Socialist Organiser

The weekly of the fused Workers Socialist League, July 1981 to April 1984

Workers Review

Socialist Organiser no. 139, 7 July 1983 · scan pp. 10–11 · about 828 words

Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 10 →

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 10

70p (plus 16p p&p) from WSL, PO Box laid in What in the World, and the shots weren't fired until Fashion.

Catching up with Bowie's enthusiasm was the problem with the group, but once they were relaxed the dancing took hold.

Bowie's songs in the past have always had a distancing or alienating effect.

Angst-ridden to the point of despair, the LP Scary Monsters and Super Creeps confronted that feeling and could not cope with it.

For him to sing these songs with his new found confidence and optimism, seemed almost an impossibility and occasionally I was not convinced.

Roughness of finish compensate for guilt in: 'Time and again, I tell myself I'm staying clear tonight But the little green wheels keep Special issue on struggle in the unions: also contains articles on workers' politics and national liberation, and the Stalinist state 'unions' 135, London N1 ODD inxthe iumiomsı?

15% OR WE STAY OUT NUPE

Scan page 11

the Youth Training Sch Fightir the YI rip-off YTS: off the dole queues - for a year's cheap labour and then back again...?

Decline in Manufacturing Youth Trainees and growth of YOPs SOME trade union bodies have adopted a position of simply refusing to cooperate with YTS.

The National Union of Journalists Annual Delegate Meeting urged its NEC to instruct NUJ chapels not to cooperate and to campaign for the TUC to cease its involvement. The National Graphical Association has enforced a policy of total non-cooperation with YTS.

Birmingham Trades Council has likewise said it will support any trade union branch opposing YTS. Its policy, however, also argues that the labour movement cannot simply refuse to recognise' YTS.

YTS will be a fact, come September, and the labour movement has a duty to fight for the interests of the hundreds of thousands of youth who will go into it.

So Birmingham Trades Council has formulated a list of conditions to fight for where YTS is introduced:

1. Topping-up of pay 2. Guaranteed jobs at of the scheme of Trai 8.. Employee status, proper grievance, disciplinary and complaints procedures 9. A minimum of 5 days off the job training on trade unionism and health and safety, to be provided by the TUC education service 10. Full employee rights under health and safety legislation. (At present YOP trainees are covered by some parts of the Health and Safety at Work Act, but the MSC insists that union safety reps cannot represent "non employees'.)

11. Right for trainees to make complaints through the careers service that referred them to the scheme or through a trade union 12. Every trainee to be given a card outlining his/her rights 13. Training of supervisors and trainers to be done in the public sector 14. No job substitution.

The Trades Council has also decided to lead a campaign among trainees, and to organise a conference on YTS once the scheme is in operation.

In South London, the Southwark Unemploved People's Action group has formulated the following list of conditions:

1. Guaranteed job at the end 2. Employee status for trainees 3. Relevant trade union invol vement at all levels - i.e. full collective bargaining over conditions and "topping-up' of wages to union rates 4. Training of a better standard than laid down by the MSC. Adequate staff to carry out training. Off-the-job general education. The training must end with a trade union approved qualification 5. Discrimination in favour of disadvantaged groups, ie. women and blacks 6. Youth trainee schemes to be accompanied by re-training schemes for adult workers Hackney Trades Council has put the following demands to the local Labour council:

1. Trainees' pay to be 'topped All manufacturing Engineering Decline in Manufacturin Manufacturing Trainees (excl. apprentices)

YOP entrants THE role of the MSC also looms large in the government's attempt to phase out the system of time-served apprenticeships. ICI set the pattern last year when it unilaterally repudiated the agreement it had with the AUEW.

Under that agreement it would normally have taken on 50 apprentices. Instead they took on 192 school leavers as trainees for one year.

DEPARUMENT

HEALTH SOCIAL SECURITY Sonar SONG manufacturing and engineering 1967 : 1973 1978 242.6 155.5 171.6 105.8 and grow 116.3 162.2 workers in intense competition with each other.

In selecting which 50 of the 192 young workers to retain it can be assumed that manifestations of independent thinking or a pronounced commitment to trade union and socialist principles will not score high marks. As a recent issue of Labour Research put it:

' 'The" net result will do Socialist Organiser no. 139 July 7 1983 Pa2:

1980 149.5 101.3 90.0 360.0 (000s). 1979 1981 1982 147.6 123.7 104.9 87.8 111.3 62.9 56.0 550.0 630.6 ticeships in a period of rapid technological change is to produce workers with out of date skills while guaranteeing shortages of the skills for which there is a demand. This is the reason why employers increasingly prefer flexible programmes.

Instead of making their stand

← Contents of Socialist Organiser no. 139

Something wrong on this page? Tell us →