Labour council suspends unionist

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DAVE Nurwood, NALGO Assistant Branch Secretary said last week 'Sometimes Labour councils can be really dumb, or devious or both. They're supposed to be there to fight for the labour movement — this lot have just engaged in bloody battle against their workers.' He was speaking about Labour-controlled Greenwich Council which last week drove 1,600 NALGO members it employs to take strike action in defence of their basic trade union rights.

Not that most Labour councillors knew what was happening - the dirty work was carried out by senior councillors on the Personnel Committee and by leading officers in manage, ent. Most of the Labour Group have been misled about the issues.

The Council suspended without pay Terry Woodford, who is one of 20 architects taking limited official industrial action over a grievance which should have been solved eight months ago.

NALGO's reaction was an all-out strike on March 1, with another one-day strike planned for March 8. The workers in Terry Woodford's department are on an all-out official strike.

This dispute concerns the appointment of an underqualified worker in the Architects division. NALGO proposed a solution whereby this person wouldn't have lost money. The Council now admit they were wrong at the time not to agree to this but instead of putting things right, they've escalated the dispute into a head-on collision over workers' rights to take official industrial action.

Messages of support and donations to: Dave Offord, Secretary, Greenwich NALGO, Riverside House, Woolwich High Street, London SE18. the workers involved, management have consistently refused to show the report to the unions.

Five weeks into the strike, the craft workers remain very solid, and picketing is being stepped up to 16 hours a day. There is a picket rota operating, with fines for those who miss their turn. This is one symptom of the seriousness of the strikers and of their determination to win.

TGWU members have pledged not to work that would