national strike action.
buried.
The decision of the NUR executive is the first sign of the coming split and eventual confrontation between the unions and the Labour Government, as the latter tries to make the working class bear the cost of the economic crisis. Every socialist and trade union militant must therefore throw their support behind the railway workers.
Resolutions of support, help with picketing to make sure goods and passenger falling stock are not moved and financial donations should flow in now from trade unionists up and down the country. The paper support already promised by the union leaderships of the dockers, miners, post office workers and transport workers has to be turned into concrete solidarity action.
VANISHING
For years railway workers have watched their living standards plummet and their jobs vanish under the right wing leadership of the union. The tribunal's so-called 27.7 per cent offer includes £4.40 threshold which are already being paid. This offer would give railmen on the lowest grade, an increase of £2.65 in new money and a new gross wage of For the first time since the 1926 General Strike, the National Union of Railwaymen is set for to Labour's social contract yet. Even if Sidney Weighell, the NUR's new general secretary, sucplace the decaying remains of the Wilson Government's Mark 1 social contract are certain to be James Hurst £32.70. This forced even the tribunal to put forward the idea of a 'minimum earnings guarantee" of £36.70 - a grand increase of just 22.1 per cent on the existing gross wage!
In this situation the executive had no option but to reject the offer or face a mass revolt in the ranks. But they have done nothing to prepare the strike. The latest issue of the NUR's Railway Review doesn't even say clearly what the union will be striking for.
The opinion of most railway workers is that they will be striking for 30 per cent - just 2½ per cent more than the present offer! This is hardly likely to whip up entusiasm for the strike. sent to the tribunal was for 27.9 per cent for everybody earning up to £36 plus consolidation of the existing threshold payments - worth another 12.1 per cent.
The whole executive appears to have gone back completely on that Emergency branch meetings should And if the strike does take immediately pass resolutions to the national executive calling for no retreat on the full claim and for an emergency national delegate conand amend the claim to defend any increase against the effects of inflation through the negotiation of a 'nil-norm' threshold deal.
been. established in Manchester but only for the purpose of paying ed throughout the country, with the responsi bility of running all aspects of the strike. If this does not occur Weighell will be able to continue his freelance sell-out operations. the strike decision he has continued to meet Bert Farrimond, head of the labour relations deparment of British Rail, and has said he will contact strike-baiter Wilson in the event of the stoppage taking place. Yet the original claim Weighell's campaign has been strengthened by the short-sighted decisions of the Transport Salaried offer. ference to co-ordinate the strike and One strike committee has already strike pay. These should be establishSince interests.
SHORT-SIGHTED Staffs Association and the locomen's union ASLEF to accept the tribunal's Because differentials have been Gerry Healy National secretary Dear comrade Healv open letter).
Yours fraternally Dear Comrades, NUR leader Sid Weighell-manoeuvring to get strike vote reversed maintained and their members will certainly get more money out of the deal they have broken class ranks in order to defend narrow, sectoral But if British Rail succeed in clobbering the NUR then this will rebound on the jobs and living standards of booking office staff and locomen in the future. Members of ASLEF in particular should be calling on their executive to reverse its decision and launch the struggle for a common claim with the NUR.
The disunity inside the NUR and between the rail unions has certainly strengthened the hand of the Government, which doesn't want to upset it its friends in industry and the City by being seen to give way to militancy. A kick in the crutch for the low-paid railway workers would get the Labour Government's hunting season for a hard line Mark 2 social contract off to a good start. We must not let that happen.
of the WRP and had copies of Red Weekly torn from their hands and ripped-up. Prominent in this attack was Mike Banda - a leading member of the WRP.
After Banda had sooken on the Common Market, the WRP chairman asked for questions. A member of the IMG then sooke about the need for organisations like the WRP and the IMG to make a united front on the Common
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ceeds in his manoeuvres to get the national executive's 21-3 vote reversed, the strike threat will have provided the first national challenge to the social contract.
ANT The decision to call a strike from 23 June is the most devastating blow
STOP THIS THUGGERY