Scott Lithgow Takeover No Victory!

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A HALF day national strike is taking place this Wednesday, 11th, called by the right wing National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers to protest against a 3 per cent pay offer.

Support has been pledged by the National Onion of Teachers and by the National Association of Head Teachers, who have told their members not to cover for striking teachers.

The executive of the NUT -the largest teaching union, with 235,000 members - has decided on protest action of its own, and announced a one-day national strike to take place at the start of the summer term.

The NUT also intends to hold marches and demonstrations throughout the country on that day. Other forms of limited industrial action are also likely to begin in the summer term, including no cover for absent staff, a ban on lunch-time supervision, and withdrawal of atter-school-hours activities. Extended strike action will be considered as a final option if there is then no response from the employers.

The NUT's annual conference in Blackpool at Easter will be considering the strike proposals THE 2000 workers at Lucas Electrical alternator and starter motor factories in Birmingham were told this week that they had until May 18 to agree a company rationalisation plan that would involve the loss of 700 jobs.

£15 million is to be invested over the next five years, mainly at the Shaftmoor Lane factory, with workers transferred from the other Birmingham factory at Marshall Lake Road, which is to be run down over two years.

Lucas management are also demanding radical changes working practices, flexibility in the use of labour, and new shift patterns, as a means of ensuring higher productivity. AT A mass meeting in Greenock Town Hall on March 26, the workers of Scott Lithgow gave the go-ahead for the take-over of their yard by Trafalgar House and Howard Doris.

Duncan McNeil, secretary of the joint shop stewards committee, claimed that this deal was a great victory.

yement bit in planeymen There are many things I would have liked to have seen in the agreement but none more so than have no guarantee of employment in the new agreement.

The new company have said that they will employ all the workers in the yard - but for how long?

Their commitment applies only when they have sufficient contracts on hand. When the BP rig and the RN ship go away we will once again face redundancies, only this time without the support of the rest of British Shipbuilders workers.

I believe that the intention of the company is to keep a workforce of about 1,500 at the yard, and to boost these numbers with sub-contractors when necessary. The 'great victory' has cost us 3,000 jobs.

There is a lesson to be learnt here for the rest of the workers within BS: Never underestimate the ruthlessness of BS and the government.

I have no doubt that the cancellation of the Britoil rig was stage managed by the government and BS - simply because the privatisation of Scott Lithgow was more acceptable with an empty order book than it would have been with an £88 million oil rig to build.

All other yards within BS must organise now for the fight ahead. Don't do as Scott Lithgow did and wait for the axe to fall, then hope to salvage something at the end.

Don't place your faith in politicians, or in the celebrities of the shop stewards committees, or in the SNC. Do your ground work now.

Organise the rank and file workers. Meet with the people in the real community, not the ones who just want their picture taken.

Organise national meetings of rank and file workers who are prepared for the real fight, not ones JOHN HARRIS Pick TONI

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digest Teachers

and seems likely to back them, Lucas