Break Froma Hotel Wages

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The GMWU leadership will enter this week's meeting of the wages council for the hotel and catering industry hoping to put the seal on a month of wretched betrayal by confirming acceptance of a £4 rise negotiated at the last wages council.

Since that last meeting, however, this leadership has been confronted with a movement on wages around the £50 minimum claim which has challenged the whole structure of the wages council and the years of GMWU betrayal in the London region.

Focus We have reported throughout the strike at the London Metropole Hotel how this strike, now in its sixth week, has acted as a focus for the resentment of the low wages and poor conditions which have built up in the industry.

With the Metropole workers showing the way by taking strike action, every major GMWU branch in London, Centre, Trust House Forte, Rank and Grand Metropolitan, has taken up the claim over the last two months, coupling it with demands that the union should give full official support to the Metropole workers.

This move has forced the bureaucracy-in the form of full time officials Romp and Tilston-to pursue a conscious policy of sabotaging any prospect of a common claim and generalised strike action.

Scabbing

First with vicious attacks on Metropole strikers themselves, officially encouraging scabbing on the picket line and attempting to organise a new scab leadership within the hotel Romp and Tilston have been busy attempting to isolate each branch and prevent joint action.

In this policy they SET TO WAK?!?

SOLIDARITY INDEED.) CAREFUK!

WASTE ) Minmum Fr ALL and Catering had a limited success, going as far as appeasing Centre Hotel stewards by lodging a f20 across the board claim with managing director Edwards.

They were careful to ensure that any further discussion on the claim would take place on November 22after the wages council meeting and hopefully for them after they've driven the Metropole strikers back.

Negotiations

After sitting on the Grand Metropolitan claim for £50 since August, Romp and Tilston have so far succeeded in preventing an emergency branch meeting called to discuss the claim, and the situation at the Metropole. met on 22 November.

At the Grand Metropolitan no stage-managed negotiations must be allowed to enforce a miserly 10% increase. An immediate branch meeting must be convened where the £50 claim submitted in August backed up with the threat of strike action must be made binding in any future union negotiations.

It will be on the basis of this leadership that weaker organised groups like the THF branch or those that have grudgingly accepted the 10% like the Rank branch wil be mobilised into supporting actions.

In the meantime support has to be organised throughout the labour movement for

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