The announcement of the successful Royal Mail industrial action ballot result at the beginning of Conference dominated the mood for the rest of the week though the postal committee took no decisions about action until after the end of conference. Nevertheless the Broad Left organised a successful fringe meeting on the issues and a postal branch organised another well attended meeting on teamworking.
Despite Alan Johnson's clear ambition to be Tony Blair's right hand man in the union, he is not getting things all his own way, either in the current postal dispute or on policy issues at annual conference The conference repre. sented a small step forward, although the lack of left organisation on the postal side remains a major problem which remains to be overcome.
Conference reaffirmed last year's policy of calling on a Labour gover. ment to reseal all Tory and-unior aws which had been ignored by the unicleadership at 1995 TUC and Labe-Party Conferences. Subsequenty = = left won a bitter battle on the Exe:.. tive that the motion on ant-.- =- =ms go forward to this year's Labo-- ": = conference. The leadership are s-sfoundly unhappy about this and are manoeuvring to overturn the decision. They will continue such tactics up to Labour Party Conference - but may have to rely on agreeing a soft composite rather than actually dumping it.
Conference also agreed a minimum wage of half male median earnings but also passed an NEC motion supporting the Labour leadership's position.
Lee Jasper, Harry Cohen MP and Lola Onibiyo addressed a well attended fringe meeting in support of the Campaign against the Immigration and Asylum Bill. The NEC accepted a motion opposing the Bill and calling on a Labour government to repeal it and conference voted to affiliate to CAIAB.
Liverpool Dockers Conference gave a standing ovation to a speaker from the Liverpool dockers and voted to donate £35,000 to them, against platform opposition.
Ireland
Conserence carried a vaguely wa-ces motion caring for inciusive ¿ = cEne and negotiations" and for "a -5. are asing peace underpinned by = 3. leve treless. ins is has see " ser
Telecom
The separate telecom conference discussed BT's move to downsize, to outsource to lower-paid contractors and to increase productivity from its remaining core workforce.
BT has reduced its workforce by over 100,000 since 1990 to its present level of about 130,000 by voluntary redundancy, with unfortunately no union resistance. There is no sign of any attempt to slow the pace, although target reductions were not met last year.
There has been increased use of poor performance and attendance and of disciplinary procedures to get rid of neonie who cont shade us or whose faces don't fit.
A motion was carried condemning the use of performance review mark. ings which make black people more vulnerable to being disciplined/sacked for poor performance.
Conference reaffirmed its opposition to performance related pay. But BT has now put in place enabling mechanisms for its introduction. Motions were carried calling for withdrawal from agreements on performance measurement and opposition to secret monitoring. These put staff under constant pressure to meet quantity and quality targets.
Conference opposed BT's programme of closing large numbers of suildings and relocating staff, particu. larly out of Central London to the M25 ring. This enables it to save on London Weighting payments and to force redundancy on staff unwilling to travel large distances to work.
BT Pay
Telecom conference also voted to support the £18 per week pay claim, to oppose BT's intention to force all staff on to monthly pay and to oppose differential pay within the same grade. Since conference the Telecom Executive has recommended a pay deal for acceptance, including a 3.8 per cent increase, differential pay within the same grade and acceptance of compulsory monthly pay. Although the Telecom Exec is right wing dominated the decision was supported by two Broad left supporters at a poorly attended meeting. However there has been a vigorous campaign for a no vote led by left branches and supported by the broad left. A successful campaign on Day would be a major boost for the BT membership and additionally increase the likelihood of action on other issues. Two years in the writing, and recently adopted at the founding conference of the new organisation Socialist Democracy, this programme is the most extensive Trotskyist analysis of ireland since the 19408.
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A programme for the Irish Revolution