At a Special Delegate Conference of the GMWU on Monday January 8, Gas Workers voted overwhelmingly for national industrial action against the Government's ban on pay negotiations - a decision endorsed by the Executive Committee the following day.
What this meant in effect was that the Government was given an ultimatum: Unfreeze the Gas Negotiations or face a national overtime ban and policy of non-cooperation from midnight, Wednesday January 17.
It was clearly as a result of this that the Government decided to end the freeze on negotiations (which was becoming a bit of a farce anyway) from Wednesday January 17. TIMING OF THE CLAIM Trade union bureaucrats are notorious for avoiding leading struggles - because it imposes extra work on themselves and breaks their routine. G&MWU officials are no exception which is why they timed the Gas pay claim to follow on immediately after agreement was reached on the Power Workers' pay claim. A joint, or even simultaneous, struggle - which could have ensured a much better settlement for both sections - was avoided. Instead, the G&MWU bureaucrats put their faith in the "leap-frog" system of claims, which relies heavily on the employers' alleged "sense of fair play": if the Power Workers got Ex, then we want at least Ly, and so on. Unfortunately for the G&MWU, the Government timed their Pay Freeze to follow immediately after the Power Workers' settlement OOH So the Gas Workers' claim was submitted on November 15, with the employers due to reply one month later on December 15. And it was duly "frozen".
CALLS FOR INDUSTRIAL ACTION On November 30, delegates to a G&MWU National Industrial Conference called to discuss the Gas pay claim were urging the union to take national industrial action to break out of the deadlock imposed by the Government. And they were pointing our that the membership in almost all areas were prepared to take such industrial action. At this conference, however, no firm decision was taken except to wait and see what the Gas Council had to say on December IS. ADDING INSULT TO INJURY In the event, the Gas Concil announced that on the previous day they had received a directive from the Government freezing all negoriations about pay as well. This had a twofold effect.
First it impelled the G&MWL to recall its National Delegate Conference (the meeting on January 8i to discuss the new situation. But secondly, it served to divert attention away from the Par Freeze itself.
From then on, the G&MWU leadership concentrated its fire merely on getting a retraction of the "insult" rather than a redress of the "injury" itself.
SIDESTEPPING THE POLITICAL FIGHT This was, in fact, the essential weakness of the ultimatum. For all Mr. Basnett and his executive was demanding in return for calling-off the overtime ban was what he called "reasonable negotiations" - a "concession" which Heath could give away without conceding anything essential at all.
Like the AUEW executive committee's emphasis on protesting about the fines rather than on a fight against the Act from In Birmingham and London, building empl Gas workers' delegates after the January 8th conference of the GMWU which they result, the G&MWU leaders were side-stepping the political fight against the Pay Freeze itself - and therefore leaving the Government room for manoeuvre. THE POTENTIAL FOR STRUGGLE It remains to be seen how successful rank and file militants will be in resisting any attempt to call-off the struggle now that the ban on negotiations has been lifted. Gas workers in East Greenwich and Croydon have been banning overtime for some weeks now, and gas workers in the Nottingham and Birmingham areas joined them last Monday. In addition, the Confederation of Ship Building and Engineering Unions has issued a directive to all its members in the Gas industry (who are mainly in Maintainence sections) to support any action taken by the Process workers, and white collar workers have also decided to black all work normally done by manual workers who are taking industrial action.
Finally, at the Delegate Conference, the vote the C.P.'s control. Charter was set up to use was really not between taking action against the ban on negotiations and not taking action but between limiting action to the question of the ban on negotiations and a struggle against the Freeze as such.
BUT MILITANCY IS NOT ENOUGH But two things are clear, First, the trade union leaders are instinctively shying away from any positive struggle against the Industrial Relations Act or the Pay Freeze (though, of course they are quite prepared to "ignore" the NIRC!) - precisely because they know that you cannot fight an Act of Parliament without fighting the Government which introduced it and maybe also the State apparatus which upholds it as "the Law").
But secondly, such a political struggle against the Government is vitally necessary to defend even the sectional interests of the working class (as expressed in the trade unions) - a fact demonstrated nowhere so clearly as in the effects of the Pay Freeze itself.
many new areas, This organisation could torm the bones of a united struggle against the "lum)
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