Water strike

Scan page 9

Saturday 14 February, 2.00 p.m.-5.00 p.m.

Dr Johnson House, Colmore Circus, all trade unionists and Labour Party Is/Details, contact Longbridge Defen tee, c/o 10 Green End Rd., Moseley, redential Commit Queensway, Birmingham members Birmingham 13 Leaders representing 33,000 manial workers in the water and sewerage industry are to meet on 3 February to decide on how to respond to the overwhelming call for strike action in pursuit of their 30% pay claim.

Regional delegate conferences of the GMWU-which organises 20,000 water workers -have been voting heavily for all out strike action. A ballot of 10,000 NUPE members is likely to show support for a strike recommendation.

AUEW and TGWU officials as well as the Agricultural Workers Union have said they will support a strike.

Until they hear whether the officiais are prepared to mount an all out strike or attempt to defuse the militancy of their members through partial and "selective" action, the employers are sitting tight on their miserable 7.9% offer.

But if the water workers do move towards their first-ever national strike, it seems more than likely that the employers will be forced to move their offer upwards sooner than prompt a full-scale and potentially damaging confrontation The final scene in the Ford workers pay claim was acted out at South Liverpool Football Ground on Monday 19 January.

It was the culmination of an intricate sell-out by the union Battered and bewildered by the vacillations of the union bureaucracy; by the decision to allow the smaller, less militant plants to vote first; by the length of time allowed to elapse before letting Halewood vote; by the announced redundancies at Vauxhalls, Ellesmere Port; and by the total lack of a principled lead from the national leadership, workers reluctantly accepted Fords pay offer along with a whole series of BL-type strings.

Even so vote was a close with the Tories' limits.

The Tory government does not directly employ the water workers. And there is scope for the employers to meet a pay increase by raising water rates.

Water workers at present average a basic rate of only £60£67. They have shown themselves ready to fight.

Only the most brazen betrayal by the union bureaucracy can now stand in the way of a retreat by the employers or a major strike that can offer a lead to other workers throughout the public sector in the fight against the Thatcher government.

It must have given Broadhead and Macguire, the works convenors, quite a turn, for though they both gave militant sounding speeches neither called for strike action to further the claim-nor indeed did they seriously attempt to call for a rejection of the offer.

They were more concerned with the conditions the company meant to impose.

By consciously splitting the two issues and ten voung on them. together in one motion they succeeded in thoroughly confusing the workforce-and indeed confusing themselves for when the vote was taken they didn't seem to know whether the motion had failed or been approved!

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Longbridge conference