Buckton runs from pay fight

Scan page 10

WORKER S BRARICH DRA TOWU OFFICIALSTAIKE SHAKERS TGWU FOR HAUSES STEAK - OFFİCIALSTKKE TRADE UNON RECOGNITION A FOR HOUSES SARNERS STEAK TRACE UNIS RECOGNITKI 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 reactionary positions 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 PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report 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.

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

TGWU ATEWATOMAL