steps up campaign Fire service cuts cost lives Firefighters and local residents across London are joining forces to prevent London's Fire authority from a drastic reduction in fire cover. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has called for a "united campaign of opposition" against cutbacks.
The fire authority is planning to close Manchester Square Fire Station in Westminster and to remove fire engines from Westminster, Knightsbridge, Kensington, Euston, Acton, A T&GWU member The proposed merger between the T&GWU, Amicus and the GMB, did not arise out of a grass roots movement.
It arose out of present financial difficulties in the GMB and future problems of a falling membership in the T&GWU.
The merger moves are part of Tony Woodley's "Agenda For Change" in the T&GWU. It goes alongside a recruitment campaign, which presently taking the form of trying to achieve 100 per cent membership in unionised plants.
These are bureaucratic mergers, and as with others of Tony Woodley's policies, they might be logical, but you have to discuss the motives, and the results.
The key question is what difference they will actually make to activity.
Woodley tells his officials to go out and recruit. He says that if the workers won't accept a particular official, Ignoring policy: Tony Woodley into a factory, because of previous partnership deals, then the union will send in someone else.
He says we are seen as "too close to the gaffers", we want no more "concession bargaining". But he has himself been a major advocate of concessions.
For example, four years ago a mass meeting of workers at the BMW plant in Oxford voted unanimously not to allow him back in the plant.
This was because of the introduction of the Working Time Account" system of annualised hours introduced on the back of the threatened closure of Longbridge.
Even now over Rover, and the Chinese deal, which means huge job losses, he says its "the only game in town". This was exactly the term he used before at Longbridge.
The concessions given in the 1998 deal at Longbridge have now spread throughout the UK Motor industry.
This non-political trade unionism, that just acts defensively, ends up selling out.
At the last Labour Party Conference, Woodley voted against the resolution for withdrawal of troops, which is T&GWU policy.
So the question for rank and file activists isn't just to discuss with activists in the other unions the pros and cons of merger, but the political direction of the unions.
The hopeful sign on this is the pensions issue. This might raise militancy, and really different policies. This is as long as it develops into sustained joint action. New SSP Convenor Colin Fox speaks to an anti-war rally