NUPE strike vote

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not profit.

*Maintaining a high standard of work.

*Acting as a check on outside contractors.

*Providing good, safe working conditions.

*Supplying skilled labour through apprentice schemes.

*Allowing a certain amount of accountability to tenants.

The Act will compel DLOs to work on the contracting system, requiring them to make a profit, and eventually this will lead to the removal of all the hard-won gains and benefits which DLOs represent. A rigid, bureaucratic standardisation will be imposed as the guide to the running of all types of work. It is the standard of private contractors, and its success is measured by profit.

Not only will the decline of DLO under the cuts open up a massive new market to contractors, it will remove the only practical demonstration that the contracting system is not the included in any account.

These accounts are required neither for convenience nor for information. They are trading accounts to show profit or loss. The rate of return prescribed by the DoE is 5% on capital. This was the rate achieved by the private sector two years ago. The CBI estimates a rate of return for the private sector in 1981 of 3%.

The Act requires that the accounts will be publicly available.

3. Disclosure of information. This has been dressed up in the guise of public accountability. However, it is quite clearly aimed at generally discrediting DLOs. And, specifically to assist private contractors' tendering strategies. It has been likened to publishing all DLO tender prices the week before the closing date.

The effect of the Act is twofold. Firstly, in the short term, it means a drive by local authorities towards profitability and In Coventry last week about 2,500 NUPE workers in schools and colleges attended a mass meeting.

This was in response to the Council's proposed package of cuts which deals most viciously with these workers who are already the lowest paid.

The Council want to break both national and local agreements by reducing the retainer fee paid during the school holidays.

This would reduce wages for full-time cleaners over the year by a massive 17% and for part-time workers by 11%.

In addition they want to reduce the number of lunch time assistants supervisory by 200.

It emerged in the discussion that NUPE has alrady made suggestions to the council for cuts which have saved them £800,000, but if NUPE thought this would make the Council deal kindly with them in this round of cuts they were sadly mistaken.

Instead it has clearly only whetted the Council's appetite to demand a further £300,000 cuts.

The most militant speeches which demanded immediate all-out strike action got the best response at the meeting, but by careful manoeuvring the branch secretary, Joe Little, ensured that the motion which was carried left the date of strike action deliberately vague and failed to stipulate whether it would be an all out strike or selective strikes.

Of course the implementation of the reduced retainer fee will be during the spring holidays when it is impossible to go on strike. This leaves any action to the beginning of the summer term-leaving the press and Council plenty of time to whip up anti-strike hysteria.

Nevertheless the massive turn out and overwhelming response of these workers is an encouraging start to the fight to prevent the Labour Council carrying out the Tories' cuts.

The second mass meeting at Tate and Lyle's Merseyside refinery on Tuesday 10 March saw an adaptation to demands embodied in a Workers Socialist League leaflet put into the refinery earlier in the morning.

The leaflet,_entitled "Ten questions for Tate and Lyle workers to ask Humphries and the Action Committee at today's mass meeting" detailed the actions necessary for the victory of the struggle.

They centred on occupation, blacking, a shop stewards' conference for the whole of the sugar industry, and the opening

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NORKER PICKET