[TUC Health Services Committee Albert Spanswick stonewalls as…]

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TUC Health Services Committee Albert Spanswick stonewalls as rank and file activists demand action TUC Health Services Committee Albert Spanswic immediate action if any trade unionists is jailed under the or the Full Claim' - demanding all-out Tebbit laws, and an NGA motion insisting that the TUC all for a 24-hour general strike. And many 'fighting' fund should not be used to pay legal fees arising Its will join the lobby of the TUC on MonThe reality is that the vast majority of union leaders are anding that the TUC gets off its knees and opposed to taking any action at all against the Thatcher gov- h the Tory government. This means firmernment. That is also why the health service pay dispute - e of the courts to fight the Tebb Bill, despite the inescapable militancy and tenacity of 700,000 : all levels with this vicious unir ng union members - has been allowed to drag on for five months, with the wave of solidarity strikes in other industries Last week's meeting of TUC health unions once again brushed aside resolutions for all-out strike action and for a 24 hour general strike, and failed to take advantage of the two-to-one ballot rejection of the Tory pay offer by the non-union Royal College of Nursing. Instead it limply called yet But this did not go unopposed. Outside was a vocal lobby of 100 health workers organised by the rank and file group 24-HR GENERA i rank Wol inion temb will! o for ting g all nent I stre ision a 24 of tr ictior 'ories le co

Lancashire (0942 877296)

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stonewalls as and file activists demand action J 'Health rkers fo strike ac and a c health u militan from the new legislation. day Sep per 6.

They be dem: gears up war wit ly rejec any us breakin! links at governn , and t fighting ngth of the working class. curbed by NHS union bureaucrats. A dec i for all- out action by the NHS call for hour gi eneral strike in defisupport ne healt th workers, could offensiv giving a powerful Ir smashing the power of the unions. other se Is now € entering the The T s can be i defeater* another one-day stoppage.

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Socialist Organiser no.98 September 2 1982 Page 2 lLabour wich EVEN before this year's A FURORE has been caused in the ranks of the British Communist Party, and among its fellow-travellers, by an article in the September issue of the CP magazine Marxism Today - or, rather, by quotations in the Daily iS Mirror from the article.

The article, "The Unions Caught on the Ebb-Tide'. ', by Tony Lane, is about the current state of the trade Most of the article is noncontroversial. But at the end it discusses the shop stewards' movement. "The move towards company bargaining with shop steward participation has gained a nêw clientele for the British Rail breakfast, as shop floor representatives have sat cheek by jowl with managers on to London"

"Here we are simply observing the creation of a new working-class elite which has the opportunity (and too often takes it of sharing in the expense account syndrome: the franchise of perks and fiddles has been widened"

It says some stewards use their positions to become foremen and even personnel managers. "Other" stewards simply use the role as a means to an end: an easy ite, an opportunity to get off the job and out of the plant with spurious excuses of 'union business'...

The article goes on to say that this produces cynicism in the membership.

Much of this is an accurate account of how the employers sometimes bureaucratise even the lowest level of the trade unions. The struggle against such

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Organıser ORES

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