This week sees the start of a huge one and a half-million pound publicity campaign by NALGO. But publicity campaigns and the fanfare about the prosed merger with NUPE and COHSE cannot disguise the fact that many NALGO members are under siege.
NALGO's half-million white collar local government workers are will occupy an even more right-wing
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threatened with a tide of redundancies. All over the country councils are demanding jobs losses. Councils affected so far include Haringey (1200), Lambeth (600), North Tyneside (700), Harrow (200), Derbyshire County (1000), Liverpool (1000), Newcastle (850) and many others. power in the union movement as a manual workers, now NALGO workers are under attack. Some of the worst attacks have come from Labour councils.
Last year NALGO's local government membership went down 5000; in the next eighteen months up to 50,000 jobs could be at risk.
But NALGO has no answers. Local branches are being encouraged simply to negotiate the best redundancy deal.
Central government funding of local govemment has fallen from 60 per cent in 1979 to 33 per cent this year. Apart from the abolition of the GLC and Metropolitan counties, the biggest jobs losses have been in services affected by competitive tendering - direct labour, refuse collection, cleaning, and catering. Butthe poll tax