Nalgo Jobs Fight
Socialist Press1976 1976-04-07Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 11 →
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After a fortnight's strike by manual workers in the Direct Works Dept., Knowsley Council have been forced to retreat and temporarily withdraw some 180 redundancy notices. As a consequence, 17 NALGO posts due to be chopped in the same depot have also been reprieved.
This was no tanks to the NALGO leadership who ensured a strike motion at a 500-strong General Meeting was rejected. The motion had called for action until the Council had withdrawn the redundancy threat.
Executive members at the General Meeting conspired to mislead the membership. On the one hand the chair was used to pre vent an amendment being put to the This would have added the demand of increased government expenditure to maintain all jobs and services as well as opening the books of the Counci to an elected committee of the trade unions with members working for Knowsley.
This last demand was particularly relevant as the Council and the local press had been waging a campaign against the Direct Works as a prelude to turning it over to private contractors.
Some executive members on the other hand deliberately lied about the redundancy threat and pursuaded members that strike action was premature.
Having succeeded in sabotaging a fight for jobs, NALGO members were then told that they could cross the picket lines of the manual workers! Some refused and were thereby left open to rictimisation To the extent that the manual workers in NUPE and UCATT fought successfully they would save not only their own jobs but the NALGO jobs that went with them. But while the manual workers struck, the NALGO leaders were closetted with the council planning the destruction of the 17 NALGO posts and the redeployment of the members elsewhere.
At the Executive meeting on March 29th, Frank Ward, an IS member on the Executive, proposed that the breathing space gained by the manual workers' strike should be used to bring the unions together for a joint defence of jobs.
This was defeated 9-13. Branch Secretary and Conservative Party member Frank dewall in opposing the cotion said: These people bate
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