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In the Highland Region, 300 school cleaners are showing the way to fight the Government's public expenditure cuts. Despite the manoeuvres of a Regional Council which the cleaners" union, NUPE, says is *handling the matter as though they were Highland lairds and treating their staff as though they were serfs" " by the beginning of October the cleaners had entered their fifth weeks of strike action, determined to force the Council to withdraw the decision to cut their working hours by one third.
The strikers are well aware that what the Council is doing amounts to a wage cut of over 30%, and they are solid in their refusal to accept this "We want our hours back, nothing less" pickets at Lochaber High School, Fort William, told Scottish Socialist.
In an area where industrial disputes are uncommon, the women have built a powerful strike organisation. and schools in Inverness, Dingwall, Nairn and Lochaber have all been affected by industrial action. At Lochaber High School, where cleaners hours have been reduced from 17 to 124, all 18 women are out, with the support of
the janitors, staff, pupils, and even the Rector. The school, with a role of 1500, has been closed, and a picket has been kept up during all normal working hours. Pupils have joined the picket line, with their own banners supporting the strike.
One of the pickets who had worked at the school for ten years emphasised the health hazards that a partially cleaned school held. We wash the walls and scrub the toilets. I know what can be done, and what can't, and we can't clean this school in 12% hours"
But it is not only in the larger schools that action is being taken. Even in the small schools, scattered throughout the Region, the cleaners have stayed In Mallaig, example, the solitary school, cleaner away. is supporting the strike.
The Council have conducted a vicious campaign against the strikers they have: - been the first Council in Britain to sack workers for going on official strike dismissed all those on strike and advertised the posts as vacant
used non-union members to try to break the strike. accused the pickets of intimidation of those wanting to work. Nonetheless, the cleaners are determined to keep up the fight. Reports of a trickle back to work have been flatly denied by the union. The strikers are particularly encouraged by the decision of the teachers union, EIS, to back headteachers who refuse to recruit blackleg labour, but they are still looking for more active support from other local authority workers.
They point out that if they are defeated, the floodgates will be opened for all local authorities to impose massive wage cuts across the board, in line with the Government's antisocialist economic policies. Some of their placards pointedly state We want your support not sympathy".
JIM McKECHNIE
As we go to press, the cleaners have accepted a new deal proposed by the council. We will print further details in our next issue.