be sufficient to ease the pressure of militancy among the membership, particularly over the issue of jobs threatened by the cutbacks of the British Steel Corporation. It was this which above all prompted NUR leader Sid Weighell to warn in January of the danger that the steel strike might spread to general strike action.

pleased Yet the employers, too, are well pleased. The 20% deal is barely adequate to compensate rail workers for galloping inflation, yet in exchange BR management have secured a commitment from union leaders to productivity changes.

Weighell • has publicly pledged that "the Board will get these changes" and a BR official told the Financial Times that he had never seen a productivity commitment drawn up so tightly. . ASLEF leader DC Weighell abandoned his initial opposition to the productivity concessions, declaring that there was "no problem" with the deal.

The "problems" will of course be felt not in the plush offices of the union bureaucrats but among rank and file railwaymen whose jobs and conditions are now under fire.

It is with this in view that the Tory government has clearly connived at the 20% deal, which allows them to proceed with their strategy of picking off those sections of workers that seem most vulnerable, while placating powerful sectors such as the miners, power workers and water workers.

The months ahead will show railwaymen the real cost of this pay deal and the real face of Tory "concessions" given much publicity in the press but in their election addresses have said very little about their actual policies.

Losinska is in favour. giving selective support to the Tory Employment Bill and will accept government financing of union postal ballots.

She is also in favour of retaining the archaic: Pay Research Unit and Whitleyism.

She is a member of the Christian Trade Union Movement and has been associated with the employer-backed TRUMID.

Court action

In 1976 she took the union to coutt to prevent publication of an article criticising her for an article in Readers Digest WOICh attackea me uT In 1978 she gaver to the right wing p stirred up a cynical witch-bunt against alleged vote rigging (most of which proved to have been carried out by right-wing branches).

CPSA members must not be conned into voting for the "moderates' and their anti-anion policies but should vote for the Broad Left despite their betrayals over the last year.

LEAGUE

Public Meeting *The fight for jobs against the cuts"

Wednesday 30 April 8.00 p.m.

Kings Head Grangetown, Teesside

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