Water, power, gas: Journalists up agains Tebbit's straitiacket

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RON BROWN MP (Leith) writes: Militancy is building up again to the levels of the 1978-9 strike UNION leaders representing 29,000 water workers meet on Monday 17th to discuss industrial action on pay.

For years the water industry has been building up to a showdown on pay. In a warning shot for this year's struggle, water workers staged their first-ever national stoppage last October 18. They have now voted by an 80% majority to reject the employers' 4% offer.

And the possibility is there - if the union leaders will take it - of a powerful joint fight by workers in the three utility industries; gas, electricity, and water.

The 42,000 gas workers have recently turned down a 3.9% offer in reply to their 13% claim. And 90,000 electricity supply workers who have put in an 8% claim will also face the Tories' 4% public sector pay "norm' The water workers' claim is for a 15% rise. The National Water Council wan.. ted to offer 6% - which would not be enough! - but the government stepped in and knocked it down to 4%. NWC chairperson Robert Marshall has recently resigned over this and other issues, and describes the offer as "deplorable"!

Water workers' present basic rates range from £78.20 to £85.85, and average gross weekly earnings "are £133.88 (April 1982). The job of maintaining and servicing the water and sewer systems not only demands skill, but often means working under the worst conditions.

Britain's 130,000 miles of sewers are decaying fast as governments refuse to invest modernising them. Requiring frequent repair jobs, these sewers are dirty, dank, rat-infested, and sometimes as narrow as the narrowest of seams worked by coal miners.

There is more to the dispute than pay. The Tories plan to abolish the National Water Council as from September 1983, and tear up the national agreements. The

reorganisation, and the bonus schemes which are

already being pushed through, can only mean job cuts.

Possible plans for action being discussed include a rolling strike movement round the regions, to be followed rapidly by an all-out national strike. The potential strength of the water workers is huge: within days whole sections of industry could be shut down as water supplies fail, though workers plan to provide cover to maintain services as far as possible to hospitals and other non-industrial users.

But the question mark hangs over the union leadership - for the unions involved, GMWU, NUPE and TGWU, are after all some of the same unions as allowed the NHS workers' pay fight to expire in dribs and drabs. And the one-day strike last October 18 was arranged in a week when there were three other one-day strikes - health, British Telecom, steel - so as not to fall on the same day as any of them! of miles from home and owed £50,000 in back pay.

The vessel is registered in Cyprus, but owned by UK interests. The crew (Filipinos, Indonesians and by Jonathan Ham.

mond (president, National Union of Journalists, in a personal capacity).

ONE OF the provisions of the 1982 Employment Act outlaws secondary action. By changing one of the key factors in a trade dispute from 'workers and employers' to 'workers and their employer, ', the Act aims to make some traditional trade union action unlawful.

For instance, unions will be acting unlawfully if they take action against an employer whose own employees are not in dispute. This is relevant to a national NUJ dispute that may take place in February. • The Newspaper Society - the employers' organisation in the provincial newspaper industry with whom the NUJ bargains nationally - has offered chronically under-paid journalists a measly 2.2 to 3.2% in this goes ahead, and certain chapels settle with their managements at local level, there is in that newspaper no longer a dispute 'between workers and their employer' Even if they were minded, the bought-off journalists could not lawfully strike in support of their colleagues elsewhere - and would doubtless plead 'reasonable cause' if disciplined for not striking.

The removal of the phrase 'a dispute between workers and workers' could have a sinister significance over demarcation differences (often triggered off by management action) preceding, during or after the introduction of new technology.

The proposition that a dispute must be wholly or mainly' connected with listed collective bargaining issues gives the courts more scope for questioning a union's motives for taking industrial action.

Privatised

For example, if the government privatised certain Civil Service funetions - such as putting the organised, or those under particularly hard financial or other pressures, will cave in and return to work.

The employer can then sack the more militant, better organised workers remaining on strike.

In my own field of book publishing, this could have a significant effect. The NUJ currently has a campaign to end low pay in that area, which may involve individual chapels in strikes at some stage. The Publishers' Association is known to have a secret blacklist of NUJ activists, which it advises its members not to employ or - if they can do it without too much fuss -to get rid of.

I know of at least one . famous book publishing company whose personnel manager has a policy of victimising and harassing union activists with a view to driving them on to the dole queue. It does not require too much imagination to see how companies might make use of this legislation if the campaign gathers momentum.

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VEMBLEY l 8, BREN MES BAck BOLTON strike

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