School cleaners fight cuts

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The dodges and manoeuvres used by the local leadership of the GMWU to head off any serious struggle against the cuts being imposed by the Humberside County Council were highlighted at two meetings of manual education workers in Hull.

At the Hull Education Branch 5 school cleaners meeting held on March 3 over 200 cleaners and college staff attended.

The meeting was informed of the extent of the cuts and redundancies in the Hull division of the Humberside County Council.

Adamant

All negotiations were over, and the County Council were adamant and would not be moved from their decision to implement cuts which would mean the loss of 200 manual jobs in Hull schools commencing on 15 April.

The union leadership gave details on how and where these cuts would take place, but gave no indication that they were going to give any lead in opposing these attacks.

When the Regional Organiser was asked from the floor what he was going to do about it, he replied:

*What is more to the point what are you going to do about it?"

hn.-. . .GMWU shop steward Margaret Nix, a Socialist Press supporter, pointed out that most of the members present were not activists and were asking for some kind of leadership from the platform.

This was followed by an embarrassed silence and when it became apparent that no leadership was forthcoming, Nix moved a motion calling for all-out strike action as being the only way to fight the cuts.

No venue This was seconded and was well received by the membership.

It was quickly pointed out by the platform that the decision to call strike action could only come from a mass meeting of all members of the branch.

When Nix called for a meeting of the whole membership, the platform got around this by saying there was no venue large enough to accomodate all the membership!

After some wrangling it was agreed to call a mass meeting of all the school cleaners and College staff.

This meeting was held on 9 March with over 400 members in attendance.

The Regional Organiser went through the same rigmarole, spending well over an hour giving details of how, when and where the cuts would take place..

When the meeting was finally thrown open to the floor, Margaret Nix again moved a motion calling for indefinite all out strike action to begin from 1 April to give time for other sections of Education Branch 5 to hold meetings to extend the action.

She also called for a lobby of the Education Committee meeting taking place on March 11 with the union providing transport.

Nix was then urged by the membership to speak from the platform, an indication of the feeling of support for the motion.

She pointed out the absolute necessity for strike action as being the only way to fight not only these cuts but all attacks in the public sector.

The motion was then discussed by the members with only one speaker being in dissent.

By this time it was quite clear that the resolution would be carried if put to the vote.

Then the bureaucrats moved in. At first they suggested that the motion was calling for a one-day token strike on 1 April.

They were corrected by Nix who pointed out that the motion called for immediate all out strike action-which was received with applause from the membership.

Then the Chairman asked Nix "who do you want to take part in the strike action?"

She replied all the membership of Education Branch 5.

This was a mistake, and the platform were quick to seize on it as a lifeline saying that there could not be a decision taken on strike action which would involve members not present such as caretakers and kitchen staff.

She tried motion saying they, the cleaners, would give a lead, but was blocked by the chair.

It was finally agreed to call another meeting of the whole membership as soon as possible. The union also agreed to lay on two buses for the lobby.

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