How Left Is the Aslef Leadership?

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Kings Cross ASLEF THE FIRST all-out national rail strike since 1955 is now set to take place on August 31.

The strike call has given the ASLEF and NUR leaderships virtually a whole month to work out compromise with the British Railways Board.

Record

Weighell's record as an out-and-out right winger in the trade union movement who has sold thousands of his members jobs in recent years is well known.

But the ASLEF executive is widely regarded as militant and left wing. (They committed the union to support Benn in the Labour Party deputy leadership contest very early in Benn's campaign).

Their record is worth examining.

In May of this year, there was industrial action on the Southern Region, concentrated at Tunbridge Wells depot. Services were threatened with severe cuts, which would have meant a cut in wages of up to £32 per week for a driver at the depot.

NUR and ASLEF members developed a policy of joint action and decided to ASLEF's Buckton come out on alternate days, thereby stopping the job but ensuring that there was no great loss of pay. Management responded by suspending the guaranteed week.

The ASLEF EC who declared verbal support for the action, refused to make the dispute official, until under considerable pressure they called for an official one day strike.

As the strike day drew closer the EC went into negotiation with management and reached a decision. Not only was the one-day strike called off, but the guaranteed week agreement was thrown out the window!

At the same time, other depots through BR were involved in consultation with local management over the new summer rosters. The new timetables meant cuts in service at neariy every passenger depot in the country.

The EC drew up a directive calling on Local Department Committees (LDCs) to Work to the old rosters, thereby refusing to accept the cuts. This directive was withheld for nearly two weeks before it reached the depots.

• Meanwhile, LDCs were instructed to pull out of consultation over the new rosters, and even this instruction was not uniformly applied. Some depots remained in consultation, others pulled out and some depots were moving into dispute over the new workings.

Depots

By the time the directive arrived at the depots, the EC had issued new instructions completely contradicting. the original directive. LDCs were to get back into consultation, accept the new rosters and men were to timetable. The cuts were allowed in through the back door.

Without doubt, fusion in order to prevent the fight against the cuts from spreading beyond the Southern Region.

Up to that time, ASLEF was committed to a policy of opposing the cuts, but the EC were not held down to a formal position of industrial action to defend jobs and services. This position was clarified at the union conference held in June.

At the conference, the EC was completely outmanoeuvred by the rank and file delegates and the union was committed to taking "forms of industrial action" against the cuts. Not perhaps NUR hell but no doubt that it involved action against the cuts.

The EC stated that it was just a matter of days before they would meet and decide how and when to put that policy into action. ASLEF members are still waiting.

At the recall delegate conference held at the end of June, the closure of the Manchester-Sheffield electrified line (MSW) was imminent. An independent inquiry had concluded its investigation in Sheffield and its findings were that the MSW should remain open. The BRB responded by announcing that it would close.

Lacks

The recall conference was faced with a specific issue over which the new union policy could be tested - and nothing was done about it at all.

The MSW, opened only a few years ago at considerable cost to BR, will close without a fight on the part of ASLEF.

A number of depots and mass meetings up and down the country have now expressed support for the action. These rank and file members show a determination to go into a national strike and win which the EC, on past performance, lacks.

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