'Someone up There Likes
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AUGUST /SEPTEMBER A 20p MAN AND PARTY MACHINE IN PERFECT HARMONY The TGWU likes me as well as USDAW NUM NUR FBU ASTMS Foot Thatcher Reagan Andropov The Pentagon TUC CBI CIA KGB MIS MY MUM FREDDIE THE PARROT SURVIVOR-Neil Kinnock stands by his wrecked car on the. ~H early today. The car somersaulted for 100 yards. But the l\IP walked away with minor cub.. Popu ar yarns 'SOMEONE of class war INSIDE : France/Aire Valley Strike Co-op~/NGA/F .. T /EEPTU /LT /More UP THERE Initials/Jargon/Small Type/etc etc e INSIDE : France/ Aire Valley Strike Co-ops/NGA/F .. T /EEPTU /LT /More Initials/Jargon/Small Type/etc etc e INSIDE : France/Aire Valley Strike LIKES ME' Co-ops/NGA/F .. T /EEPTU /LT /More -BUT WOULD YOU BUY A USED VEHICLE FOR SOCIALIST Initials/Jargon/Small Type/etc etc e INSIDE : France/ Aire Valley Strike TRANSITION FROM THIS MAN ? St James Infirmary Blues Hospital workers in Leeds who displayed high levels of militancy during last year's Health Service strike have been at it again. At St. James Hospital a strike by laundry workers over pay cuts is· currently in progress. We were sent this account of a technicians' s.trike at the same hospital by a member of the Northern Communications.Grou).l (Leeds). Having been threatened with dismissal· this equipment has a· 1 or 2 year service unless they returned to work by May guarantee from the manufacturer. As a reversed and management refused to 13th, fourteen medical physics workers ·result, it is very difficult for such a strike comply. The worker remained out in the - all members of the Association of to affect the hospital and squeeze cold. Scientific, Technical and Managerial management through -!he withdrawal of Staffs (ASTMS) - went back after 12 services to patients (same problem as in In the end, because of intimidation, the weeks on strike. the national dispute ! Same dubious workers ·went back. The victimised targets.) worker found another fob outside the The strike, coming in the aftermath of NHS. However a new training scheme has the official Health Workers dispute, was The technicians knew that the support of been established, and contact with the over the dismissal· of a trainee technician ot.~er workers was essential to get a technicians has shown that a good spirit (who won't allow his name to be favourable resolution. Hospital drivers still exists; 1n fact one has said that published, because of future possible were willing to strike· in solidarity, and maybe the mistake was 'going out' victimisation), who was taken on from said as much to the pickets. However, maybe we should have 'stayed-in'. technical college and told he would be COHSE Branch Secretary and failed given training to do the job. He was Labour councillor Susi Armitage refused There was no talk of a sell-out either. sacked for alleged incompetence. He had official support b!J the drivers, saying that Graham Johnson. was an irrelevance. The been given little training. In fact, he was there had been no official call for workers themselves ran the strike, and sent to college to learn more specific solidarity. By official call, she meant decided to return as a· group freed from skills, and at the end of the course got written request .from ASTMS full-time manipulative leaders. 100% on a theoretical paper. Even though officer Graham Johnson, who was cons an enquiry into the Medical Physics picuous by his absence from the picket How many other workplaces are taking · Department, headed by a District Nursing and from the workers. He did however these tentative steps to freedom from the Officer, had concluded a year before that have a few meetings with management, dead hand of Labourism? training was essential, ·the management details of which he would pass on to the SAS • had given this worker about one day's other workers when the urge took him. practical training. He was then sacked. SENTENCED TO WORK (2), The decision to strike came not from the As a result it was 14 men alone, picketing technicians' shop stewards, but from the in freezing conditions, with harassment membership. They called a meeting and and ejections meted out to them by Soviet jails then informed their stewards so ·they hospital security staff. Financial support could attend. By a majority vote, they came from other workers in the NHS, and 'an example decided on strike· action until re\fistate physical help on the picket lme, but the ment. call for a mass picket in support got little to the West' response.· By Rupert Morris Medical physics technicians service the Prisons in China and the complex machinery of modern health ; After an appeal, the management was Soviet Union provide out$tand e.g. X-Ray machines, life support instructed by the health authority to ing examples which the West machines and dialysis ·machines. Often, reinstate the worker, but this was ·tater ~ould do weD to study, Mr Warren Burger, Chief' Justice of the United States, said in I..endoa last Bight. Chief Justice Berger told law students at the Middle Temple Hall: "On my visit to the Soviet Union, I was compelled to conclnde that the· one correc tional institution ·1 was invited · to see - a juvenile institution - ha.. training programmes in advanee over anything I had seen in other countries." -He added: Wfhe prisons in China literally are factories with fences around them, and the prisoners are trained · in THERE IS marketable skills by producing pfiof'ef;<! goods to help pay for their f~oG-IZAM~£. incarceration. That surely makes them more likely to tNSTITUIED· • become useful citiZens." I !<.EAU\.f DOW1 KNOW State of Ho'N I'M trotN G- TO Sut{V\VE ON SIX C.ASuAL 5Jf1FT.S Minders A WEEK I At the end .of a 2-month pay and prod uctivity strike by 270 NGA printworkers, the Financial Times was back on August 8th. The strike was in support of 18 machine managers, who were demanding an £18 rise and extra shifts. Their claim was in response to an award made to SOGAT machine assistants, and was said to be in defence of pay differentials. The manage ment has been insistil'lg on more product ivity and an end to the 'leapfrogging' pay demands NGA and SOGAT workers have used so effectively in the past to hike up their wages. J At various stages in the dispute, the bosses·threatened to print theFT without union labour, or at least without its NGA workers ~ either by persuading SOGAT printers to scab, or by having the paper Poached- or printed abroad (it already publishes a European edition). The TUC put pressure on the union to force its printers back on ACAS terms the workers had already Hard Boiled ? rejected, since ACAS backed the manage ment. A group of workers seeking to break ving, that is, leading the membership. away from their autocratic union leader• Through this attitude the interests· of The strength o( Fleet Street printers is ship and by doing so challenging a closed the labour movement come in direct their ability to inflict large losses· on the shop agreement ought to be ·causing big conflict with those of workers; the way company very quickly and without headlines in the press and noises of that they will sell out their members in hardship to themselves, since they can get support from the government. But these order to serve the best interests· of the casual work at other papers. ·Falling are not an 'ordinary' group of workers. industry bosses. profits, however, are at last persuading newspaper bosses· that they need to break Those involved are part of the Fleet St. SUNNY SIDE UP this power once and for all, even at the branch of the electricians union EEPTU. expense ·of a massive, Fleet Street-wide They previously gained front page prom The decision of the electricians to break showdown. New technology would be a inence in defying Tebbit's 1980 Employ away was in part a wish for a stronger weapon in their hands. ment Act by stopping production of all craft position within Fleet St.. Electric· national newspapers for a day. Moreover ians hold 'the key' to the print process - In the end, the printers won a £13 rise, they are seeking to join SOGAT '82 in an it is they who not only keep the machines taking them to £317 a week, and more attempt to gain more industrial influence. running but actually start them up (or shifts. Nobody is claiming total victory, refuse to as the case may be). But while but the workers have once again staved this was in their minds their actions were off a catastrophic attack. The TUC Their arguments for this are couched in a response ·to the immediate problems couldn't face expelling the NGA, a union appe¢ng liberal terms ·- · individuals posed by their own union leadership. which lives in fear of its own members, should be free to choose between various and prefers subtler methods of griilding democratic forms of union organisation. Tension between branch and union down strikes it doesn't like. The FT This in itself does not challenge the form, executive built steadily from the activity bosses -couldn't bring themselves to let alone role of Trade Union 'democracy'. during last years NHS strike. The Fleet dispense ·with the NGA's services either, It is simply a wish to swap the hypocrit St. electricians defied both a High Court although they would have loved to sack ical democracy of the EEPTU for the injunction and Union directives forbidding its members.