Campaign for Gay Rights

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•fighting in the Labour movement for lesbian

¡To join or affiliate, write to Chris Richardson, 21 ]Devonshire Promenade, Lenton, Nottingham NG7 I2DS. £5 for individuals, or for affiliated organi ¡tions, per 1,000 members. £2 for low-waged indivi¡duals. £1 for unwaged. Add 50p if you want the special issue of Gay Socialist. members.

500 NALGO members, residential workers and other council workers striking to support them, lobbied a meeting of the London Whitley Council on November 10 to demand they acknowledge the claim and open London-wide negotiations.

For over an hour branch after branch assembled outside Camden Town Hall. By the end there were enough to surround the building, but nobody came to talk to them. So, their patience wearing thin, the lobbiers decided to take a direct hand in the negotiating.

As the Tory-dominated borough council employers fence' to SO: 'The Tories had just arrived from their group meeting, heard the workers streaming down the corridors, and fled."

Since the employers wouldn't listen, the demonstrators decided to see what their union officials were doing. After all, NALGO's headquarters was only 50 yards down the road. But once inside the NAIGO offices, confusion. While Keith Sonnet was scrabbling round for his 'I support the Res Workers' sticker, NALGO members were searching the building for someone to talk to. It wasn't easy!

But it wasn't uncomfortable wither - not for the lucky few

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Grim faces at a mass meeting plans by the Tory council to of UCATT Direct Labour axe 300 jobs. The redundan- Tory plans to hive off repair craft workers in Birmingham cies - 60% of the workforce and maintenance work to last week, as they heard of - have come up as part of the private contractors. FORD are increasing their offer of 5.5% made last week to its 48,500 hourly paid workers to over 6% (more than twice the Government's unofficial norm of 3%) provided the unions drop some of their other claims.

The unions have been hoping for a similar pay settlement to that achieved by Vauxhall workers after a four-day strike recently of 7.75%, together with improvements company pension arrangements and moves to a shorter working week.

At talks held on Monday (November 21) Ford made an improved "final" offer of 7.5%, among the highest in the current pay round, which union leaders rejected; mainly it would seem because it includes no improvements in holidays and pensions. The 56-strong union negotiating team are due to meet again on Thursday to consider the reaction from meetings in the 24 Ford UK plants.

Following a similar agreement made between British Steel and the ISTC, the National Union of Blastfurnacemen representing 3,000 out of British Steel's 74,400 employees reached an outline pay and productivity deal last week, accepting that there will be virtually no 1984 national pay rise, for the third yrar, and that increased earnings must come from local productivity bargaining.

A mass meeting of Rolls Royce Motor's manual workers at Crewe last week (Thursday 17 November) voted overwhelmingly to reject management's latest offer and to continue their four-week strike.

The latest proposals came after talks in Lundon between the company and national union officials on Wednesday - and after management had warned the workforce by letter to individuals' homes of the dispute leading to permanent damage -sticking to the original 4% ''final" offer accepted by white-collar staff), but making an addirional £1.50 a week across-the-board payment from nexi January, in exchange fur the ending of an already existing cutput bonus scheme. In addition the company also promised to "harmonise" shop floor conditions towards those of white-collar staff.

CIVIL SERVANTS in Lana Registries throughout the country have entered their second full week of selective strike action. Members of CPSA and SCPS unions are taking industrial action over downgrading of jobs.

So far, managenent have refused to negotiate. On Friday, further staff were given suspension notices because of their refusal to work the new system.

Fund-raising is going on in all branches and the membership is standing firmly behind the strikers in nearly all workplaces.

At the Nottingham branch where about one-quarter of the strikers over 100- are employed, there are increasing demands from rank and file members for escalating the action.

At present, union section officers are telling them to play a waiting game. Whatever the outcome - and we are fighting for victory -funds have to be raised. CPSA are only paying 50% of net wages. Therefore cash is vital to continue the dispute.

Cheques payable to CPSA Land Registry Strike Fund should be sent, c/o Chris Watkinson, 368 Broxtowe Lane, Broxtowe, Nottingham. As workers at Shell UK's strikebound Stanlow oil refinery step up their four week industrial action over the company's 1.5% pay increase offer, by extending picketing to all main Shell terminals - including Heathrow and Birmingham airport depots - the 1,750 Shell oil-tanker drivers seem likely to accept their stewards' recommendations to end their five day overtime ban and work to rule.

This decision by Shell tanker drivers follows the acceptance by the 1,550 drivers and depot workers at BP on Friday November 18 of an offer of a 4.5% increase and a consolidation in basic pay of two pay supplements of £2.50 a week.

This, the first breakthrough by oil companies in the autumn pay round, was quickly followed by Shell management altering their offer to the point where it was virtually identical to BP's -4.5% increase with the consolidation of three supplements of £2.50 a week into basic pay, with the promise of furiher talks over arrangements concerning drivers' jobs.

This means that refinery workers come under increased pressure to end their dispute over a similar 4.5% offer. Official strikes have halted output at Shell's two main refineries, Stanlow [Cheshire] and "COWBOY employers treat us like cattle" , "Contract cleaners should not be employed, they should be done away with", "Calling all unions -our jobs today - but yours tomorrow!" read some of the placards outside Arnotts stores in Glasgow's city centre last Friday (November 18).

The origins of the dispute date back to November 3, when cleaning staff at Arnotts, the second biggest shop in Glasgow and part of the House of Fraser empire, received a letter thanking them for past services and informing them they were being sacked and replaced by contract cleaners.

There had been no prior consultation with the union. And the letter was only the latest in a series of attacks on cleaning staff at the stores, involving a cut of 30% in its size over the last two years, leaving just ten cleaning staff for the whole store.

Working conditions had also deteriorated, with the antiquated cleaning equipment not being replaced and the cleaning staff being expected to lift heavy Shellhaven [Essex), which account for three-quarters of Shell's production, worth f4 million a day.

Overtime bans and work-torule actions are in force at leesport [Cleveland] and the Carrington chemicals complex (Manchester). Secondary picketing by refinery workers has halted deliveries from one-third of the main distribution In an attempt to end the NUM's overtime ban (now in its fourth week], the NCB seem set to put into practice one of the three options presently being consid. ered — the withdrawal of the 5.2% pay offer, a ballot of the mineworkers over the heads of union leaders, or the putting of the 5.2% non-negotiated offer directly into the pay packets of the 192,000 miners.

The decision is likely to be made next werk for MacGregor wants the overtime ban to be finished by December 12.

Planned talks between the NCB and the NUM to discuss the possibility of a joint approach to the Government on the industry's future with a new loads, job.

Local union officials, from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), were unprepared for the announcement and were clearly thrown off balance at a union branch meeting on November 14 where they were confronted by angry cleaners demanding some positive steps from them in defence of their jobs.

But all that came back was half-hearted promises - that they would make a stand, that they would fight, and that something would be done. But no clear-cut plan of action was put forward to the workers.

At a follow-up meeting three days later the union agreed to limited action, but involving only the cleaners not the shop staff. What this meant in practice was revealed the next day (November 17).

The store was "picketed" by both cleaners and shop staff until starting time. Then, apart from one cleaner who was left to picket on her own, the stait, including the shop steward and JOHN HARRIS centres so far, with continuing promises by drivers not to cross picket lines.

This action is hitting Shell UK hard, and despiie settlements by the tanker drivers, perseverance and the stepping up of picketing by refinery workers, though faced with injunctions, will break de r management's "final" offer and refusal to negotiate. plan for coal would be unlikely to go ahead if the dispute carries on past this date.

The latter option of the direct increase in the miners' wagepackets seems the most iikely, since the balloting of mineworkers to undermine their support for the action decided by their elected delegate conference would be unlikely to work through lack of participation.

However, such a course of action by the NCB still leaves unresolved the major concern in the industry caused by its contraction policies and the still massive threat to jobs posed by future plans. the USDAW branch went into work.

This is no way to win the dispute. The cleaners have shown their readiness to put up a fight. Union officials should be organising the action needed to win that fight, in particular the organising of mass pickets and a ban on overtime and Christmas working.

With Christmas coming up, Arnotts will be extremely sensitive to the embarrassment of pickets outside its entrances. And with both the Scottish TUC's women's conference and the Scottish Labour Party Women's Conference being held this week in the City Halls, just five minutes away from Arnotts, an appeal to the delegates could see hundreds of pickets outside the stores during the conference breaks.

Faced with the loss of Christmas shoppers, Arnotts management could be cracked in a matter of days and forced to withdraw the sackings. The question is whether or not the actions needed to win this dispute will be actually implemented.

AS ROBERT Maxwell's BPCC printing corporation could face the loss of its lucrative Radio Times contract if he does not take steps to settle a major struggle with SOGAT printers at BPCC's Park Royal works.

Maxwell has issued dismissal notices to the 280 SOGAT members in dispute at the plant, where there have been repeated battles over manning levels and fresh investinent.

During this latest ciasii, SOGAT chapel leaders report that Maxwell sent a team of workmen into the plant with 141b hammers to smash the ageing printing presses. The present conflict centres on pay rates and manning levels to accompany a new £10 million investment in the plant. • Park Royal electricians — still holding SOGAT membership despite TUC instructions to return to the Press branch of the EETPU - have supported the SOGAT machine minders by cutting off power supplies throughout the plant, paralysing typesetting by NGA members, and backed up by occupation of the main substation.

Alongside the threat to sack the strikers, Maxwell has issued two-week "protective" notices to 257 more Park Royal workers not in dispute and 152 at his East Kilbride works.

But neither his heavy handea treatment nor the timid approach of SOGAT General Secretary Bill Keys has dented the determination of the strikers or the "blacking" action in their support by wholesale workers organised in SOGAT, who disrupted distribution of colour supplements for the Sunday Times, Observer and Mail on Sunday, printed by Maxwell subsidiaries. The next embarrassing loss could be the 9.5 million run of the Christmas Radio Times - and even the whole contract.

Maxwell' union-busting tactics however are by no means new or unique in the printing industry. But what does make him unusual is that he sports both a Labour Party and a trade union membership card - despite repeated efforts of rank and file activists in the Oxford Labour Party and ASTMS to kick him out of buth.

A righ point of such struggles came during the marathon official strike in 1979-80 by journalists at Maxwell's Pergamon Press power base for trade union recognition, following the sacking of an NUJ member in breach of procedure.

Oxford NUJ Branch protested over Maxwell's behaviour to ASTMS General Secretary Clive Jenkins, only to receive a stonewalling response from Assistant General Secretary Muriel Turner assuring the NUJ that 'the dispute with Pergamon Press has nothing to do with this Association, since Mr Maxwell was clearly acting in his capacity as an employer and not as a member of ASTMS."

This rynical response infuriated ASTMS members in Oxfurd and the union's No 7 Divisional Council. The Oxford l'abli hing Branch of ASTMS min! "out that Muriel Turner' •art: sued the union into two lariers: "those to whom the rulelunk applies, and those to whom it does not.

They also protested that Maxwell's membership of ASTMS 156, 24, 1983, Harry Sloan was an embarrassment in tions with other unions. Letters and resolutions of protest were to no avail: Maxwell was being stubbornly protected by bureaucratic friends at the top of the union, and by the right wing leadership of his own local ASTMS branch. The fight was also carried through into the Labour Party front. Again the NUJ Branch queried Maxwell's status as a Labour Party member given his brazen hostility to trade unionism. But the right wing leadership of Oxford CLP - which also refused to take any action against Lady Margaret McCarthy, who, as chair of the local Area Health Authority, was ruthlessly following through a programme of cuts and closures against stiff union opposition - rallied around Maxwell, whose wealth, influence and rabid anti-Trotskyism appealed to them in almost equal amounts.

But Maxwell did not repay their favour: during the June 1983 election he was back in the headlines - making heavy criticisms of Oxford's Labour Council in its handling of the possible relocation of Oxford United Football Club, of which Maxwell is chairman.

Delight

To the delight of local Tories, Maxwell urged voters to bear in mind the council's record when they went to the polls!

This latest outburst appears to have been somewhat ill-judged. Not only could it do nothing to serve Maxwell's own personal interests, but it came at a time when the traditional right wing stranglehold on the Oxford Labour Party had begun to be broken and boundary changes had created two new CLPs where once the bureaucrats had been able to focus on one.

Since June the rumblings of anger at Maxwell's betrayal have been heard in both CLPs: how appropriate, therefore, that with his behaviour at BPC he should offer a further reminder of his contemptuous attitude to the labour movement as a whole.

For Labour Party and ASTMS members, now is a good time to try once again to drive this arrogant, opportunist, anti-union millionaire out of the ranks of the labour movement.

TOWN ON TRIAL

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