IMGpapers 1976–79

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1976–79

Newcastle wasteland

Socialist Challenge No. 103, 5 July 1979 · p. 10 of the scan · 369 words

The scan: sc-n103-jul-05-1979.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 2-4 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 10 of the scan

other represents jobs no longer exist. By a CPSA member, Newcastle THE LARGEST branch of the Civil and Public Services Association is the 8,000-strong central office branch of the DHSS in Newcastle. This branch has voted by a 2-1 majority to support the campaign launched by the union's executive against Tory expenditure cuts, and has done so by introducing an overtime ban.

The three-month ban on recruitment in the Civil Service will have a massive effect in our office, which is scheduled for cuts of 6 per cent. There is no way that this can be achieved through 'natural wastage' - to Which we're in 'any case opposed — so the Tories must be thinking ol compulsory redundancies.

At the same time, the long-term effects of computerisation and new technology could lead to a least a fifth of the workforce on the clerical side being eliminated over the next few years. When it is borne in mind that this is the North-East and that over 80 per cent of our workforce are women, the effects of such policies can be readily appreciated.

Civil servants like us don't sit around all day drinking tea. We are, in the main, young workers who would in the past have been employed in the shipyards, engineering, or in the many factories in the area. But these So we have no choice but to turn to the government offices. If we lose these jobs, the whole region will become a wasteland with no future for school leavers. The CPSA campaign offers us a chance to fight back. Grosvenor begin their picket duty, they were horrified to discover a large group of men clearing the Room'. The pickets tried to talk to them and explain their case, but the scabs shoved them roughly aside.

Shop steward Ellen Gallagher was struck on the face. All the women were subjected to crude remarks and other abuse. The police told them that they had better get out of the way as The women were forced to watch, some in tears, as the scabs completed the job which the UCATT building workers had refused to touch. The belonged Brentford, a firm well-known for this sort of activity.

← Cuts, limbs gangreneBY NEWTOWN:- if Death: Speculation. →

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