JULIUISI ASLEF: sharpest battle to come?

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AFTER THE report of the Mi Carthy inquiry, the British Rail Board is on the defensive, and can be rouled as long as ASLEF sticks to its position, maintains its action, and escalales action if the BRB remains obstinate.

McCarthy recommended that the 3% pay rise be paid to ASLEF immediately and that the issue of flexible rostering be taken to the railways negotiating machinery. without any binding arbitration. McCarthy's recommendation that ASLEF reaffirm its commitment to productivity is, in this context, no more than a mild slap on the wrist for the unión.

ASLEF has accepted the McCarthy report, while the BRB — as we go to press -is stalling.

The humiliation for the Board is all the more acute as the Committee of Inquiry was set into motion on their initiative. It was the Board that attacked ASLEF for refusing to come to the Inquiry.

When the BRB began to see that McCarthy's findings would in all probability not go in their favour, they restated their position on pay and productivity and promised, once again, mass Duffy sourced by the company to combat the strike's effectiveness can lead to an important escalation of the dispute by hitting Jaguar production.

Easily the best means of building unity between the vehicles strikers and the Cars Division would be through activating the BL shop stewards combine committee decision to convene a joint stewards conference. It is urgent that the strike committees now take this step.

LV Strike Fund, c/o Austin Sinior, 240 Leyland Lane, Leyland, Lancs.

Tel: Leyland 34600. Branch Secretary, Kings X ASLEF, in personal capacity)

sackings. This threat has so far proved to be just bluster.

NUR general secretary Sid Weighell, in spite of his statements identifying himself with McCarthy's findings, must also be smarting from the result. Having sold thousands of guards' jobs for 3%, he is now faced with a situation where ASLEF has received the same payment without committing themselves to any binding agreement on flexible rostering.

Determination

The determination of many NUR guards to defeat flexible rostering can only be strengthened by McCarthy's findings.

In spite of the defeat for the Board, ASLEF cannot claim a total victory even if the BRB accepts McCarthy. The ASLEF executive. went into this dispute with two central weaknesses.

Firstly, there was an attempt by the ASLEF leadership to limit the dispute to the technicalities of the agreement of August 20 last year. The dispute was geared around the 'honouring of agreements and the credibility of the machinery of negotiation' The ASLEF executive has point-blank refused to escalate the stoppages to all out action. Linked with this refusal has been the pathetic and deliberate failure of the EC tösensure effective blacking action from other unions.

Reluctance

These attempts to restrict the development of the struggle clearly point to the reluctance of the EC, from the very start, to take on the Buard at all.

This reluctance has been reflected, often quite viciously in the EC's attitude to unofficial action taken by many depots in an attempt to escalate the dispute. But it is even clearer in the leadership's response to the re-launch of the London Liaison Committee.

At the committee's last meeting, Andy Moynihan, branch secretary of Willesden ASLEF, argued that the Liaison Committee be disbanded forthwith. It was a mysterious about-face by Moynihan, a Communist Party member, who has previously supported the Liaison Committee.

There is every reason to believe that Moynihan Continueu p. 15