After five years of resistance, in the shape of two major strikes, countless token strikes, overtime bans and refusals to operate new berths, the port employers have achieved their cherished aim: complete rationalisation of the Docks Inaustry:
On Monday 21st Sept. Phase I of the "Devlin Scheme" went into operation with the rapturous blessings of both the dockers' unions, T&GWU and NASD.
The scheme provides that 70% of the workforce receive £36 a week, 30% receive £28-10s together with an extra week's annual holiday, improved sick pay and pensions and a 5-hour reduction in the working week.
The employers receive a two-shift 14-hour day with the probability of an extension to three-shift round-the-clock working, complete mobility of labour, vast reductions in gangmanning scales and the abolition of the need for enhanced overtime payments.
The national dock labour force has been NJACWER LIVES!?
The Equal Pay movement has lost momentum since the May Rally of last year and the introduction of the Equal Pay Bill, which many women still believe will bring them equal pay and treatment, albeit not until 1976. (Any careful reading of the Bill will show a multitude of escape-routes for employers from even the very limited field which it covers.)
The only national trade-union-based organisation working in this field went into a decline at the same time as did the movement. This organisation, the National Joint Action Committee for Women's Equal Rights (NJACWER), was set up in late 1968 following the Ford wasting away over the years: in 1948 the National Register was 81,000 strong, by 1966* it had dropped to 62,100; at present it is approx. 40,000!
Last year the P.O. made an extra £1,000,000, increasing their profit from £8,000,000 to £9,000,000. Hays Wharf made a modest £300,000 gain while sacking 300 of their dockers! Well done Port Employers-Well done Unions!
SWEET CHARITY Trade-Union-basher Heath and his fellow cesspool skin-diving team continue to bleat about the need to discipline the unions. The oft-repeated threat is to suspend strikers' families from their rightful Social Security benefits.
The facts should be made clear, for too many workers regard what is theirs by right as sweet charity bestowed on them by their loving Govt For each week a man works he contributes 17/8 in Social Security payments, the employer contributes £3.6.11. from the profits the worker has produced for the same purpose. That is ganda, and some support of women involved in local wage and union recognition disputes. Increasing tendencies by the "leadership" to clamp down on signs of life from the active membership culminated in the farce of Chris Norwood's instatement as Secretary in October 1969: a tour de force in bureaucratic manoeuvring, followed by almost total rigor mortis. The downswing in the movement was thus reinforced by inactivity from the only organisation that had been able to reach working women on a nationar level The NJACWER General Meeting held on 20th September hopefully marked a fresh start for the organisation, following the resignations of the former Secretary and Chairman. Delegates £4.4.7 a week, 52 weeks of the year credited to each male worker's Social Security.
In a year the worker contributes directly and indirectly £219.18.4 to the Government's Social Security fund. A worker in dispute receives no social security benefits. A worker's wife and children receive a meagre pittance! A wife and three kids are allowed approx. Ell a week which includes payment of rent. Should the worker be on strike 6 weeks, his family receive about £66. Some workers, like the Pilkington men and the teachers, had contributed over 20 years without striking. It would be more to the point if workers received their full rightful benefits in a strike.
FEED THE HUNGRY Seven in ten school-children are on the verge of malnutrition, not in Africa or Latin America, but in the technological "Land of Dope and Tory", 20th Century Britain.
A recent survey conducted by Dr. Ben Lynch, nutrition expert into children's health, discovered 32% of all school children are well below should now be left behind, and a working party more representative of the membership was elected. The meeting voted to concentrate the organisation's at present limited forces on matters particularly affecting working-class women: the fight for the early implementation of Equal Pay for work of equal value (which the Act does not give and the campaign for equal opportunities -including training-for women, together with a campaign for child-care facilities. Despite suggestions from the former bureaucracy that the best means of doing this was to "pressurise people who matter, " Tory M.P.s to be exact, the mood of the meeting was for action among women on the shop-floor, through the movement's activists. The meeting also voted general support the Ministry of Health's recommended food intake level, and a further 57% are unsatisfactory. This in the "Welfare State"!
School meals recently increased from 1/6 to 1/9 and pretty soon they will be 2/, all in the interest of the national well-being Eight million women, a large proportion married with children, are forced to work to supplement their husband's starvation wages. They cannot afford the time to attend to the children's day-time needs. The schools are overcrowded and under-staffed. In some cases a family with three school children has to pay over fl a week in fares to school; this cost added to uniforms, sports gear, outings, etc. is slightly bending the principal of free education.
Denis Healey, Labour's ex-bellicose Minister of Defence, is now opposed to selling arms to "Nazi" South Africa During the 1967 devaluation crisis he pro posed that the sale of arms to South Afric would be a valuable help to the economy.
year. An attempt to begin a link-up of the two wings of the Women's movement was made in an agreement to send an observer to WNCC meetings (Women's Lib. movement) and to invite similar observers.
Many women in the Liberation movement are beginning to recognise the need to move into solidarity with the working-class struggle if the social revolution for which they are fighting is to become a reality. As much support as possible is need for women workers struggling for economic and social equality, particularly at a time when the majority of women are still not unionised and most of the union bureaucrats seem to have lost interest in the question.
NJAWER, for all its deficiencies, may be a
if certainly is to the Palestinians themselves. In of kibbutz income), but this is mainly the case of a few large industries so that 80% of the Kibbutzniks are operating pure socialism devoid of exploitation. (1) The first argument is obviously the main one: our reader agrees that Israeli policies are wrong but in his opinion this has nothing to do with the social and political structure of the Zionist State as such. We hold, on the other Finally, the long excerpt of Ben-Yosef's letter published above is perhaps especially remarkable for the absence of any reference t a solution through mass mobilisation: our reader sees peace as the result of Mrs. Meir's exertions or Mr. Nasser's efforts, perhaps ever as a consequence of Mr. Brezhnev's policy. Surely for socialists labour action is the main road towards solving any problem, or what is