Ballot queried

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SHOP stewards at Vosper Thorneycroft have raised serious questions about the recent EETPU postal ballot on British Shipbuilders' survival plan.

According to combine committee delegates, some 9,000 ballot papers were distributed throughout Vospers just prior to Christmas. Of these, approximately five thousand were returned and counted under the auspices of Electoral Reform scrutineers during which process many voting papers, allegedly spoilt, were declared invalid. While unsatisfactory, this at least retains the probable virtue of being human error.

How then does EETPU head office account for posting ballot forms and thereby offering voting facilities to unemployed and retired members simply on the basis that they had been former employees at Vospers. A simple exercise in computer malfunction? Maybe.

But what possible explanation exists for the voting fiasco that of a shop of 280 electricians, at least fifty-one didn't even receive their voting forms.

Incredibly, scores of ineligible EETPU members as far afield as Esso's Fawley Refinery (not noticeably part of BS) actually took possession of ballot papers and voted.

The result was a tiny majority against the scheduled stoppage. Given the way the ballot was conducted, many union members have little respect for this Without doubt a great reservoir of anger exists in the shipyards due to recent events. Shop stewards still have time to channel rank and file militancy into fresh mass meetings throughout Vosper Thornycrofts, and push hard for total reiection of BS's disastrous blitz on jobs.

They must re-instate the strike and fight for the full claim. They surely have no alternative.

PETER Heathfield, the lef -wing candidate, is reported to have won the National Union of Mineworkers' ballot for general secretary by a narrow margin.

After the votes for the thirdplaced candidate, Les Kelly, were redistributed, Heathfield beat the right wing candidate, John Walsh, by about 74,000 to 70,000.

"The close finish" • reported the Financial Times, "has put the NUM's executive under its first real pressure to call a ballot on its overtime ban." Walsh had campaigned against the overtime ban.

This conclusion. however. may = :00 weepire Despite the -esson given cy Arthur Scarcoy in the presidential **.: zains: y right wing in insistent left-wing - ae not the norm in Hermield was reckoned to be = =: :andidate. but the effects Siazil! leadership's cases ram: che issue of - 25erers there is necessi a midessend revolt against he overtime ban.

Moves by the leadership to -evelop from the overtime ban wards strike action could win -ack the lost ground: LAID-OFF workers at the Scott Lithgow shipyard on Clydeside "worked on" On Monday January 23.

occupying the yard. But until the mass meeting on Friday 20th, it looked like there might be no action at all.

with closure - at the cost of 4,500 jobs directly and another 4,000 indirectly - due to Britoil cancelling its contract for an offshore oil-rig. The unions had hoped, in vain, that at last week's talks they would persuade BS to renegotiate the contract with Britoil.

tions, BS announced that 3,000 jobs were to be axed by midFebruary and that the yard would be completely closed by late summer. 800 workers would be laid-off on Monday January reduced to 300 if the unions remaining contracts. the BS announcement by

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occured at Vosper's Woolston yard in Southampton. Here, out

mustn't ret reat