Hotel strike.... fight for a

Scan page 11

NUJ strike to The strike at the Hotel Metropole, Edgware Road, London, has reached its third week, surviving manhandling from management and treachery from the GMWU officials.

About 60 workers representing all grades at the hotel are still out, determined to fight on until their demands for a minimum wage are met.

Originally 208 members of the GMWU working at the hotel After nearly five months on the streets, action is to be taken to spread the Darlington closed shop dispute.

The NUJ is calling guerrilla strikes throughout the Westminster Press empire from November 1.

This action-instead of the firmer all out strikes-has been called so that the employers will not know just how long the NUJ strike fund will last. But unless the action is strongly taken and strongly supported by printers it will become nothing more than a token of support.

IRRESISTABLE

NATSOPA are certain to refuse to support further action after an outburst from General. Secretary Owen O'Brien, at the Printing Industries Committee of the TUC last week.

He said the NUJ should recognise that the IOJ was a union!

The call to spread the strike became irresistable as soon as the mediator published his report. He suggested that the Darlington chapel should return to work for a year and try to get on better with their management.

No window dressing y vas thought MARADOSTI The NITT offered owned b voted to October the giant Lonrho gro -di the strike on MoI day PROMISE They were demanding a minimum wage of f50 a week and £43.60 for service workers, and were backed by the full time official Gerry Tilston, who promised to make the strike official within three days.

Regional Officer, Edward Romp, told management that since there had been no union agreement under the fight.

When NUJ members overwhelmingly rejected the report in Darlington, the scene was set to step up the strike. NGA members Darlington, who are supporting the strike, said they would have been angry if it had been accepted and the NGA team at the PIC were forced to admit that their members did not want to return to work.

The working of the NUJ resolution can mean anything or nothing. If the guerrilla tactics are to mean token strikes the dispute will fade into oblivion. If enough pressure is to be put on Westminster Press to recognise the closed shop, then strikes of substantial duration are needed, leading to an all out shutdown of the entire newspaper network.

IT IS NOW CLEAR THAT the vote of Ford workers on the company's 12% pay offer is overwhelmingly favour acceptance.

The pay award, however, remains totally inadequate to defend the living standards of Ford workers.

Responsibility for this lies squarely with the union leadership who submitted a claim for a mere 15%, knowing full well that in negotiations this would be whittled down to near the government's 10% guidelines and that workers wnuld unt etrike for a difference of Phase 2, the 12-month apply.

But Romp and Tilston did a quick 180 degree turn within one day of the Department of the Employment saying that management were right to be invoking the 12 month rule.

The officials disbanded the picket lines and ordered the strikers to return to work, promising that there would be no official support.

----- pull-quotes -----

spread the wage