Varied races of bureaucracy Boost for Raindi strike We can stop pit closures Cunningham unemployeu Th ed

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18TMS and TGWU hureaucrats put their heads together Exploiting jobless Subscribe! Teacners THE Raindi dispute has been receiving amuch needed increase in publicity during recent weeks. First there came the television interview on ITV with the strikers and the boss of the factory. However, not much was explained of the strikers' point of view. Most of the item consisted of an interview with Raindi junior who was hard-pressed to justify the extremely low wages paid to the workers. He claimed that it was because they did not work hard enough.

The scabs now sacked by P.S. Raindi explained how they were receiving about £60-£80 per week and considered that they were now treated fairly. This contrasts with the £3 million profit made by Raindi last year, which was mentioned on the TV programme. This represne THE LEVEL of unemployment among teachers is high, especially so with the newlyqualified. At the same time teacher training institutions are being decimated.

But this coexists with under-staffing and cutbacks in the schools.

The struggle against closure of Croxteth comprehensive school in Liverpool - which began in the last week before the summer holidays, and is still continuing - shows, however, the possibility of the unemployed fighting alongside employed workers.

After a two year calnpaign of lobbying and petitioning, which successfully ents £200 profit per week!

However, some of the women strikers were able to explain how bad their pay is which did something to mitigate the biased reporting.

A second piece of publicity was a social organised for the strikers by the strike committee in collaboration with Banner Theatre. The evening was well attended by a couple of hundred people and over £200 was collected for the strike fund.

Ine Raindi strikers also spoke to a rally against the witch-hunt in the Labour Party, attended by many Labour Party members.

They said that the strike was a test case for all lowpala workers, and called tor mass picketing along the lines carried out at Grunwick.

BLOCK-Leaded, block-voting, boorish, bullying bureaucrats: the image of the official trade union leadership held by many rank and file militants - particularly those who have seen their leaders exposed in action -may be politically inadequate but is far from completely inaccurate.

Recent experiences have underlined the many ways and means whereby the official union apparatus ignores, or worse still, tramples under

foot or actively sabotages the struggles and demands of the rank and file.

There have been the spectacular 'set piece' national level betrayals: the eleventh hour sell-out of last November's BL strike for an offer worse than that before the strike began, and the TUC Finance and General Purposes Committee's 1 knifing of the ASLEF strike : this summer.

There have been the attempted betrayals w hich have not quite come o ff -such as the many and vi aried attempts by health u inion leaders, most no1 tably CoHSE leader Albert Si panswick, to wear down, dr efuse and demoralise the mara thon NHS pay fight and pre event an all-out confrontation THE recent revelations by the National Coal Board of a list of sixty pits which could close by 1990 should come as no surprise to anyone.

The existence of such a list has been known for some time, though the NCB have been reluctant, to say the least, in revealing details until the NUM wage claim was out of the way.

As well as the sixty pits which the NCB say could close through seam exhaustion, it has another list of 30 5 1 which could close for "economic reasons"

The effect of all this on the NUM will be to reduce because the reorganisation' of Liverpool schools by a Keith Joseph-imposed instruction, in the wake of the St Saviour's primaty school riot in Toxteth earlier this year, is threatening even more closures and amalgamations of schools.

The employment of all qualified teachers would enable much more personal tuition and take some of the stress out of teaching large and difficult classes. But the Tory/Liberal council proposals are to lop off the small sixth forms of former secondary moderns like Croxteth, which are supposedly 'unviable' because there is small tutorial group teachWing, and shove them all into

esque collective retreat by union officials from any action to block or defeat Tory anti-union legislation -leaving Fleet Street electricians' leader Sean Geraghty to the tender mercies of the High Court.

On the other hand there has been an equally gross collective drive by most union leaders for action to drive socialists from the

As we draw closer to grass roots level we see union bureaucrats acting in effect as an extension of management: in Cowley, TGWU disstrict secretary David Buckle allowed BL management to victimise deputy convenor Alan Inornett winoul issu- ithant iconing a single statement in his defence, but instead gave statements to management witch-hunting the campaign by TGWU stewards against Thornett's sacking.

In NUPE, Oxford area official Alf Collier, with no record whatever of struggle for action against public sector cuts affecting his members, launches a witch-hunt against prominent anti-cuts activist Anne Marie Sweeney, wheeling in right wing hand-raisers to vote for her suspension and possible expulsion from the union.

But the hostility of fulltime officials to rank and file militants is not entirely a matter of political differences. There are real material interests and pressures which shape the thinking and the actions of the union hierarchy.

NALGO general secretary

Geoffrey Drain, for instance, is due to retire. His job, it appears, is worth some fin Ann ner vear on ton. no its membership from its present 210,000 to about half that figure.

The disclosure of the list shows that the NCB had been deliberately misleading the miners in the run-up to the recent ballot. Whatever the tactical merits - or demerits — of linking the issues of closures and wages on the ballot paper, there can be no doubt. now in anybody's -mind that in principle Scargill was right in his actions.

The National Coal Board has seen the result of the ballot as a green light to go ahead with its closure plans, and also to attack the NUM at pit level.

sixth form colleges where class sizes will increase to a 'viable' level. Tutorials are only allowed in private schools and Oxbridge, not in working class Croxteth!

In contrast to the struggle in Croxteth, the unemployed locally ate being used to undermine union by the Tories and Liberals via the 'Return and Learn' scheme - which was the brainchild of local Liberal leader Trevor Jones, but is funded by the Manpower Services Commission Community Enterprise Scheme.

In this scheme, largely non-unionised teachers are paid £89 a week to teach undoubt, of substantial expense allowances for attendances at conferences and other top-level junketing.

His successor is not to be elected by the union's 800,000 members, but appointed by the NALGO NEC, and like Drain will hold office until retirement.

Inflated salaries are paid to most General Secretaries and full-time officials, but some of the gravy flows down the bureaucratic apparatus, to be lapped up by many members of top 'lay' committees in the form of expenses payments, luxury foreign 'fact-finding' trips and other perks.

The extent to which some of these place-men have come to identify their position with the perks is illuminated by the recent resignation of ACTT president Ron Bowey - angry at an economy measure which In Yorkshire, many pits are reporting an increase in disputes, as colliery managers put the knife in and twist it' as one NUM official put it.

At one colliery in Yorkshire the manager has even gone so far as to refuse payment under the incentive agreement, because the men Kave earned 'too much'!

Suddenly, after five years of operating the incentive scheme, after five years of NCB propaganda, saying the sky's the limit, miners are now being told there's a limit as between £25 and £30 a shift to be earned on incentive.

The pay and conditions of service are well below union levels, and a cheaper alternative to the established school sixth forms and Further Education colleges, where teachers and lecturers are paid the union rate.

This is clearly a dangerous trend towards dismantling the regular services, and is a good example of how the unemployed are unwittingly being used by the Community Enterprise Scheme to do the same work at a lower wage.

The demand must be raised for the scrapping of such schemes and the employment of these teach-.

eis by the Local Education Authorities at full union rates of pay. requires him to submit expenses claims for prior approval to general secretary Alan Sapper!

But the onset of the recession has cramped the style of some of the more trendy bureaucrats: Clive Jenkins' ASTMS, for example, having continued recklessly to budget on the assumption of a 6% annual increase in membership and to move accordingly into new, larger premises, has lost members and run into acute cash problems.

As a result, at the end ot last year ASIMS branch funds were seized under Rule by the union's central office, and there are plans to slash the union's wage bill by 28% in an across-the-board cutback in clerical staff -and even full-time officials!

Yet even in the midst of this chaos, the ASTMS bureaucracy has forged ahead Further moves are afoot.

There are as yet unconfirmed rumours that the government intends to de-nationalise the Selby complex once its starts up. The Tories have already indicated their willingness to hive off certain NCB operations, such as transport and stock-holding, and also to increase the numbers of men allowed to work in private (licensed from the NCB) mines from 30 to 100.

The way may already be paved for such moves. Miners who have applied to work at Selby have been refused if they are, or have been, branch committee members, branch officials, or otherwise active in the Rates: £5 for three months, f8.75 for six months, and £16 das a vaar • IDAA D 10 Bundle of five rach week: £12 for hree months.

Jundle of 10: £21 ior three months.

Name..

Address.

I endose £ To: Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL. and borrowed €100,000 from the banks - in order to re-lend it to the TUC at a substantially lower 'rate of interest.

What have all of these episodes got in common? Each is an aspect of the complex phenomenon which is the trade union bureaucracy in Britain.

Rising above their rank and file members, as a privileged, increasingly remote, parasitic and self-perpetuating layer within the labour movement, the bureaucracy has evolved its own characteristic political outlook, and its own technique for securing its power and influence.

In the next few weeks we will look in more detail at why the bureaucrats act as they do; why and how they have been able to get away with it so far; and just what we as socialists must do to fight back.

Watch this space!

by John In face of all this, the NUM Executive meets in December to discuss the situation, and another ballot, this time solely on closures, could be called. This is certainly what is needed. A clear statement to remove any confusion whatsoever.

South Wales and Yorkshire have already had area ballots on this subject, both showing massive opposition to any closures other than on grounds of seam exhaustion.

A clear national call for total opposition to pit closures can unite the NUM and show the NCB that we will not be dragged back into the Robens era of the '60s.

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