Salford Scandal

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THE Labour-controlled Salfurd City Council has taken over where Michael Edwardes left off.

It has torn up the existing work contracts with its 430 building and maintenance department workers (direct works), and intends to issue new eontracts individually to each worker. All union consultation and negotiation has been rejected, and when the new contract lands on a worker's doormat, he has ten days to accept, or he is sacked!

The •background to this incredible situation is a long wrangle over the bonus scheme in the BMD. Both the council management and the unions have accepted the need for a change in the bonuses to eradicate inefficiency, and a number of changes have been tried.

A joint work study exercise came up with a 46% allowance, while another trial scheme involved 25 to 30% allowances (to cover such things as travel to and from jobs). • Next, the council wanted to go for redundancies. 90 were put forward, and then withdrawn when the leader of the council, Les Hough, called in BMD reps and announced that the allowances would be cut to 5% across the board - i.e. about 24 minutes a day, for jobs which are often many miles away.

Already there has been outrage from the local labour movement. Eccles Constituency Labour Party and Salford Trades Council supported a lobby of the Labour group meeting last Monday.

A move to refer back the report on the BMD was however lost by 8 votes to 27.

Time is now short, as the new contracts will be out in the next couple of weeks.

We need to camnaign to kick out the traitors who are presently masquerading as 'Labour' councillors in Salford. As one of the stewards on the lobby told me, 'Never mind another Labour council, there isn't even a Tory council doing this to its direct works department"

DAVE LUNTS proposal to scrap the guaranteed week, and making the package one-year rather than a two-year deal.

A motion to reject this revised offer and call strike action. from November 1 drew a 16-16 tied vote on the JNC - at which point TGWU official Grenville Hawley used his casting vote against it. The JNC .will now go without any recommendation into the recalled delegate conference tomorrow (Thursday).

These developments will baffle many shop floor workers in BL, who have still not worked out what the original offer meant in real terms, and have not heard the case for rejection.

Such conditions have been deliberately created by Hawley and the right wing as the best basis to push