Ashdown - Labour backing?
Sections of the Labour right are now openly arguing for coalitionism at a national level. Having abandoned any residual commitment socialism, they now see a pact with the Lib-Dems as the only way to secure an electoral majority against the Tories.
No price would be too high, including complete severance of links with the trade unions. Moves like this have to be opposed at all costs.
By a tubeworker OVER 10,000 members of rail union RMT on London Underground will be balloted for strike action against management's 'company plan cuts package this week and next.
At stake is 6,000 jobs and every single condition of service won since the end of the Second World War.
Voting takes place between November 5 to 1Ò, with a result due on November 17. The union's general grades committee took the unanimous decision TO ballot in the face of management's announcement that the plan would be unilaterally imposed from November 23. Eleven months of negotiations had failed to persuade even one union to recommend acceptance.
New rosters Train crew will be asked to work to new rosters based on new terms and conditions of employment. Every single London Underground Limited worker will get a new contract of employment - together with the promise of the sack in the event of non-compliance.
New contracts will be distributed from November 1. During the following fortnight, everyone will be seen by their 'centurion' manager and asked to sign. If they refuse, they will be given a fortnight to consider their position.
If after four weeks a worker still hasn't signed up, they will be given notice of dismissal on the basis of one week for every year worked up to the statutory maximum of 12 weeks.
This is mass intimidation is an attempt to smash the unions effective bargaining strength ir the workplace, in line with personnel director Gwyn Evans' boast: In two years there will be no unions of LUL'.
Victimisation
Evans cut his teeth at British Leyland (now Rover) in the seventies, where he participated in the victimisation of Derek 'Red Robbo' Robinson, convenor of the Longbridge car plant in Birmingham and leading Communist Party steward.
Yet in the face of this open union busting, drivers union ASLEF and collar workers' TSSA are conducting postal 'referendums' on the plan; ballots that do not include the key words 'are you prepared to take industrial action?' Their leaderships would dearly have loved to recommend the plan because some extra money has been on offer. of the RMT District Council -have refused to swallow.
Decency, fairness and collective strength through the union at the workplace would be replaced by a mass of powerless individuals, each on their own rates of pay linked to performance.
Tactics
Even though ASLEF and TSSA members have been denied a strike ballot, the tactics of the rank and file leaders of the RMT have exposed the real meaning of the plan behind the talk of big pay rises.
Instead of it being probable it was last April, that ASLEF and TSSA would have worked in the face of an RMT strike, there is every chance of these workers now supporting the fightback.
National