Pay: the Winter of

Scan page 8

The National Union of . shown to be more than willing month wage freeze on January Mass demonstration against Callaghan's 5% limit: 72% insults low paid too!

FUND GYWU 13080 ?*..

say PHOTO: Ian Mackintosh (IFL)

As the National Union of Seamen began their selective strike action in pursuit of their wage demands, their struggle stands out as a beacon amidst a tide of betrayals.

That tide gathered pace the moment that union officials and convenors in British Leyland deliberately steered their £17 pay claim onto the rocks and wrecked the chances of BL workers giving a lead to others throughout the public and private sectors.

Since then, foghorns of retreat have been sounded by one union bureaucracy after another.

Launched

The Tory government arrogantly launched their 6% pay limit in the public sector-while allowing one exception to sail past in the form of the 13% tenmonth deal for the miners.

The 6% figure was today's equivalent of the decoy lights with which Cornish peasants once used to lure cargo ships to their doom on the coast. Because in demanding increases above 6%, public sector union leaders have been shown to be more than willing to leave their members stranded.

Two million local authority manual workers are now being recommended by their unions to accept a miserable 72% pay offer which is barely half the present rate of inflation.

And now NUPE's Ron Keating has gone even furtherhe has made it clear that health service manual unions are not cvcn claiming more than the Aroma *1 same 7½% on offer to their council worker colleagues!

Meanwhile in British Airways, in Steel and Rolls Royce trade union leaders have allowed their members to run aground on the sandbank of a wage freeze.

BA workers are planning a one-day strike against their six 23; but in Rolls Royce the whole of the 72% pay "offer" is to be financed through productivity strings and has been endorsed by union leaders.

And in BSC, union leaders themselves offered to impose a wage freeze on their members in exchange for less redundancies.

BSC chief lan MacGregor on the other hand wants more: he is demanding both wage freeze and sackings.

Meanwhile in the gas and water industries union leaders, under pressure from militant members, are sending up distress flares.

The pay offers of 9% and 7.9% respectively fall miles short of both the rising cost of Continued page 7 readers have offered donations.

we could raise an additional £60 per month in new money we could start the work of restoring the cuts. We could ensure that every issue of Socialist Press between Red Youth and Woman Worker contained 12 pages.

Can you send a donationor pledge a monthly sum to help us reach that figure? Could you take an extra copy or more of Socialist Press to sell each week to a workmate or friend?

Our paper is the only consistent Trotskyist weekly in Britain. Let us raise its circulation and increase its size to meet the needs of the international fight for socialism! Send your pledges, donations and orders to:

Socialist Press BM Box 5277 London WC1N 3XX