Circulars on everything the claim!

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On July 19-21 the demos can be bigger still SIX AUEW members are on strike for union recognition at Glendale Engineering, Hythe Road, London NW2.

The AUEW approached Giendale for recognition after recruiting seven of the ten workers (excluding the boss's family). But the management refused even to answer letters from the The union members walked out on Monday June 28, and have been picketing and turning back some suppliers. Some non-union suppliers are however still making deliveries.

The AUEW North London district committee endorsed the strike last Monday, and blacking of Glendale products is being sought.

Messages/money: Mick Woods, 76 Austen House, Cambridge Rd, London NW6 SLY. . THE June rail strike on London's underground succeeded in preventing the immediate introduction of rail timetables which would cut the peak service on most lines by up to 25%.

Union leaders and LT management • are now engaged in talks to find alternative ways of saving the money.

These seem bound to fail and LT railworkers could find themselves on strike again by the second week of August:

The peace deal signed by two of the three union executives, ASLEF and the white collar TSSA, included the condition that should the talks fail, the unions would allow LT to bring in the new timetables.

The NUR Executive rejected the deal because of this catch. Whether the peace cobbled together at the NUR conference included this commitment is unclear.

What is clear is that implementation will depend on the LT workers' willingness to resist.

The action - the first for more than a day for many years - gave rail workers considerable experience in how trade unions need to operate during a strike.

The basic strength of the strike was a deeply felt opposition to the cuts among rail union members.

The rail union leaders had consistently opposed the new timetables from the first.

Explain

But when it came to the day they had done little to explain the issues to their members or prepare them for strong and sustained action.

That this strength did not turn to a serious weakness is a measure both of the workers' attitude to the cuts and also the extent local "ASLEF and NUR branches were able to organise and run proper strike committees.

This experience should prove invaluable in future struggles.

• The London Transport Trade Union Defence Committee, which is the bureaucrats, called an all-out strike on the buses for this Monday on the correct assumption, as it turned out, that the rail dispute would be settled by then.

Garages, mainly in East London, came out on a one-day strike on Monday 28 June.

Although some rail strike committees visited local bus garages, calling for their support, the bus garages action was principally over impending bus cuts rather than in direct solidarity with fellow tube workers.

Effect

The effect of this action and the very fact that there was a rail strike, has forced London Transport to postpone its bus cuts from July 31 to the first week in September, for fear of provoking simultaneous bus and tube strikes. a campaign for a wage claim that will unite the lowest paid workers in these three unions. We must demand no less than restoration of real earnings to: the pre-1981 level which means something like a §20 per week increase. The claim must be for a flat rate increase. As in the CPSA, unions must call special delegate conferences to commit their unions against Megaw; and for strike action in 1983.

The CPSA special conference on pay is fixed for December so the left in CPSA is well placed to give Particular responsibility thus lies with the current Broad Left majority on the CPSA Executive.

They must be urged to reject not only the Megaw committee majority report, There is a strong basis for joint action around both the cuts and the pay offer (7% plus important strings for both bus and rail workers). LT workers need to repeat their oft-voiced demand for a recall of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee which met in Febraury to endorse the March 10 strike.

The decision to call this JSSC rests with the Defence Committee and since widespread demands for it have consistently been ignored by that committee it is impossible to say whether it will take place again, let alone be recalled on a regular basis which would make it much more the property of the members than the trade union leaders.

Unity in Action - a group of LT workers set up in March, which played a small but worthwhile role in the recent strike - is now working to bring together the local rail strike leaders and the best of the bus shop stewards to try to get them to meet together on a regular basis. but also the minority report signed by Boilermakers' general secretary John Chalmers and evidently inspired by top civil service full-timers.

The minority report looks back nostalgically at the old Pay Research Unit system, pleading plaintively that the unions never broke with it in the 25 years of its existence. It calls for more regular comparability studies, it hints at productivity payments for new technology, and suggests that an unspecified minimum wage could be introduced gradually.

It does not challenge the basic axiom of the majority report - that civil service workers are the first and easiest target when governments want to control wages.

Only the rank and file can prove Megaw wrong on that. "AS far as the official leadership are concerned" , Edinburgh COHSE shop steward Reg Bartlett told us, "they're playing it down. We're getting circulars about everything except the pay claim.

«Theaworkers are really looking for leadership. But they won't get it from the officials.

"So we have to fill the gap. Through Health Workers for the Full Claim we're flooding the hospitals locally with as much information as possible"

The June 23 one-day strike got the biggest response yet from the health workers, and working class solidarity action on a scale not seen for many years. But instead of pressing home the advantage, the TUC Health Services Committee on June 24 decided to leave any further coordinated action for nearly a month.

And the action has not just been delayed but also weakened. Most workers thought that three days action on July 19-21 obviously meant three days strike. But the TUC Helath Services Committee was careful to say "intensive nationwide industrial action" , not strike.

NUPE's National Executive is calling for a "three day strike with the maintenance of accident and emergency services and the immediate care of all inpatients". But the COHSE leadership is stressing that it is not calling or supporting a strike. The GMWU leaders also are not calling for strike action.

With such delay, and such leadership, there is an inevitable tendency for wires morale to sag. NUPE shop steward Anna Lunts put it like this: "There is such a long gap between now and the 19th that unless something is organised people will forget that we're even in dispute"

In Leicester, for example, the industrial holiday fortnight falls between now and the 19th, severely limiting what can be done in the way of building industrial support. In Coventry the three days July 19-21 themselves fall in the industrial holidays, and many hospital workers will be on holiday too.

But in many areas sectional action is continuing right through to the 19th, keeping up the momentum.

In Oxford, the transport drivers have been out since the 23rd, moving supplies only with trade union agteement. At Littlemore Hospital COHSE has decided to come out for three days despite the national leadership line.

In Coventry, the Central Sterile Supplies Department will be on strike from the 7th. The CSSD is also out indefinitely at Hope Hospital in Salford. In the Manchester area, switchboard operators at the Regional Health Authority and medical records staff at Oldham General are also out.

And work is also going ahead to get demonstrations and sympathy strikes on the 19th-21st. In Leicester, for example, a Trades Council demonstration is planned for the 21st; in Coventry, a Regional TUC demonstration for the 19th, in Islington, London, a trade union/Labour Party march and rally for the 21st.

PATR

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AUEW STRIKE