New Heathrow Claim Submitted

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this year won substantial the shift pay claim. The A lour week strike earuer uclay VYCL LIC pay wuL Heathrow engineers mass meeting last April Interviewed 01 television last week one member of the icketbusting Special Patrol Group described Grunwick pickets as "sub-human"

This, of course, is the SPG's excuse for their brutal assaults carried out on last British Airways are expected today (16 November) to offer their engineering employees at Heathrow a 10% rise and "self-financing" productivity deal with effect from January 1978.

This offer will be in response to a claim submitted by the Joint Shop Stewards Committees of the Overseas and European Divisions for a 25% increase in basic pay; an extra five days holiday a year; a reduction of the working week by 2½ hours; London weighting increases and consolidation of Phase One and Two payments into basic pay.

Shift pay

The engineers are also insisting that the substantial shift pay award made earlier this year and due for payment from January be paid in full without prejudicing this new claim.

Moreover, union officials are due to sign an agreement today giving engineering workers incremental increases totalling £210 over three years as opposed to the 70p they receive at present. This increment plan is also due to start in January.

It engineering workers are to win even a fraction of this money they cannot avoid a confrontation not only with British Airways but with the Lib-Lab coalition government who have clearly instructed employers in the public sector to offer no more than 10% and, where appropriate job-slashing "self-financing" productivity deals.

Rejected

The AUEW engineers have however already rejected attempts to make pay rises conditional on a productivity British Airways insisted earlier this year that they only increase shift nav on the condition that negotiations began on new shift patterns but were subsequently forced to concede the shift claim unconditionally.

Not paid The question now confronting engineers at Heathrow is how to respond to the British Airways offer. increases in shift pay but not a penny of this increase has yet been paid.

If British Airways try to include the shift pay and increments within the 10% offer this will give an actual increase on basic rates of well This would be more than inadequate for the shift workers but for the day workers would represent a cut in real incomes of more called on workers to accept a 10% offer and go for fringe benefits and a productivity Delay An AUEW shop steward told Socialist Press that as far as he was concerned they wanted their claim in full. If British Airways then wanted to negotiate a productivity deal that would be a different matter.

There has been enough daloo aar tha narment of Joint Shop Stewards Committees in Overseas Division and European Division must now meet and draw up plans for strike action capable of winning the claim in full.

They should also appeal to the other 55,000 workers on the airport to press ahead with simultaneous strike action in support of their own claims some of which are larger even than those of the engineers.

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PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report PHOTO: Johr