Water Workers Turn
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-01-27Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 8 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 8
THE water workers' strike is a struggle directly against the Tory government.
The Tories intervened right at the start to push the employers' offer down to 4 per cent. And they are also pushing through legislation to abolish the National Water Council as from September 1983.
This will mean that all the present national agreements will be torn up, to be replaced by regional agreements. Jobs and conditions will be at threat across the board.
And wage negotiations are to be regional, not national. In this way the Tories hope to From the local water workers' strike in the north-west in 1979 the state machine concluded that "as long as the strike was localised, and as long as managerial and supervisory staff kept working, such a strike could be beaten". But they're not so sure about a national strike!
What the water workers face is only another application of the Tories' general strategy:
*To 'sweat out' the crisis, using unemployment as a weapon to bludgeon union organisation and to force wages down and profits UP To use public sector workers as a pacesetter in keeping wages below price inflation, with the current 4 per cent norm;
*To chop public services, with the aim of redirecting resources to private profit.
United nationally, the water workers are strong - strong enough to defeat the Tories' plans. Their strength could be doubled by a common front with gas and power workers.
Both these groups have pay claims confronting the Tories' 4 per cent norm - 13% for the gas workers, 8% for power. The gas workers have already turned down a 3.9 per cent offer.
By coming out now alongside the water working class strategy which, with the aid of the slump and the feebleness of the top trade union leaders, has scored far too many successes recently.
The Tories could even be forced into an early election.
Some local Labour Parties are already organising to support the water workers. The whole labour movement, including the national Labour Party and TUC leadership, should be throwing its weight behind the
----- pull-quotes -----
break up the tremendous power of water workers united nationally.
workers, they could win their claims - and deal a devastating blow to the Tories' anti-