Hire U Vorkshire Ucatt

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On May 30th and 31st the UCATT Yorkshire Regional conference will meet in Scarborough. The agenda to some extent reflects the matters concerning the Yorkshire membership, but it is a disgrace that with two building workers in jail for picketing there is not one resolution calling for them to be freed.

The level of discontent with the UCATT leadership may be judged from the resolution which calls for a vote of no confidence in the UCATT Executive Committee. What in fact has the UCATT leadership done in defence of their members interests? The building industry has been one of the hardest hit by the economic crisis. The figures issued last month showed that 45% of the firms at the bankruptcy court were building firms. There are hundreds of thousands of building workers unemployed. Yet this present leadership has shown over the 1972 strike sell-out, the betrayal of the Shrewsbury 2, the refusal to defend the Eldon Square scaffolders in their struggle, and the recent wage agreement, that it is determined to submit at all times to the demands of the employers.

Although George Smith criticises the Labour government's lending of £500 million to the building societies as just being a subsidy to speculative house builders, and says how inadequate is the £350 million granted in borrowing rights to local authorities, he attempts to delude the membership by saying (p 41 of his address in the latest UCATT journal) "I am hopeful that further steps will be announced in the 1975 Budget"(!). Whereas, as we all know, the opposite happened. An estimated £1,321 million is to be cut from public spending in 1975/76 which will directly hit UCATT members employed by councils. Already in Leeds it has been claimed by the deputy leader of the Labour group, George Mudie that Tory cuts planned in Leeds threatened 500 council jobs. The increasing talk of "cutting costs" in Wakefield Metropolitan District has prompted the UCATT stewards - on 20th May - v agree that any threat of redunaancies has to be fought by a programme of work sharing with no loss of pay.

And yet another resolution puts forward a programme on which to fight redundancier, and wage-cutting It is also an an ver to the leadership's so-called uternatives of accep. ting one or the other. The resolutior calls ir (a) work sharing with no loss of pay to combat redundancies. UCATT members are not to blame for the economic crisis. It is part of the worldwide recession gripping the capitalist system. We all know that there is a crying need for houses, hospitals and schools, so there is no shortage of necessary work which could justify sacking any building workers. What stands in the way is the capitalist system of production only for profit. (b) for the sliding scale of wages to combat inflation. The UCATT wage claim must be renewed for

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