Moostrial News Heathrow Pay: Strike Vote

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Heathrow engineers' strike meeting, April this year.

Shift workers employed in the engineering and maintenance section of British Airways at Heathrow Airport will meet on Friday to vote on a resolution for strike action from Monday 25 July.

Since the AUEW strike at the Airport in support of the claim last April, there has been little progress.

The strike ended when management agreed to negotiate the question of shift pay claim without insisting that payment should be based on the introduction of new shitt patterns.

CHANGED

But once the strike was over they changed their position and made their offer on shift pay which conceded most of the workers' demands, conditional on the unions accepting new shift patterns.

A totally ineffective one-shift-aweek strike was initiated by the shop stewards and backed by a mass meeting but the action only lasted two weeks.

Last week, at the first ever meeting of stewards from all unions represented in the engineering and maintenance section of British Airways -the AUEW, GWU and EETPU- a motion calling for strike action at a time to be decided was amended to fix the date for strike action as next Monday.

If Friday's mass meeting endorses the stewards' recommendation, the strike could have very important consequences.

The government has a declared aim of limiting increases in average earnings over the next year to 10% and will clearly seek to hold wage increases down to that level in the public sector of which British Airways is a part.

However, with British Airways lacing their busiest season, the strike will undoubtedly put enormous pressure on management.

The strike would also certainly open up the whole question of the struggle for large pay increases since the substantial amounts involved in the shift pay claim come on top of a Stage Two settlement agreed at the beginning of the year.

15700 DESPITE LARGE LOBBY and a 17,000 name petition, the Liverpool Area Health Authority decided at a special meeting on 15 July to go ahead with the closure of Mill Road Maternity Hospital.

Only 11 out of 24 AHA members bothered to turn up to the meeting, and the vote was only carried by a majority of one.

This decision reflects both the manifest inadequacy of the maternity units at Sefton General and Broadgreen where patients are to be transferred and also strong pressure from the unions and even consultants to resist the closure.

Since the Liverpool AHA decided to carry on with its policy of cut-backs in all hospitals, NOPE has staged two lightning 24-hour strikes.

However, on the Mill Road issue, there has been a damaging public disagreement between Colin Barnett, NUPE official, and the Mill Road Action Committee.

Barnett announced that workers would stage a work-in if the Mill Road closure went ahead. But the Action Committee said they had never considered this.

The responsibility for this confusion rests with Barnett, who had not called a meeting of the Liverpool Steering Committee, composed of 40 stewards from various unions, for three weeks, and resists any suggestions to elect a committee which can call meetings and keep all members informed.

Further, he ignored the policy of the Steering Committee to demand that the AHA reveals its plans to a committee of trade unionists.

Full discussion must urgently take place with the Mill Road Action Committee and other stewards in the area, so that plans for a work-in at Mill Road can be drawn up.