AEU plans protest within the law

to ensure that any industrial action in support of demands for a shorter

working week is lawful under the Government's trade union legislation.

With a national dispute looming over pay and hours, the AEU leadership

is having to follow the lead of Mr Ron Todd, general secretary of the

Transport and General Workers' Union, who is attempting to conduct a

dispute in defence of the threatened National Dock Labour Scheme without

attracting potentially disastrous legal consequences.

After last week's breakdown in talks over pay and, more particularly,

hours with the Engineering Employers' Federation, the AEU executive will

shortly consider how to press the employers to concede a further move

toward a 35-hour working week.

Ten years ago the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions

staged a 13-week campaign of guerrilla stoppages, 24 hours at first and

then two days, to win a one-hour breakthrough in the 40-hour working

week.

Yesterday Mr Bill Jordan, president of the Amalgamated Engineering

Union, the confederation's largest affiliate, said his union was to

examine its tactics in the light of employment laws, which, he said,

were specifically designed to prevent national claims from succeeding.

He said his union refused to be ''set up'' by either the Government or

the employers and was still going to pursue its quest for shorter hours.

Earlier in his presidential address to the union's national committee

meeting in Eastbourne, Mr Jordan warned that the two million employees

in the engineering industry would not accept a position where the

employers took the lion's share of benefits made possible by their

efforts.

Mr Jordan also put up a passionate defence of proposals to amalgamate

the AEU with EETPU, the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and

Plumbing Union, to form a million-strong ''super union of the right''.

Other big unions were on the verge of combining and the AEU could not

afford to miss out on this process.

He said the proposed merger with EETPU ''must succeed''.

* A small group of left-wing demonstrators lobbied the conference

yesterday. They included Labour MP for Leith, Mr Ron Brown, who had his

AEU sponsorship withdrawn last year after an incident involving damage

to the Mace of the House of Commons.