Conference on Rayner

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60 unemployed activists met on April 17 in Birmingbam to discuss the fight against the Rayner Report.

The meeting, called by (the National Unemployed Workers Movement passed two resolutions. The first, from the NUWM, was for a campaign to end all harassment of the unemployed; for benefits as a right for all: a woman's right to work; restricted study for the nemployed; an end to racial categories and oring.

In Birmingham, it was reported, there has been a successful campaign by a number of organisations including the Indian Workers Association and Claimants Unions to encourage claimants not to have anything to do with the ethnic monitoring.

The second resolution, from the Federation of the Rayner Report as an attack on both claimants' rights and the jobs of civil servants employed in the DHSS and Department of Employment.

Ethnic

"We support the efforts of trade unionists to oppose the introduction of availability testing and ethnic monitoring, and urge CPSA and SCPS members to refuse to implement these procedures.

"We ask that CPSA and SCPS actively support claimants unions and unemployed workers groups in their demand for the repeal of the 1980 Social Security Act and its substitution by an individually-based, adequate, guaranteed minimum income, in or out of work, without means testing.

The meeting was a start in coordinating campaign activity and the NUWM bulletin will aim to continue the work.

Leicester posals were viewed with total dismay, by both the teachers and the local Chief Inspector, whose report on the probable effects of the cuts in the Borough's schools described them as "catastrophic.

The local National Union of Teachers felt that the role of a Labour Council was hardly to do the Tory government's job for them.

Public meetings called by the Barking and Dagenham Trade Union Committee Against the Cuts were very well attended by hundreds of people calling for the Council to give a lead to a fight against punitive Tory policies, but the Councillors who turned up told us we were living in cloud cuckoo land if we expected them to and the disco and creche organisation!

It quickly became obvious that the majority of parents were supporting us, many because they found out that four of the eleven comprehensive schools would lose their Sixth Forms; that nursery education would be seriously cut; that German, French, Geography, Chemistry, Computer Studies, Technical Drawing, Music, Remedial Classes and more would disappear across the sector; that capitation would be cut even further than before.

A TGWU driver, turned away by pickets, was suspended by the Council and the other drivers walked out and began picketing their own depots. We took large collecthe redeployment agreement and they had an undertaking not to misuse temporary contracts; so the strike was over.

Primary schools

We had 'gained' 104 jobs out of the 159; or, to put it another way, since Easter 1981, we had lost 134.

In addition, the Primary Sector came off worse than the Secondary, since only 36 of the 104 (plus seven to Special Schools) were saved for Primary Schools. Exactly which jobs and where is to be decided by the Working Party this term, of which half will be members of the NUT.

The figure of 134

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Claimants' Unions, said: "This meeting recognises

Contact: NUWM, 119 Maidstone Road,