Duffy accepts

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THETIGHT BUNDRO DE The effort put in by the Tory press and mass media to securing the election of Terry Duffy and the right wing AUEW Executive through postal ballots has been amply repaid by a succession of sell-outs.

But the Thatcher government must have been particularly gratified to hear Duffy last week cap the lot by becoming the first union leader to publicly accept James Prior's anti-union Employment Act.

While making routine noises of "opposition" • to the Act's proposals and to the "unworkable" code of practice on picketing, Duffy declared that the AUEW would not advise members to break the new law.

Though one or two union leaders have hinted that they might favour defying the Act, Duffy's stance is simply an open statement of the position tacitly adopted by most TUC leaders.

This year's TUC Congress agenda sees few motions on the Prior Act, and none calling for all-out action to secure its defeat.

Yet unless the law is challenged, then the power of the unions to defend the jobs, conditions and existing agreements won in years of struggle will be drastically cut back.

The Tories would therefore be much happier if they felt that, in grovelling before the new "law of the land" , Duffy actually represented the views of his members rather than the reactionary self-defence of a privileged layer of top union Such leaders must be challenged and defeated if workers are to defeat the Tory offensive.

MY CATAL

For a clear struggie againsi wage control, cuts Last week Rita Maxim, TGWU steward for domestics at St. Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road, London was suspended for three days.

She attended a disciplinary hearing on Thursday 14 August and was issued a written warning that puts her on probation for the next six months at work.

Sister | Maxim's "offence" had been to actively oppose the rundown and closure of the hospital.

Manning Since September 1979 the Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Area Health Authority and local management have been reducing manning levels at the hospital as part of their strategy to shut down St. Mary's completely.

The brunt of this attack has been borne by the domestic workers. They have been increasingly harassed by supervisors and hospital management to work at an almost impossible rate to cover for the severe shortage of staff.

Lead by Rita Maxim the domestics, members of the TGWU, GMWU and NUPE, are putting up a strong resistance.

Sister Maxim has already received a verbal warning for refusing to cover in another department and last week she was once more instructed to move from her own ward to the Outpatients Department. Again she refused saying that the move was against union policy and not in her job contract.

Suspended

She was immediately suspended. During her suspension TGWU branch chairman Joe Beckles organised a meeting of all domestics to be held on the same day as the disciplinary hearing. At the meeting the domestics sent the following ultimatum to management.

"We the undersigned membership of the TGWU, GMWU and NUPE domestic staff of st. I Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road, give full support to Sister Rita Maxim against any disciplinary action.

We recognise that in carrying out trade union policy Sister Maxim is fighting against the plan to run down this hospital.

Any attempt to dismiss Sister Maxim will be interpreted as an equivalent attack on all of us and we shall take all the necessary action to resist it.

We will conduct a campaign o7 anu discinlinarv action taken against Rita Maxim in her fight and our fight to preserve the standards and resist the rundown of this hospital.

As part of the fight we demand the ending of harassment against the domestic staff as a whole".

The strength of support for Sister Maxim forced management to drop some of the charges against her including one of gross misconduct.

It is obvious that it is the domestics' solid resistance which is preventing them from running down the hospital further and they know that Rita Maxim is at the centre of this resistance.

The hospital unions will be taking action to force management to withdraw the formal warning. They are also preparing to mount a campaign in local trade union branches knowing that management will attempt further victimisations in the near future.

Leaders of the London trade union movement such as Jack Dromey have acknowledged that the campaign to save St. Mary's is one of the most important battles against health cuts in the London area.

They must now begin to turn these words into action and build a broad campaign in defence of Rita Maxim and other activists who are defending St. Mary's Hospital. workers and poor peasants face starvation and a chronic lack of elementary commodities, the productive plant and capacity developed bý capitalism is grinding increasingly to a halt.

Goods are not being produced-not because nobody needs them, but because their production does not offer sufficient profit to the capitalist class!

As a result, industrial output in Britain was 2.7% down in the three months April-June compared to the first three months of the year-the period of the steel strike.

Manufacturing output in the first half of 1980 is down 42% on the average figure for 1979.

Some industries have fared particularly badly: textiles, leather and clothing have seen a 10½% drop in output compared to last year.

Production of chemicals; coal and petroleum products was down 7% in April-June compared to the first quarter of 1980.

As capitalist industry pulls down the shutters-throwing workers into short time working or redundancy and refusing to use potential productive forces, sections of employers have increasingly begged the Tory government for assistance.

Mad monk

They have received short shrift from the 'mad monk' Minister for de-industrialisation Keith Joseph.

Intent upon a "weakest to the wall" shake-out of British capitalism to boost profitability, Joseph has turned a deaf ear to CBI appeals for state aid to The CBI has asked him to bring forward £145 million in regional development grants which Joseph had himself delayed-with full CBI supportas part of the Tory spending cuts.

Now that the cuts are really drawing blood among weaker capitalists as well as in the working class, the bosses are seeking some relief.

But the Tory strategy remains inflexible: among their sacrifices on the altar of profit-