Miners ban overtime

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October, and seem likely to move to strike action themselves in support of the pay claim, dependent on the outcome of "a delegate meeting in Manchester (Monday 24 October) of all Shell UK shop stewards. Incidentally, directors have been given a 17% pay increase'this year!

From Monday 24 October the National Association of Collierý Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) are withdrawing "safety coverage" at Monktonhall colliery in support of the five week NUM strike there over closure.

Since government moves to rescind the Fair Wages Resolution on September 21, described by them as ... irrelevant in modern conditions, was out of step with governmental thinking on market forces, it created an The injunction had been pursued under Norman Tebbit's 1982 anti-union laws. The failure to secure court intervention at this stage has plainly shocked hoth Mercury and BT. The sackings - designed as a brutal follow-up to the expected injunction - would have forced IN AN eleventh-hour out-ofcourt settlement prior to an Industrial Tribunal hearing, BL management have paid £8,000 compensation to sacked Cowley militant Alan Thornett.

Thornett is a nationally known Trotskyist, and had been a longstanding shop steward in the Cowley plant (which he helped to unionise), and was an elected militants should be maintaining the fight for a national ban on overtime and other policies which can spread the action to involve the whole membership and create conditions to repel the next, inevitable round of the bosses' offensive on their jobs and conditions. the event was ordered to pay £8,250 compensation instead.

The out-of-court £8,000 settlement in Thornett's case is therefore a clear admission of guilt by the company.

FRIDAY 28 October is the date, when delegates from all British Shipbuilders yards will be faced with the decision to recommend action against management attacks on jobs, wages and working conditions or give in and prepare themselves for 9,000 redundancies, a wage freeze, casual labour and privatisation.

At a shop stewards combine committee in Carlisle last Saturday, the reports coming back from the yards that had held mass meetings was that management's LAST Friday's special delegate conference of the National Union of Mineworkers, held in London, voted unanimously to begin a national overtime ban from October 31 in protest against the 5.2% pay offer made by the National Coal Board and the NCB's programme of pit closures.

The decision was another serious retreat from the fight to save jobs in the industry. The decision does nothing to support the miners at: Monktonhall in Scotland and Cronton in. Lancashire, who have been on strike for many weeks defending their jobs against closure.

In fact no specific decision at all was taken in support of those pits who had been told that their appeals for support would be considered at the conference and who now face a very serious problem of isolation. to the Shipbuilding Negotiating Committee on any action neces sary to achieve = realistic wage rise and also support for the previous decisions to oppose A delegation from Cronton which löbbied the conference was bitter that no lead had been given to the conference by the leadership of the NUM who put no recommendation at all.

Scargill, however, turned this failure of leadership into a virtue by saying that the overtime ban represented the grass roots reaction of miners against the closure There is, perhaps, some truth in that, but it only reemphasises that the responsibility of the leadership was to take that reaction, give it contidence and lead it towards some real action that does stand a chance of defending jobs.

The reaction of lan MacGregor to the overtime ban was predictably arrogant. He has stocks equal to six months production of the enforced redundancies.

The reports from some yards seem to indicate that there is room for discussion on management proposals if they come up g1 entire industry behind him and it is organised to give even longer cover at strategic points like power stations. He knows that he can sit back and see the worthlessness and divisive nature of the overtime ban do its job.

In true Edwardes style he said he was quite prepared to sit out the overtime ban and the only losers would be the miners at Christmas and he was very sorry for them. He said the "enormously generous" offer he had made would not be improved. "We have told the boys that it is the best we can do for themand it seems to me that it is going to take a little time for them to understand that."

If this style of management is going to be defeated in the coal mining industry the present retreat of the NUM leadership will have to be reversed. with an acceptable wage rise. This idea leaves room open for splits between the yards.

The issues of jobs, wages and working conditions have to be linked if the fightback is going to be effective.

Moves have already been made to take the Tyne ship repair workers out of the fight by getting them to take the redundancy money with an indication by the management planning to take over the yards and run them as a private concern, that they will get their jobs back.