back to work by the NALGO leadership.
NALGO struggle.
Now that NALGO has put forward its proposals for strike action, how do you see the fight for the claim developing?
As far as industrial action is concerned the National Local Government Committee thinking is in three directions: selective strikes, day strikes, and a rolling programme or a numoer or branches on tom strike on an expanding basis. Personally I don't think that they will achieve the pay claim befor the Government restricts wages through a pay freeze.
suit which answered yes to the question GON I think that there is only one way to achieve the claim. If there was a ballot tion, 'Do you support your National Executive in taking strike action without strike pay to support the claim, then the Association should call all its members out. Whether or not this is possible one can never say till the ballot takes place.
If a total strike is not the answer the membership is going to give, then some sort or action will nave to be taken. There are ways in which industrial action can be made effective in order to get a better offer from the employers. other hand it's no use going in front of the membership and saying you have to take complete industrial action or give up.
It could well be a ploy by those who don't particularty want the membership to go into industrial action or become militant or to increase their understanding that you don't get paid what you're WOrT you get paid what you fight for.
In opposition to the claim there's been a massive campaign in the press and from ministers like Crosland about the level of social services spending and the pay of local government workers. How do you see NALGO being able to counter • this sort of attack?
In some ways it is very difficult to counter attacks through the media. trade union movement has been the scapegoat for the economic crisis for the last 10 years. It's recently that the direction has changed. I think someone feels that the social services is an area which won't Hant back.
The Association has the responsibility to ensure that through its own machiners it reaches the national publicity media With strike action planned by the National and Local Government Officers Association over its £10 and 15% government pay claim, Red Weekly talked last week to Bob Ford, Branch Secretary of Islington NALGO, about the major questions confronting the union's membership. Islington branch, with a membership of 1500, was on strike for eight weeks last year in the London Weighting dispute and played a key role in organising the struggle until it was forced We publish this interview in the interests of developing a debate on these questions. Next week we will print a further article by IMG NALGO members explaining our strategy for the Bob Ford addresses a meeting during last year's strike -NALGO COMMITTEE members working for the council and those who receive the services.
social services?
living standards. Pay claims should be based on the effects of a rise in the cost of living on everbody.
As it stands that flat rate would have to be fairly substantial.
The employers have offered 21.7% minus the threshold paid from July to October last year on the NALGO pay claim. This means that some of the lower paid workers in the union, young clerical workers, are being offered NALGO has rejected this offer and was putting forward plans for strike action to its national conference on 9 June. The programme of action pro posed includes a one-day strike with a rolling programme of branch strikes This plan is clearly inadequate to win the claim. The one-day strike should be used to develop the necessary explanation of the importance of the claim and the action necessary to win it. But it is clear that only full scale national strike action by the union will show enough political and strike official.
FORD'S STRIKE HOTTING UP The seven week old strike of 80 doorhangers and setters in the Body Plant at Ford's Dagenham is hotting up. On 4 June the Transport & General Workers Union followed the lead or the Amalgamated umon or engueerng workers in amany making the have been waging since the end of last year in order to get a smaller, more exploited workforce throughout the Ford combine. So far the strike has halved Ford's car production and led to 65,000 other workers being locked out.
But instead of uniting the whole workforce in a common fight against the manning cuts, the plant leadership and trade union officials are still putting their major emphasis on getting management to take the dispute to arbitration. They have even written to Harold Wilson - fresh from baiting the Chrysler strikers - asking him to get the Ford Motor Company to agree to go to the Conciliation and Arbitration Service! The CAS was set up in the first place to defuse struggles. Workers can only rely on their own determination and strength to defend their interests.
To make the strike effective, the strikers themselves will have to elect a strike com mittee and campaign for support from other sections of the plant. Ford workers need a common jobs policy and common struggle. The last national stewards' conference failed to go beyond empty calls for nationalisation. But a national policy of work-sharing with no loss of pay is needed to counter short-time speed-up. Nationalisation will only be implemented in the workers' interests if it is prepared by the opening of all Ford's books and carried out without compensation and under the control of Ford workers themselves.
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY SIT-IN A hundred and fifty students occupied the Cambridge University Senate House on tuesday s June, in support or the demand tor a nursery for students and stan.
University proctors and over 60 police at once surrounded the building and attempted to isolate the occupiers. This effort to isolate and demoralise the militants as a preliminary to victimisation was deicated by a massive mobilisation of over 400 stu dents who demonstrated outside the building in the evening in solidarity with the occupiers. Cordons were formed, and bedding, food and water were passed into the The manning dispute is just part of the speed-up war that management