By Mike NALGO series of executive's trade hialisa one-day Ior starT and social services.
Called by the Trade Union which unions, in union Tory-controlled the votes schools, nursery and gramme. are national firmer required than workplace delegations North LaC top over cuts. Several of the indirectly cut wages.
attack marched which was White Paper on the drew Supplementary and recommended include:
"poverty line' points the entire £30m a year:
stop the wages of liable in law for will For earnings as at present.
Although march. The bringing packed with dangers. for discretionary benefits, äbolished, • week security stem.
position to Tucker, Southampton OVER eight hundred public sector and students marched in Winchester last Thursday to lobby Hampshire country council against its proposed euts in education Hampshire Joint Committee, the lobby was supported by all the public sector and a trades work.
Southampton, Portsmouth and Havant, and Wessex area The lobby had little effect on the council, which decided to raise the price of school meals to 50p, ban the sale of milk in and cutback the already education range to • reverse action. will be simply sending to lobby the council, as happened last Thursday. We should build for strike action.
And if we are to secure the support of industrial workers in the area, we will need an alternauve swalc g to trade union officials who spoke on the lobby said that they oppose rate increases, which Claimants under THE government has just produced a 'Reform of the • Benefits Scheme, and has introduced a Social Security Bill in Parliament. These proposals offer little to the five million people:
SS. . The changes:
*Knocking 20-30p a week off the AT supplementary benefits to bring these into line with National Insurance benefits. This will result in a loss to claimants of about *Denying supplementary benefits to school leavers until the end of the holiday following their last term at school, thus keeping them dependent on their parents for even longer.
maintaining them. *Benefits will be increased in line with inflation, rather than with prices there at. SOLIC advantages in the proposals, such as long-term rates after one year instead of the present two years, they are also The secret 'A Code', which allows is to be but the legislation which will replace it also abolishes several 0f* these benefits. At the same time, the Supplementary Benefits Commission is to go, removing even the fig leaf of 'independent' scrutiny of the social Claimants are not in a strong resist these measures.
That's why they need the support of court", and while we were sitting in the meeting management was issuing everyone on the shopfloor with their redundancy notices.
That was it.
Our first decision was that we'd work the 90 days' notice whether management liked it or not, and that wouldn't allow them to anything out of the factory. Practically the whole workforce was at the meeting which decided to occupy. We've got a very good product workforce which wants to figures management is giving out living in cloud cuckoo land. 'They're just not for real. We've got the people on the shopfloor who can pull this company round.
We're trying to point out to the company that we are a viable concern and that with our new 1980 product can make They've put out in the media that we have been disruptive and have had disputes. It's not true. We've operated with management all along the line. This is a stab in the back, and taking lying They've definitely hoodwinked us.
We've had redundancies before, in 1976-77 for example. We thought at that time that it was the best thing do because was saving majority of peoples' jobs.
We've realised that's not the right way. You get stabbed. You get killed. So anyone else who's in a position like us, don't accept redundancy. Fight it all the way!
As far as we're concerned, if any more factories close on Merseyside they may as well drop a bomb on it.
MARCH Wed Sat Sen 30 Camden Rd, London N1.
combine members management.
workers redundant.
many thousands more had been laid off. ONMONDAY 19 November BL management announced the dismissal of Derek Robinson, convenor of the British Leyland shop stewards combine. Three other; leading received official warnings Their crime was that they distributed a pamphlet attacking BL's plans to make at least 25,000 The victimisation led to a series of walk-outs and unofficial strikes. An example was a mass meeting at BL's Canley plant where 6,000 workers voted to take indefinite By 22 November 37,000 BL workers were on strike and A week after the sacking 5,000 people took part in a demonstration in Birmingham in support of Robinson. The same day the leadership of the Transport and General Workers Union said they intended making the. strike first. Robinson is & member of the AUEW. announced.
The next day Terry read on ... official but were waiting 'out of courtesy' for the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers to do so The next day the executive of the AUEW broke up their own meeting to have a secret one with BL boss Michael Edwardes. Led by right-wing president Terry Duffy the executive gave in to Edwardes. They announced their own internal enquiry into Robinson's activities and ordered their members to return to work. Robinson remains sacked but will be paid by BL until the results of the enquiry are BL said that even if the enquiry declared Robinson 'innocent' he would not be reinstated.
Duffy said Edwardes had threatened to close down BL for good if the strike had been made official. All employees at BL are now back at work.
A battle has been lost, but the war need not be. Now ROBINSON — no backing down from the fight WAIT