Don't forget the majority!

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SOCIALIŚT Organiser fights to act as a real to the local labour movement asking for support in any way possible.

Donations Hospital workers have been visiting workplaces, and so far NUR City Branch and ASLEF have sent donations to the strike fund. The BSC craft unions are providing printing facilities.

During the one day strike on Wednesday we will be speaking to meetings of railworkers, miners and steelworkers, and demaning not just moral and financial support but strike action in solidarity.

Scam celluls workers in the struggle for new leadership.

Mary-Ann Todd

NUPE is the union for the women in our society who are doing for pay an extension of their jobs in the home - the public paid carers, wipers and moppers. If anything was to be an emblem or symbol for the majority of women in our union it would be a mop and bucket.

They need a union that will note and understand their particular problems in paper which oroanise getting well organised and playing an active part in the union, working in isolated, often small sections, with members have to rush home after work to pick up childTen.

How does NUPE up? NUPE does not.

Dinner

You ask, can you come to the branch meeting next week? and so often the reply is, Who's going to cook the dinner, look after the kids? How will I get there, you'll not get my husband to drive me, he doesn't want me getting involved anyway. Well, I'll do me best."

And so often when they do 'do their best' and after a great deal or organising women turn up and find either the meeting goes on over their heads, has very little relevance to them and, the burning issues which have driven them to come along are evaded, talked off the agenda, ruled out of order (14 days' notice needed, dear). No advice is offered about what can be done to fight the attacks of the local council or area health authority, no concrete plans suggested by the 'experts' in the union (who after all if anyone should know, he should), the union otticials, the branch officers. But all these good officers seemed to spend their time doing is moaning how terrible Maggie Thatcher is, how management don't care about the sick, old, the very young.

Then, if a member should dare to say 'I haven't come all this way to hear what 1 know already. What's the union doing about it?' The experts the branch officers have the reply; the same reply that every official downwards from Brother Fisher (now Bickerstaffe) uses.

"Love'

Well, dear for love' or even the occasional 'sister"). we understand what you'te getting at but we're not the union. It's the members out there that are, the same members who haven't bothered to turn up to this We can't do anything if they don't want to fight.' Plausible It sounds so plausible, so unanswerable, especially when it's linked to other old chestnuts that come from the bureaucrats' handbooks like we haven't got the industrial muscle of the members', 'the only people we hurt if we strike are the old and sick' And so the women who have made such an effort to get to the union meeting think to themselves What's the poing in coming', get totally demoralised, end up bitter and frustrated.

However, all is not lost by any means for Nupe women. Many women have been driven to tight, to ignore the deteatism of the leadership in Nupe. They know what's at stake if they don't fight, they don't stand * hope in hell of another ob part time and they know what long term suffering will be caused if the services for those they care for are slashed.

And so they occupy threatened closures, in everything from swimming baths in Fulham to the geriatric hospitals like St. Mary's and St. Benedicts' Many health workers are completely aware that there is no way they will win even tho inadequate 12% they're asking, without strike action and are discovering how to do this with an essential. service maintained, discussing the whole question of 'emergency cover' and how to implement it. But, nowhere, will you discover Nupe officials working out the best way to, encourage the membership to take the fullest possible strike action.

What is needed is for women to organise to get rid of the present leadership at every level and to replace it with union leaders that will not make excuses and start fighting. Leaders who Spread We're offering bundles of five each week for £1 post free, and bundles of 10 for £1.75 post free.

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Socialist Organiser no.85 May 20 1982 Page 11