Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

Buckton runs from pay fight

Socialist Press no. 89, 1 March 1978 · scan p. 2 · about 562 words

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OFFICIALSTRKE increased bonus payments.

We support any section of workers prepared to fight the employer for an improvement of wages and conditions.

ASLEF leaders have stressed repeatedly that they are seeking increased bonuses equal to those agreed for NUR pay train guards-and not fighting to hold up or block those increases.

For this reason workers should brush aside the press hullabaloo and confusionmongering and the vicious already faced lock-outs of short periods and a general wave of lock-outs is now expected against chapels which have increased the severity of their sanctions.

They must demand that no more local settlements are permitted and that national action be called if a wave of lock-outs takes place.

Chapels have won the right to make local claims and must unite to ensure that wage claims are submitted and fought for, not by negotiating phony productivity agreements, but by combating wage controls head on and demanding wage rises to restore and retain living standards.

It is necessary to fight for wage rises to match inflation and for elected committees of workers, and working class unemployed and housewives, to dictate what rises are necessary.

Primary

But the importance of the present struggle must not be underestimated. Although it takes the form of a prelimi nary struggle having its roots in a seemingly secondary question of backdating, the employers have chosen to make it an issue of primary importance in the continuing campaign to destroy the NUJ and prop up the weak and ineffectual company union, the Institute of Journalists.

NUJ members must therefore be prepared to fight this battle through as if the rights already won by the union depended on it.

DAY 1-INTRODUCTION OUR TASK IS TO ADVANCE THE RIGHTS OF WORKING PEDPLE! TUC DAY 4 AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS, YOU MAY HAVE TO IJSF A ONE-DAY STRIKE... RAY SUMMED IT UP WELL... hm côn TUC MORNING Bacchy Assembly Plant. O'FISHALL : reactionary positior s argued by NUR leader Sid Weighell, and support the ASLEF action.

But at the same time it is necessary to see the way ASLEF leader Buckton has used the token strike on this issue to duck the central issue of the ASLEF pay review.

Buckton was one of the TUC 'lefts' who sounded off verbally last year against any Phase 3 of wage control.

He went as far as voting against a Phase 3 at the TUC, and was one of the 17 union bureaucrats pressured into voting in support of the firemen's strike in the December meeting of the TUC General But Buckton had no intention of applying these words and gestures to his own union.

Despite an ASLEF pay claim calling for 30-40% increases, Buckton-who sat on his hands while the firemen were defeated by the Lib-Lab strike breakers-has made no call or preparation Ray Buckton for serious action.

The series of token strikes outlined by ASLEF are completely inadequate, and have been divorced from the pay claim itself.

Train drivers must demand that these actions are immediately turned into a full-scale stoppage in support of the full 30-40% pay claim, and call on NUR members-whose union conference drew up a 63% claim which has been brushed aside by Weighellto take simultaneous action to win their own claim.

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WELCOME BROTHERS & SISTERS! I'M NO EMPEROR- JUST A SOLDIER IN THE GREAT ARMY OF LABOUR.

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 89, 1 March 1978