[HOSPITAL I ROAN Management at St Mary's Hospital…]

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HOSPITAL I ROAN Management at St Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road, London W9, have pressed ahead with plans to close two wards - but found the workers' fightback alive and * Messages/money: c/o TGWU office, St Mary's Hospital, Harrow Road sa London W9.

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Mass pickets: every Monday morning, 7am to 10am. PHILIP WOLMUTH (NPCD) PHIL (NPCD) THE THREE Ford plants at Halewood have voted overwhelmingly to strike in answer to the call by the union negotiators for all-out strike from January 5.

Ford offered a wagectting 7.4 per cent wage increase' (just over half the current rate of inflation). Even that miserable offer they insisted on tying to a five point 'efficiency improvement' plan which would involve the scrapping of local agreements where they conflict with the company's 5 point programme for 'mobility and flexibility' between jobs and grades - that is, for Hugh STIRLING Unemployed Workers' Association have been leafletting and demonstrating outside the Job Centre, the Claims office and the DHSS office in protest at ten social security snoopers being drafted into the Stirling area as from Monday November 30.

The investigators thought that they would just walk over us without protest, but we have made this quite clear - that we an increase in exploitation.

The offer sets January 1983 as the date for a one hour reduction in the working week, to 39 hours, dependent on improvements in "efficiency'.

Ford's offer is thus a wage cut, plus worsening standards, plus loss of what little control over their working lives Ford workers have now.

The company is intransigent. When the determinedly non-militant union negotiators offered their own plan to 'improve efficiency' as a basis for negotiating. The company countered with the aig unemployed and the sick for the sake of a ruling class whose system is so clapped out that they can only resort to the law courts, police and army to carry out their sick policies.

For those who experience this policy of snooping, we say, "Inform your members of the Tory threats by telling them:

"If you are asked to attend a Social Security interview and are confronted by two SS officers, then ask if you can have an independent witness available.

"If you are refused, five points, which were not negotiable, and on acceptance of which the miserable 7.4 per cent pay offer depended.

A firm decision for a national strike will depend on votes by 45,000 other Ford workers, on Wednesday as we go to press.

With the miners' decision to reject the Coal Board offer and to call a conference to plan strike action, it may yet prove a warm winter for Mrs Thatcher and her government.

JOHN O'MAHONY Hugh McClung AT THE advice of the local Trades Council, the Stirling Unemployed Workers'

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