[The task of preparing workers for industrial action…]
Socialist Press1981 1981-03-04Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 6 →
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The task of preparing workers for industrial action against the Tories and the Labour Council continues in That task is less straightforward than it might have appeared.
This week has seen the working class move towards strike action-yet not without setbacks that will limit the impact on March 4-the rate fixing day that NUPE has chosen to fire its first shot, with a one day strike.
We reported last week on the reactionary intervention of NALGO National Organiser Mike Blick into a mass meeting of Camden members.
This helped not only to pull back NALGO members from solidàrising with NUPE on the one-day strike, but also to reverse the principled position of the branch executive of resisting the Council's attempts to introduce voluntary redundancy and redeployment.
The Executive thus found itself in the impossible position of being mandated to co-operate with the Council's attempts to reduce the workforce.
Rejecting this mandate, all but nine of the 40 member executive resigned last week.
They aim to stand again on the platform of no redeployment, no voluntary redundancies and support for the JSSC steering committee's plan for selective strike action and support for tenants' rate and rent strikes.
The UCATT leadership, dominated by Communist Party members and supporters, con-, tinues to vacillate between advocating all out indefinite strike action and complete inaction.
The shop stewards committee decided two weeks ago to take no action on March 4 and accept the "inevitable" loss of 200 jobs.
Since then, however, a meeting with council officers revealed the pathetic amounts being offered to those taking voluntary redundancy.
Indefinite strike
A leaflet circulated to all members on Tuesday speit out the dangers of VR.
The stewards meeting on Wednesday voted to propose indefinite strike action to a mass meeting on Tuesday 3 March.
Given the retreat by NALGO officials and the vacillation of the UCATT leadership, it is hardly surprising that the resolve of some NUPE stewards