However, even by Labour's cuts. worker. Labour's desperate struggle to prop up a decaying British capitalism has two sides. For the big companies there are lavish handouts; for the sick, the old, the infirm and the deprived there are reductions in the already inadequate social services.
In Labour-controlled Tower Hamlets, social workers are fighting back against intolerable conditions and thereby defending the interests of working people against Last week, social workers in the Stepney area of Tower Hamlets refused to handle any new cases. They continued working with the cases that were already on their list. Any new cases that camg in were noted down but were not dealt with. This decision was taken by the intake social workerswho deal with all new referrals and have to bear the brunt of all the problems that people bring to them.
The dispute was caused by the chronic under-staffing in the Tower Hamlets area, which is 21 percent under strength. In Area 2 the intake team has no senior social workers so the intake workers have to take decisions on their own. If money is required for any of the families, they are not able to give it without authorisation by a senior social Tower Hamlets is short'of senior social workers because the Labour Council pays the lowest salaries in the whole of London. Very few are recruited from outside the Borough. The pay discrepancy is about £18 per week.
The situation escalated on 4 August when the intake workers were told to report to the Head Office and to be supervised by a member of the management (principal Wing them would be doing more than one job. for the Tower Hamlets working class.
Labour's capitalist policies
FOR officer). The intake workers refused to go on the grounds that they would be taken out of the area where they worked. They pointed out that this would also be scabbing on union policy because the principal officer who would be supervisAs a result of threats and intimidation against these workers a meeting of social workers and direct support staff resolved 'that all members of the Social Work Services group and direct support staff withdraw their labour on Friday, 8 August for a day of action, as the start of a campaign that should then be extended to other sections of the Directorate and other directorates in the Borough:
The strike was supported by nearly every one of the 250 social workers in the area. No more than about eight reported for work. Pickets were set up at every social services office and hospital in the area. Leaflets were distributed in the market places explaining why they were on strike. A mass meeting of the social workers was held and then they marched to Bethnal Green Town Hall.
Red Weekly urges trade unionists in the area to give this action their full support. One step to take would be a joint enquiry conducted by social workers and other trade unionists into the local social services so that they could jointly determine what is needed to provide adequate social services Struggles like those in Tower Hamlets set an example of how working class unity must be established to defeat