Poeu Must Pick up the Gauntlet

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THE HIGH COURT is expected to grant an injunction under Tebbit's anti-union Act against the Post Office Engineering Union in its dispute with British Telecom, as we go to press.

But this ruling will be immediately followed up by another challenge to the POEU and its fight against BT management at Walton on Thames yesterday hauled in four POEU members who have been refusing to cross picket lines in the dispute, and gave them four days' notice that if they maintain this stance they will be sacked.

It is not yet clear whether this victimisation is a case of "selective action" by management, or whether it is simply the first reported case of a new attack on a national level.

But in either case such a move is a fundamental challenge to the By Ricky POEU. It must pick up the gauntlet and call an all-out national strike if and when the first member is sacked for honouring union picket lines: if not the fight is doomed.

In any event, the situation is sharpened by the impending High Court injunction, which could threaten the POEU with fines, seizure of assets, or - if defied -with the imprisonment of its leaders.

A number of union leaders have repeatedly pledged support to the POEU if they defy Tebbit's law, and the TUC policy is to support defiance of Tebbit's law, provided the union first approaches the TUC.

The stakes are high for BT workers: up to 100,000 jobs are at risk, both from the Tories' privatisation plans and the growing competition arising from the 1981 Telecoms Act.

At the moment, 2,000 engineers are suspended as a result of the work to rule at international service exchanges and blacking action against the interconnection of Project Mercury to the BT network.

The membership who are out are solid and look likely to remain so: repeated attempts by BT management to undermine the strength of the unions' campaign at the rank and file level have failed up to now.

Locked

The membership who have been locked out are being paid their average earnings out of the Union's strike fund, and so remain solid.

But the attitude of the Broad Left-led Executive to the dispute appears to be fixed rigidly on the notion of selective action sustained by a levy, while most members remain at work.

This has been recognised by management as the Achilles heel of the dispute. In what has become known as "Operation Black Hole", they put the POEU leadership to the test by escalating the number of suspensions -and thus threatening to bankrupt the dispute fund.

Sooner than come to grips with the problem and prepare for an escalation to all-out action, the Executive retreated in the face of this attack. In some places picket lines were lifted, in others POEU members were told to do work which was "not officially blacked"

Lawyers

Lawyers for Project Mercury said that the POEU's blacking work had alrcady cost the private consortium £1 million, and that the POFU's action wàs strangling the firm at birth. There is little doubt that the success of the secondary action against Mercury's financial backers, Barclays bank, Cable & Wireless, and BP, was also a major factor in the injunction served on the POEU last Monday.

But on the Thursday preceding the hearing of the injunction the POEU Broad Left-dominated NEC called off all action against Mercury's financial backers. Although the interconnection of Mercury is still blacked, this sign of weakness will be noticed by BT management, Project Mercury and the Tory government.

The NEC, embarrassed, and obviously covering themselves from the mass membership, stated in the industrial action bulletin issued on the Thursday that Mercury's backers 'might still be hit' by industrial action that was still being continued.

In fact the separation of the two forms of "blacking" - that against Mercury itself and that against its backers - appears to be purely in the heads of the POEU Executive.

I the court declares the OFU action unlawtul, then me ruling will apply to both forms of blacking. The POEU will have either to defy the law - and go all out for victory - or be the first union to climb down before the Tebbit Act, and abandon any real fight against privatisation.

Tough job There is no doubt that the Broad Left-dominated NEC faces a tough job as the union's membership have never faced such a threat before, and neither does the POEU have any tradition of militancy. For years, the union's leadership have been central to the right wing in the TUC and Labour Party. BT management and the Tory government realise this but they also realise the potential strength of the union if it does come qut to fight.

But the problem is that the Executive, sticking rigidly to a formula restricted to selective action backed by levies, is not preparing to mobilise that potential strength.

is the dole".

The tactics which the POEU have adopted were developed in the shorter working week fight of 1978: a fight which did not achieve the full 35 hour working week it was begun for.

The stakes are much higher now, and the opposition much stronger.

The appointment of Tebbit to take charge of privatisation shows how much the whole Tory economic policy turns upon it. BT is the first of the whole of the public sector facing privatisation.

At the moment the NEC is still thought to be considering calling for a national overtime ban. The time for such an intensification was last week: it is already overdue. It is essential that this step is now taken, to begin to involve the whole membership in a dispute crucial to their union.

No doubt, as a result of an overtime ban, further mass suspensions would follow. BT management's recent threats to șack any engineers not obeying any management instruction will almost certainly begin in that event. But it is essential that the Broad Left NEC breaks from the limitations of the present campaign; which BT and the courts can easily exploit, and begin to build for all-out action.

If management do carry out their threat, the Executive would have no alternative but-to go for an immediate nationwide all-out strike, irrespevtive of the certainty of the response. The only alternative would be complete collapse of the fight.