Lift Engineers Work to Rule for 130%

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EETPU lift engineers are now in their third week of a national 40 hour work to rule in support of a 130% wage claim. This call for action on the long standing demand for £3 an hour came from the National Shop Stewards Committee in July.

The same meeting threw down the gauntiet to the union bureaucracy-that if adequate support was not given EETPU members in the lift industry would come off the check off system and form a break away union. This anger came direct from the sell-out of the 7-week strike in June and July of Otis workers against suspension.

Lift engineers pay levels are made up by long hours of overtime. With cut backs in the industry this overtime is threatened. To maintain living standards, therefore, much higher rates of pay must be secured.

The response of the Federation of Lift Engineers has been to ask for £3 for the top grade workers going down to £1.30 for mates.

Despite the derisory nature of this offer official support has been much less than full. employers.

The work to rule means that increasingly routine maintenance is not being carried out and only break downs are being seen to.

On the construction side, the employers face large penalties for failing to meet deadlines.

Lift engineers are planning to lobby the EETPU Conference on November 19 in Blackpool.

This claim can only be won if the work-to-rule is turned into all-out strike action, and a struggle taken up against the Lib-Lab government and the EETPU bureaucrats. * new and not the formation of a 'new' union is the task that confronts the lift engineers.

TGWU officials are remaining silent on the decision by Takiron (UK) to sack 12 workers including the IGWU Branch Secretary Lawrence Jortes-a founder member of the union in the factory.

Management claimed the men were 'redundant but have since begun recruiting new labour to take their place. Meanwhile immediate strike in support of Jones' reinstatement was squashed by TGWU District Officer Binding, who has proposed no. further action.

wage call Around 120 shop stewards from public sector unions in the Birmingham district attended a conference called on October 15 and adopted three virtually identical resolutions calling for a £55 minimum wage, protected against inflation through threshold payments.

Such payments, however, are not to be based on the assessment of trade union price committees, but on the government's Retail Price Index.

Each resolution spelled out a slightly different view of the way in which this claim should be pursued on a local level.

But none tackled the major

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