POEU must prepare all-out action on privatisation

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digest Unions representing more than 70,000 local authority building and civil engineering workers submitted a 15-point pay and conditions claim on October 25. which includes a "substantial" increase in basic rates, and moves towards a 35 hour working week from the present 39 hours and towards six weeks annual leave from the present four weeks entitlement.

NUPE and other health unions are mounting a series of actions in protest against staff cuts and privatisation plans in the NHS.

Staff are occupying two hospitals in North London - Hayes Cottage Hospital and Northwood and Pinner Hospital - both earmarked for closure on Monday October 31.

In Wakefield 1000 ambulance and ancillary staff took part in a total stand down for 15 minutes in protest at manpower reductions and privatisation by West Yorkshire metropolitan ambulance service.

In Dorset it was announced that maintenance and repairs of ambulances would go out to private tender after a ten-day notice period to staff.

In Lancashire, 37 jobs will go in the ambulance service by next March - and talks are to begin on a further 125 jobs.

In Greater Manchester, 73 jobs will be lost and 44 ambulances will be cut.

In Northumberland, 100 jobs and 19 ambulances are scheduled to go following cuts in emergency services in Sunderland, Washington and Herrington.

Ford made an opening pay offer worth 4.1%, comprising a 4% increase in basic rates and 5.5% rise in attendance allowances, to its 44,500 hourly paid workers on Friday October 28. Included was a rejection of a claim for an extra seven days holiday, and improvements in lay-off, sickness and pension schemes. The company package was rejected by unions who are claiming 15 to 16% increases on basic rates.

The Durham area of the NUM said it will freeze all stocks of coal (some five million tonnes) in the area when the national overtime ban begins. Support had been promised from TGWU in invoking the triple alliance of coal, rail and steel unions to stop coal being transported from the pit-head.

Strike action by all 2,800 Rolls Royce manual workers which started on Monday 24 October, in support of a 10% wage claim has stopped all production at the company's Pyms Lane car plant in Crewe. This first all-out strike action in 20 years is over the company's first and final offer of A "major decline in business confidence" over the prospects for economic recovery, showing that uncertainty in the UK's most buoyant region has grown strongly since the summer, is revealed in a company survey of manufacturing industry in London and the South. East. (The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry Economic Report and Survey: covering 247 manufacturing companies). MAJOR decisions on some tough issues hang over the heads of delegates to the reconvened conference of the Post Office Engineering Union this week.

The threat by British Telecom management to sack 19 engineers for refusing to cross picket lines has now been extended to a much larger number.

BT initially gave the first group of engineers a four-day deadline for the rack, timed to follow up the -pected High Court injunction against the union's "blacking" of work involving the private Project Mercury.

When the Court ruled in the ON Tuesday October 25 the Oxfordshire DHA abandoned attempts to hold its meeting after angry exchanges between DHA officers and 100 members of the public.

The Oxon Campaign for the Defence of the NHS, backed by the local JTUC and Trades Council, had called for a lobby of the DHA in order to protest at the latest round of staff cuts (77), privatisation, and a proposal to build a private hospital (BUPA) on NHS land.

Offensive But the lobby had a second purpose, as secretary of the Campaign, Michael Dulieu, explained, "we are not only defending Health Service facilities and jobs but also moving on to the offensive. One of our prime targets is the DHA itself.

"Its meetings are open to the public and we want the public to see just how their decisions are made. However, the room in which the Authority meets is too small to allow proper access.

The Campaign had organised a letter-writing protest through its affiliates, the JTUC and Trades Council asking that the DHA meeting be held in a more public place and at a time when working people could attend.

Both requests were refused. After the lobby, whilst the DHA members were in another part of force the union's leadership switch from its rigid schema partial, selective action.

There will almost certainly be an emergency resolution from the NEC to the conference on this issue: but to judge from the NEC's unwillingness to reach the more militant proposals on the agenda at the September Special Conference, they seem unlikely to propose all-out strike action or preparation for it.

While it seems that the mood at the Special Conference could have led to the defeat of such an escalation of the struggle, the very real threat of sackings might now change matters. the Chair tells us that they just do as they are told. We don't believe this and will be pressurising them in operate in a more public arena. They teli us we can only listen and not participate, but unce you actually get people in there listening to the ways in which they sweep away a third of Oxfordshire's family planning facilities, listening to the way in which they discover that the But in any event the present strategy of running selective action - in which members in dispute are paid their full average take-home pay through a strike fund raised from a compulsory levy on the whole membership - must be reassessed.

Its obvious limitations have already been exploited by BT multiply the numbers of POEU members in dispute, and thus bankrupt the strike fund.

Last week's decision by the NEC to step up the fight, the NUR's decision to black Mercury lines along the rail network, and the beginning of industrial action by UCW telephone operators clearly indicate the need to go beyond the present limitations of the dispute.

The twin policies of restructuring the numbers involved in the fight (and thereby largely confining action to London) and paying full average earnings threaten to strangle the POEU's struggle against privatisation which, though not the only topic on the agenda, is the most weighty item before the delegates.

Many of the other conference issues can be directly linked into the Tories' privatistion plans -such as job threats facing the POEU through the introduction of new technology. This has led a number of branches to table propositions calling for a shorter working week; some local disputes over job levels have already taken place over the past year.

Area reorganisation is another issue for POEU members in BT which can be directly linked with privatisation in a number of ways.

The enormity of the struggle the POEU faces is now becoming apparent as every day brings further developments in the hardening of BT management's stance and new threats to the union's membership currently taking action.

But the industrial action has been slow to increase and spread outside of London although during the last week this has changed.

However if the POEU are to win, then the present selective action must be used not as a tactic in itself but to prepare for all out strike.

That is not an easy task for a union with the POEU's history: but nevertheless a necessary one.

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