Lambeth council opts Lampetn council to fight workers
Socialist Organiser1983 1983-10-27Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
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Socialist Labour socialist Fightthe Join the ORGANISER Party ORGANISER hunt Scargill gets it right Inside Les LOCAL authority residential workers have finally been goaded into fighting for payments which every other worker in the land would expect as of right and have been met with -a half-hearted rejection.
Socialists might expect lettwing Labour councils to give a lead in such a situation - and indeed they have. They are showing Tory councils how to fight workers with scab labour (Strathclyde and Southwark) and with spurious offers of negotiations, coupled with -a crackdown on NAGLO shop floor activities and a tactic of divide and rule (Lambeth).
In Lambeth, NALGO has attempted to get local negotiations, but the council has instead offered negotiations witn the Association of London Authorities, on an offer which they will not reveal.
Understandably NALGO has turned this down, since the ALA is not a recognised negotiating body and has no role in the National Joint Council structure.
Pressure to open local negotiations has included closing unstaffed children's homes, disrupting council committee meetings (with a sometimes violent response), as well as a onc-day strike with a magnificent contingent of 400 for a lobby of the national negotiations on October 17.
NALGO is now balloting members on non-cooperation with councillors. In response the council has imposed a literal translation of the trade union facilitics agreement, so all union meetings in worktime must have prior agreement - and no agreenient is forthcoming for meetings This is contrary to established custom and practice over several years. The council even tried to discipline a leading NALGO convenor, who insisted on defending his members' interests over an "unauthorised" shop meeting.
The reason for this behaviour has come out in two ways firstly in a letter to NALGO members urging them not to boycott councillors, the council refers to the great cost of the larg Q. Harry Sloan Secondly, in a crude attempt to divide manuat from white collar workers, the council has told manual unions that granting the claim would mean manual redundancies.
In other words, given the choice of fighting the Tories or the residential workers a leading left wing Labour council chooses to fight one of the most exploited groups of workers.
NUM 1 Cuts Women By Harry Kent's Sloan appeal to
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