Officials Railroad Bl Sell-out

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Hawley: rammed through Edwardes' document This kept the 'flexibility' and then dismantle the

BL management's union-busting procedure agreement which accepts the Tebbit Bill, provides for summary

dismissal and the rapid introduction speed-up measures was manipulated through the Joint Negotiating Committee by senior trade union officials last Friday.

A week earlier the document which represents a grave new danger for workers and shop stewards in BL had been referred back to the shop stewards committees in the individual plants by meetings of both the AUEW and TGWU senior stewards.

Although the document had been negotiated under a cloud of secrecy, since a commitment to negotiate on it had been smuggled into the final stages of last November's wage negotiations, National Officers had opposed this reference back.

In the case of the AUEW, the full Executive had already unanimously accepted the document. At the TGWU convenors' meeting, Jack Adams, convenor of Longbridge and chairman of the meeting, assisted Automotive National Officer Grenville Hawley to neuter the motion moved by Bob Fryer from Cowley.

They argued that since the JNC was due to meet the issue on April 23, on DOCKWORKERS won a short-term victory last week when they forced the withdrawal of plans to give the port employers more power over dockers and to reorganise the National Dock Labour Board (NDLB).

On Wednesday 21st, about 10,000 dockers, mainly in the northern ports, came out on a one-day warning strike. They had threatened an all-out national strike from Monday 26th unless the plans were withdrawn.

The NDLB was set up by the Labour government in 1947 to be the employer of a registered workforce. Dockers were then hired out to individual employers on a half-day basis and reverted to the NDLB when jobs were Inishea.

the bosses wanted because the reference back to the stewards could not result in a further convenors' meeting since there would not be time. Instead, stewards' committees should send letters to Hawley giving their views on the document and he would inform the JNC of the decisions.

It was designed to put everything into the hands of Hawley and it did. At the JNC Hawley claimed that of the irregular nature of much of the work. At the same time, it was for dockers a great step forward from the previous system of completely casual unregistered labour.

Regional

The NDLB is administered on a 50/50 basis by the employers and the TGWU at both national and local level.

Now the employers want to reorganise the existing system. They want to replace the 20 subsidiary local Boards with five regional bodies, and to pass back responsibility for welfare and medical services to the employers.

Dockers see it as the thin onu ul cne weage to erode and of then oradar da Inside: MONTH'S Exclusive interview with the Tasjerkers including Roody Radiation Specisis centre pages.

Class fighter No 4 April 1982 10p the only definitive rejection of the document was from the Cowley Assembly Plant and therefore he regarded himself as having authority to sign it.

He reached this position by counting resolutions which rejected the document on the basis of certain paragraphs or called for substantial amendments as acceptance in principle. As scheme which gives dockers security of employment.

They are almost certainly right. In 1947 the NDLB offered some advantages to the employers - the organisation and regulation of the vast armies of dockers.

But since the '60s the NDLB has been a fetter on the employers in their efforts 'to reorganise the industry.

The technology of the ports has been revolutionised. Armies of militant dockers, using techniques for shifting cargo as old as Pharaoh's Egypt, have been replaced with mechanical cargo handling techniques.

To carry this through, the bosses needed two things.

First: to reassert control over dockers who through militant action had used the National Dock Labour Scheme to achieve, unofficially, a high degree of control over the details of their daily working lives. Second, to radically reduce the labour force, replacing them with machines and bulk containers.

stewards' committees were who failed to reply in writing.

Not a single committee actually accepted the document. Faced with this Bob Fryer called for a private meeting of the ten TGWU delegates. There, he moved a resolution to the effect that the TGWU would not sign the document until a full convenors' conference had been held Hawley refused to accept the motion and moved his own motion that he be allowed to sign, sweeping aside criticisms that he was out of order to move a motion as a full time official and chairman of the • The meeting voted 5-5 on Hawley's motion and he used his casting vote to declare it passed, thus allowing him to sign.

With the AUEW it was much more simple. Ken Cure ruled a convenors' meeting out of order since the Executive had already decided.

Once again BL workers have been the victims of bureaucratic manipulation moves by their leaders over moves designed to put more power in the hands of BL management.

Once more the urgent need for alternative leadership and democratic control by the membership is painfully obvious. aspects of this reorganisation. But essentially they lost.

It would have needed the reorganisation of society to combine the changes in handling techniques with preservation of the elements of real self-control that the dockers built up within the NDLS in the 20 years before 1967. The strikes and militancy lessened the power of the employers, stopped them doing what they liked, and made them pay through the nose for what they imposed on dockworkers; but the pressure of the 'technological revolution' in the ports was inexorable.

The labour force has been cut drastically. In 1967 there were 57,000 registered dockers. Now there are 18,000. The employers want it down still further. With four million unempl oyed, they are now offering redundancy money 222,500 in an effort to get rid of a further 2,000 jobs.

The NDLB framework is a straitjacket for the empl oyers. Bulk container handling means. that much that THREE MOTIONS on Poland were submitted to this year's conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), held in Perth last week. But in the debate the question of Poland played second fiddle to fervent denunciations of the hypocrisy of Frank Chapple and Margaret Thatcher.

One motion, from Aberdeen Trades Council, was fairly innocuous, condemning the imposition of martial law and pledging the STUC to campaign for the release of trade union and political prisoners in Poland and the restoration of civil rights' Unfortunately, a STUC 'campaign' rarely, if ever, gets beyond sending off a The other motions called for an end to the links between the STUC and the fake trade unions in Eastern Europe.

The need for such motions was underlined ure of mass spontaneous strikes and the threat of a The the 1972 Jones/Aldington agreement defined loading and unloading work within a certain radius of the ports as under NDLB conditions, and quietened things down. Big redundancy payments were offered to buy dockers' jobs.

Wilson

The present proposal to restructure the NDLB, loosen it up, and shift some more responsibility and control to individual empl oyers, is seen by dockers as a new • blow in the war that began under the Wilson government in the mid '60s to break the power of organised labour in the docks.

They have just shown the Tories and the dock empl oyers that dockers are still a power to be reckoned with. However, the issue hasn't gone away.

The attempts to restructure the NDLB have only been postponed.

Stan by a report from a STUC youth delegation to East Germany; where labour laws of 1961 and 1968 define the role of the unions as 'mobilising the entire working class and intelligentsia to fulfill economic plans' , and abolished the nominal right to strike. Even the British TUC, no militant anti-Stalinist force, has broken off links with the East German 'unions'; but the STUC report lavished praise on them for 'the degree to which they are able to help members' daily life, from health to holidays'.

Another STUC delegation reported from the May Day 'celebrations' in Budapest. "The May Day demonstration was a massive display of people's power and their support for the government... I wish to thank the General Council for bestowing this great honour on me, and wish that contacts between.. our Trade Union Centres The docks could once again provide the spark for a trial of strengt h between the labour mov ment and an anti working class Tory government.

THE BANKERS' standing orders totted up so far this month come to £159.55. There's more to be added to that total, but with only £9.50 from Hyndburn and £1.50 from Lambeth in the post this week, the monthly fund looks like being as hard hit by the Special Fund this month as last.

It stands at £308.05.

April's final total next week. But let's get working so that May is the month where the monthly fund keeps its proper level as well as the special fund.

Send contributions to: Socialist Organiser, 28 Middle Lane, London N8 8PL. Cheques payable to Socialist can be maintained strengthened' This same sycophantic whitewashing could be found in the reports of STUC delegations which visited Romania, Cuba and the USSR.

Inevitably, therefore, the EETPU/Moray Trades Council composite calling for the severing of links with the East European 'unions' led to bitter clashes.

TGWU full-timer and STUC General Council member Hugh Wyper condemned the composite as an attempt to divorce the STUC from 50% of the world, and a gift to the Cold Warriors, as well as reminding delegates of the 'splendid support' consistently extended to the Scottish trade unions by the East European 'unions' A NALGO delegate, Pat Kelly, took up the same theme of how the motion meant abandoning the international working class, and went on to condemn the hypocrisy of the EETPU for submitting such a motion, given its own lack of democracy. Poland was mentioned in passing.

Friendship

A third opponent of the composite, by chance the secretary of the ScotlandUSSR Society, painted a grim picture of what the mution, it passed, would mean for him personally. His friendship with Boris, the fraternal delegate from the USSR 'unions' who attended Congress every year, stretched right back to 1946. Was the EETPU going to prevent him from ever again speaking to 'Bo' , as Boris is known to his friends? No it most certainly wasn't!

Jimmy Milne, the STUC general secretary, summed up, in a manner of speaking. Ducking all the political issues posed by the composite, he made a series of personalised attacks.

He didn't need the EETPU to tell him how to organise solidarity. And as for the CPSA official who had spoken in favour of the motion, what right did he have to speak of solidarity when he could only get four per cent for his members? The motion reflected an alliance of the extreme right and the extreme left.

Dead letter

The composite was overwhelmingly rejected, with only the EETPU, the CPSA, the NAS-UWT, and a sprinkling of Trades Council delegates voting in favour.

Having thus avoided any concrete measures in support of Solidarnosc, the conference could contentedly listen to the addresses by Solidarnose fraternal delegates Marek Garztecki and Piotr Kozlowski and deliver polite applause at the end, safe in the knowledge that real solidarity would remain a dead letter as far as the STUC is concerned.