Post Office Engineers dery asset Strippers HANDS OFF BRITISH TELECOM By Ricky Houston

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Paper of the Socialist ,300 members of the Post Office Engineering Union are on trike or locked out by British Telecom in a full-scale confronation over Tory moves to privatise the giant corporation.

Last night the POEU's Broad Left-dominated National xecutive voted to step up their selective industrial action in efiance of management threats and moves by backers of the rivate network, Mercury, to seek a High Court injunction gainst the union.

The struggle has escalated from the POEU's long-standing oycott on interconnections between Mercury and the BT netrork to a "blacking" of work on BT installations in the main rms in the Mercury syndicate - Cable and Wireless, Barclays ank and BP.

It is this "secondary" action by the POEU which Mercury attempting to prevent, using the courts and the Prior and ebbit anti-union laws.

But last week's escalation of the action - to include a work › rule on international telephone services - has also been met y an increasingly aggressive stance from BT management, ho last week began suspensions, sackings and lock-out action gainst POEU members who refused to sign undertakings to ork normally.

Despite public claims that the engineers action has had ttle impact on services - partly through massive scabbing by lanagement on jobs normally done by the POEU - the inancial Times admitted on Tuesday that "BT acted swiftly, artly because of the surprising effectiveness of the industrial But it went on to stress the other reason:

Indeed this fight is the acid test of the resolve of the POEU adership to fight the Tory asset-stripping of British Telecom.

And if the Executive are under pressure from BT to cave in, *to pressur paign - which a week in strik they are also militant rank rally the stren tions against pi Ironically it (who tried las because an in Mercury injun‹ So far, Star by 21 votes t publicly for th this traditional hold both ame in many localit Both the ac focussed alm‹ informed and Aberdeen mer tions.

Although a endorsed the between those who have no the levy which This gap ci political offici order to split a Nevertheles cry from the writing "camp right wing lead Broad Left ma. e the left-led executive to cool down the cami is now going to cost the union about. £250,000 e pay."

under fire from an increasingly aware and and file to fight on, dety the injunction, and gth of the union in defence of jobs and condirivatisation, t is right wing General Secretary Bryan Stanley st month to get all industrial action called off junction was expected) who is named in the stion. iley - whose proposal for a retreat was defeated o 2 - has felt unable to do other than argue e escalation of the dispute: but the right wing in Ily conservative craft union retains a strong footongst full time officials and at local branch levels ties. ition against Mercury and the work-to-rule have ost exclusively on the well-organised, wellleft-wing led London branches, as well as nbers involved in the blacking of BP installaspecial conference of the whole union recently fight, there is a potentially dangerous gap : members embroiled in the dispute and those direct involvement except through payment of generated the £1.2 million strike fund. ould yet be exploited by Stanley, the union's er John Golding, and other right wingers, in nd weaken the action against the asset-strippers. s, the current level of the dispute is indeed a far pathetic handwringing, petition-signing, letter›aign" against privatisation waged by the old lership of the POEU prior to the election of the jority to the executive in June of this year.

Continued back page troul THE order went out from Tory Central Office: pack up your troubles, rejoice at the June 9 victory and for God's sake smile at the TV cameras.

But many Tory delegates will be grinning a hollow grin through gritted teeth as they come to terms with a far from perfect performance from the government since the landslide election win.

Thatcher's gang, which strode so confidently and comfortably over the prostrate bodies of the Labour leaders to a scarcely believable Parliamentary majority has since skidded over an embarrassing succession of banana skins - many of them of their own creation.

There was the shame and humiliation of the impregnably Tory House of Commons throwing out the restoration of hanging by a massive margin.

There has been a succession of disputes in which workers have brazenly cocked a snook at PUEU members' mass protest outside BT headquarters last week Happier days...

Norman Tebbit's supposedly ironclad anti-union laws.

The economic crisis continues with unbridled ferocity, driving unemployment relentlessly upwards, and forcing highly unpopContinued back

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EDITORIAL Time to wake up! no.150 Page

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