[All the evidence shows that the local teams…]

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All the evidence shows that the local teams have greatly improved maintenance services -cutting the waiting time for jobs by weeks, or even months. But these 'decentralisation' plans will fall if the council reintroduces the bonus scheme.

The trade unions have made no commitment to the decentralisation, other than the one implied by the flat-rate scheme. If the scheme goes, so will decentralisation. That is the logic of the Council's own way of treating council workers - but the Chair of Personnel describes it as a 'union threat' that will lead to a dispute.

All this comes at a time when Islington Labour Councillors have agreed on a joint campaign of meetings, in every council departwill fail too if leading councillors against rate-capping. That COUCHIOT are dead-set on provoking a dispute.

Many Labour Party members, and councillors, are trying to reverse this lunatic stand by the leading councillors. A joint meeting of the Party and Labour Group at the end of February has a number of motions to it to keep the flat rate scheme.

The Islington Council Workers Labour Party Branch has made an appeal to councillers and Party members to support keeping the scheme - "to stop the Council plunging itself into an all-out confrontation with its workers in the Building Works Department".

If it doesn't Islington will join the long list of left wing councils who have turned on the workers and abandoned any pretence of fighting the real enemy - the Tory government and its plans to slash local authority spending. PUBLIC transport in Glasgow ground to a halt last Monday, 13 February, as bus, rail and underground workers took strike action against the threat of garage closures, Job losses, and cuts in services.

NUR members organised a 24hour strike against the introduction of driver-only trains and unstaffed stations, which would cause the axing of 500 jobs in the West of Scotland.

The strike was unofficial, having been called by the local NUR branches themselves and had not been endorsed by the union's national executive committee.

The NUR general secretary, Jimmy Knapp, the left-winger who replaced Sid Weighell, called for NUR members not to support the strike and instead to trust the fate of their jobs to the forthcoming talks between the Executive and British Rail.

Over 75% of NUR members, in the West of Scotland, however, backed the strike. • Bus and underground workers in Glasgow held an official two-hour stoppage the same day against plans by Labour controlled Strathclyde Regional Council to shut three bus garages in Glasgow and increase both ordinary fares and concessionary fares for pensioners.

The convenor of Ibrox garage - one of the three threatened with closure - told Socialist "Workers at Ibrox have been promised transfers to other garages in Glasgow, but that would mean extra travelling costs for us. We have asked for talks with the council on how money could be saved but they have refused to even meet us. This shows that their real aim is to run down the bus service itself." at GCHQ, however, many private employers will clearly be quick to seize on the precedent.

Print claim

A 10% pay rise and a move to a 35-hour week for members in the general printing industry was submitted as a claim on Friday (February 10) by the National Graphical Association and SOGAT '82 to the British Printing Industries Federation.

A further meeting is expected to take place this Friday.

Bakers' ballot

A ballot on industrial action amongst the 8,000 workers employed by Allied Bakeries lowned by Associated British Foods], Britain's biggest bakers, was given the go-ahead on Friday February 10 by the Executive of the Bakers' Union, BAFAW.

Due to take place in a week's time, the ballot has been prompted by the five-week strike by 400 union members at Allied's Thomas Scott bakery in Liverpool over compulsory redundancies and management insistence on a no-strike agreement.

Election complaint

JOHN Walsh, the defeated right wing candidate for general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, has claimed that there were irregularities in the ballot.

He says he is considering High Court action.

His complaints are that unused ballot papers were not. counted and that the poll closed early at some pits.

The election was counted by the Electoral Reform Society, and won by the left wing candidate Peter Heathfield, by a narrow margin.

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Scott Lithgow shipyard worker speaks out on the fight to save jobs Socialist Otganiser February nơ: 166